Devcon 7: Southeast Asia

This past month I attended my first Devcon ever as a volunteer. I chose the volunteer path because I wanted active involvement in the community and meeting like-minded people, particularly now that I am spending more time in East Asia. I have attended several crypto conferences by now and generally find them to be less about learning and more about networking, product launches, sales booths, and parties.

Devcon is a conference geared toward developer and researchers. It was an incredibly well-organized event with several tracks and workshops with varying levels of difficulty. I attended as many as I could, but even then, the real value of going to a conference is not attending the talks but meeting people in person. After all, the talks are recorded and freely available on the Ethereum Foundation's Youtube page. At the end of this page, I've linked some of my favorite talks that are certainly worth watching. The calibre of speakers and the depth of the content is unlike anything I had seen before. It certainly lived up to the reputation.

It is also worth noting that Devcon specifically prohibits distribution of swag, sale booths, and other commercial activities you would find at a general-purpose conference. The focus is on the content and the community, not generating revenue from sales booths. This format works exceptionally well and I hope it stays that way.

Instead you have workshops and a lot of Community Hubs which were incredibly informative and hands-on. The Home Operators Hub also had a good number of people from ethstaker community which is one of my favorite communities in the Ethereum space. It was great to meet so many of the people who I admire and without them my solo staking journey would've been far less smooth.

It is worth noting that there are several events starting a year before Devcon actually takes place called Road to Devcon and I attended a couple of them when I had the chance in Bangkok earlier this year organized by ETHPadThai. I love that name btw!

What Do You Do As a Volunteer?

tldr; whatever is needed! I was assigned as a stage volunteers, and my main task was making sure the speakers made it on-time to the designated stage and the talks went smoothly. I also helped in with some of the wellness activities so other volunteers could take a break when short-staffed. It never felt like a chore, and I thoroughly enjoyed all the volunteers that I was with.

I have volunteered a couple of times at PyCons and really enjoyed the experience. Devcon was a whole different level and I cannot wait for next year's Devconnect.

Especial shoutout to the organizers and the volunteer leads (Shyam and Morgane you two are my MVPs!) who somehow managed ~13k attendees and a 300ish army of volunteers. The amount of planning and coordination that goes into an event of this scale is mind-boggling, yet they pulled it off and made it look easy too!

Side Events

If you have ever attended a crypto conference, you would know that side events are kind of the main event. It's a bit of a weird dynamic because you have multiple side events happening and some times the main events ends up fairly empty. Devcon makes an active effort to limit side events, even then there was something like +900 side events jammed in a week of activity. Given the huge attendance of Devcon (this year was just shy of 13k people) other conferences get organized just before and after. Right before Devon there was the DeFi Security Summit and the first week you had several overlapping one-day conferences like the DuneCon, Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress, GeckoCon, you get the point.

One particular event that I really enjoyed and would highly recommend was the Bankless Summit organized right after Devcon which featured TED-style talks. I highly recommend you check them out as the videos get uploaded here.

Goes without saying there were plenty of rooftop drinks, social dinners, parties, etc. to your heart's content. I went out every day after the conference and met a plethora of super interesting and driven people from all over the world. One particular group I really enjoyed were a 30ish community of eth developers from Iran, which I had no idea about beforehand. It's amazing to see how the decentralized nature of Ethereum permeates the intense internet censorship in Iran.

From all the parties I went to, rAAVE has a special place in my heart. The venue, the music, the crowd, the atmosphere. Hard to live up to the hype and exceed it!

The Vibes

It's hard to overstate how amazing the vibes were at Devcon. Social media gets a good chunk of its involvement from flaming and trolling, but in person, it's a whole different story. The energy was palpable and the enthusiasm was infectious.

Coincidentally, during Devcon crypto markets started nearing all-time highs. Bitcoin certainly put on a show. You would notice people stood a little taller, walked a little straighter, and smiled a little wider. Oh, the irony of being at a crypto conference where the main asset of importance to the audience still hasn't reached its previous all-time high ;)

But seriously, 13k people from all over the world at a conference aimed at developers. It is as real of a signal as you would need to be bullish Ethereum.

The ticker is ETH.

Notable Talks

I didn't get to attend every talk and am still working through some that I had marked and couldn't attend. That said, here are some of the must-watch talks in my opinion in no particular order.

• Ethereum in 30 Minutes by Vitalik Buterin
• This year in Ethereum by Josh Stark
• The REAL state of L2s by Bartek Kiepuszewski
• Beamchain by Justin Drake, and then watch You’re Not Bullish Enough! Ethereum Roadmap & Beamchain
• Can we fix MEV? by Jonah Burian
• Lessons learned from Tor by Roger Dingledine
• Web3 Security is Embarrasing by Andrew MacPherson
• How to Properly Open Source Software: Lessons Learned from the Linux Foundation by Hart Montgomery

Reminder: All talks are available on the Ethereum Foundation's YouTube page.