Bytemaster and I discussed the outline for what would have been the first day of the event. My assignment is to turn this into something that looks like a training course. Once that is complete, it would be easy to pour it all into a Moodle instantiation and run it as an online MOOC-ish thing, enabling people to run content-full local meetups.
Rather than fly Bytemaster's mild-mannered alterego all over the landscape, we could Skype him in like those flickery holograms in Star Wars.
"Help us Obi-Wan, you're our only hope!"
Very interested in hearing more about this. Can it be Googled?...errr, I mean Startpaged?
That's fantastic!
So its a place to hangout and discuss anything “Beyond Bitcoin" but the pond will be stocked with Bitshares enthusiasts?
At first, but I would like to see people who are members from both the BitShares and other communities bring their friends who are interested in "Bitcoin 2.0" projects.
Let's say for instance that Barwizi from NoirShares is at the hangouts all the time, or HackFischer, or Nikolai, Dan (please no offense to those MANY I have failed to mention for brevity's sake)...etc frequently attend these "hangouts" along with other community members who are interested enough to attend. Now we have some brain power there at these hangouts who have a very good idea of how to develop 2.0 technologies. Now imagine I am the Dev of Sexcoin and I am wanting to find ways to bootstrap an entire industry on top of this coin, but it takes money to pay full-time developers to help build the infrastructure needed to do this. A BIG question many Devs and Communities have is both "why and/or how should we do this?"
Well fortunately, there are a good few people on this forum who HAVE done it (or some permutation) already. Community members from other coins could learn from and forge bonds with those from "our" bitShares community. Devs from the projects here might choose to even sign on as Co-Developers or "Contractors" who advise and help troubleshoot issues that arise. Contracting Devs could volunteer for free, or they could convince the hiring Devs to "pay" the user base of the Contracting Dev's "coin" as an issuance of some of the total shares. This would effectively serve as a symbiotic relationship and create a feedback loop that at the very best would foster good will, free & effective cross-community advertising, and unbreakable alliances. At worst it would create more competition in the space (which ironically creates more advertising).
Of course there are also individuals who have completed multiple bounties here for bitShares who might be able to quickly retool their previous code, use graphic design knowledge, paper wallets...etc to fulfill bounties that have thus far gone unfilled for startup coins.
We'll see where it goes and much of this could be idealistic pie in the sky sh*t, but if we don't try it we'll never know. I believe if we try enough, eventually something legitimate will manifest and stick. I am interested in helping this along and making good friends in the process who I can someday sit down with a couple ($.20) Pints and chat about how we contributed to the new industrial revolution.
The possibilities make me
giddy. Monetary gain, though nice, would be dwarfed in significance as compared to the knowledge that we all collectively stood up and helped push the human race back from the precipice yet one more time. We live in extraordinary times, so I say lets all learn to be extraordinary together.