BUIP027: (passed) Satoshi's Vision - Development & Scaling Conference

[solex]

BUIP027: Satoshi's Vision - Development & Scaling Conference

Submitted on: 31 August 2016

Summary

This is an Operational BUIP requesting BU membership approval for the expenditure to hold a small conference for the purpose of bringing together noted* Bitcoin developers to overview, discuss, critique and prioritize many of the leading software enhancements which enable a far higher capacity for transactional throughput on-chain.
* active developers of any full-node implementation who also support the on-chain scaling ethos.

Objectives

This conference has several strands:

1. Reaffirmation of Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision described in his 2008 whitepaper and later forum correspondence.
   
   
2. Make the case for multiple implementations, i.e. decentralized development, resolving the last major centralizing force within the Bitcoin ecosystem.
   
   
3. Presentations: Selected items drawn from the Bitcoin Unlimited proposed development roadmap.
   
   
4. Panel and breakout discussions to debate specific on-chain scaling changes
   
   
5. Networking: CTOs from Bitcoin ecosystem businesses will be invited to participate.
   
   
6. Prepare the groundwork for paid developers to enhance BU full-node software on a per-project basis which are approved by technical BUIPs.
   
   
7. Publicity for BU itself as a growing centre of development excellence for Bitcoin full-node software.

Expenditure

Budget: $20,000 with a further $5,000 reserve if necessary.
BU to be the major sponsor for the event but will attempt to mitigate costs by attracting additional sponsorship.
Funds to cover the conference room, catering and direct conference expenses for approximately 10 attendees. Externally invited attendees are additional but not reimbursed for expenses. (estimate ~10)

Edit: Funds to be available for live-streaming of the presentations and panel discussions. Recordings of these will be made available. Also, the keynote presentations will be translated into major languages and then available later on.

Location and Date:

San Francisco area (TBD).
September 25th (provisional date) but the option exists to defer if necessary.

 

[solex]

BU members in particular are invited to comment on this proposal.

 

[freetrader]

Will this conference be somehow enabled for real-time online participation?

While I'm all for BU devs meeting up in real life and getting to know each other etc. I don't see how most of the objectives of the conference aren't already able to be satisfied even without a physical conference.

So I guess I don't quite see the point of this particular venture, except as a vehicle to bring devs and industry leaders into physical contact.

In that sense, unless it's somehow far more transparent and openly accessible, it's going to attract the same "closed room meeting" criticisms to which similar meetings have been subjected (specifically the Roundtable II which had lackluster online presence).

I don't know the magnitude of expenditure on conference technology to open this meeting up, but I'd like to see it budgeted in addition to the "funds to cover the conference room, catering and direct conference expenses for approximately 10 attendees".

Ideally, I'd rather see the on-chain scaling projects work together toward a common online Bitcoin technical conference infrastructure - open to the world and more satisfactorily accessible than the recent WebEx conferences - where there can be some cross-pollination and building of a bigger community.

 

[pekatete]

Totally agree with @freetrader here with regard to accessibility and the publicity for BU to be derived from the conference. If it is a circa ~20 people with the "invitees" only emanating from the on-chain scaling group, then it is a closed door conference (like the junta led ones) and all that could be accomplished in the meet could equally be accomplished in a slack channel.

On the aim of mitigating costs through sponsorship, making the conference an open one and charging un-invited attendees a nominal fee to cover admin could also be an option, but that'd probably need a decent amount of lead time (which I think the 25th is).

 

[Justus Ranvier]

Is there any reason to not just broadcast a stream on YouTube?

 

[digitsu]

A broadcast stream can certainly be arranged. We could go a little bit further and get edited videos with post-production as well, but that would of course incur more costs. A youtube stream seems like a cheap default option.

As an organizer of the OnChainScaling online conferences, I think there is a value to both online based 'seminar' format conferences, and ones which are face-to-face. The former is great for presentations and interactive questions, while the latter allows breakout teams to really brainstorm on topics. Of course this is more appropriate when the audience are more peers than general public.

Therefore I think a combo of in-person with streamed presentations is ideal

 

[HelloGuy]

Physical meeting helps a lot in communication. Right now there are several teams with some very new ideas like Flexible Transactions, new netlayer, emergency consensus, desynchronize of rule sets for different nodes, subchain etc. Developers will be able to get a better understanding of these idea and its code behind it.

And it is not close door meeting for all the memebers of BU. I think anyone who supports that Bitcoin should do on-chain scaling can go, but to have a more effective technical discussion and peer review for all the ideas above, stop 1MB blocker troll from joining is required.

 

[solex]

We are all of the same mind.
Real-time video streaming is highly desirable, also the availability of recordings afterwards, especially as they can be translated for distribution to non-English speaking countries - which have the majority of Bitcoiners after all.
We will investigate the feasibility of decent video and report back here.

 

[taxed4ever]

Kudos on doing things the right way as it is helping me gather a good amount of support!

If one has a disability, say they are in a wheel chair which makes it harder to travel, how can one fully participate?

 

[solex]

@taxed4ever
Can you advise your approx travel distance to SF?
PM me if you wish to keep that private.

 

[digitsu]

Kudos on doing things the right way as it is helping me gather a good amount of support!

If one has a disability, say they are in a wheel chair which makes it harder to travel, how can one fully participate?

We can stream out live to Google Chat, perhaps. Any other streaming options/suggestions welcome.

 

[freetrader]

Funds to be available for live-streaming of the presentations and panel discussions.

I don't see any announcements related to streaming at https://www.bitcoinunlimited.info/conferences .

Is this:

a) still coming
b) dropped (why?)

We will investigate the feasibility of decent video and report back here.

Looking forward.

 

[lunar]

Any live stream?

 

[solex]

@freetrader [USER=55]@lunar[/USER],

We did investigate but the logisitics at a bandwidth challenged hotel plus the serious fee of $640, meant that we would not have a professional look-and-feel to the livestream. So we have 8 hours of video from two cameras which will be edited into a smaller output for people to watch.

 

[adamstgbit]

did you get hookers and blow?

with a 20K + 5K budget catering to 10 people, was it 2 girls for each dude?

It's a real shame this wasn't livestreamed.

 

[solex]

@adamstgbit
Much cynicism, NOT warranted.
Video of the conference will be forthcoming.

 

[adamstgbit]

hehehehe

sry but it does seem like quite an expanse.

20K on 10 people for 1 night?? waaaa

but you had cameras, you had a hall reated, you had food. etc..

had you reated 10 hookers ( all night ) that alone would've set you back 10K.
[doublepost=1474944838][/doublepost]i'm sorry for the jokes.
i look forward to the video(s).
was peter R there?

anyway Cheers!

 

[solex]

Satoshi's Vision Conference Video

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