ETHDenver: Good vibes, plus round-the-clock networking

The United States is an expensive country to get to if you don't live there already, the cost of things is high, and all the networking has to count for something when you are part of a team making the journey. There is a powerful argument that some of the new people you meet over cocktails in Colorado need to become converted leads a few weeks or months down the line to make the whole jamboree worth it, and I wouldn't oppose that.

My first impressions were clouded by jetlag and I wasn't alone. Denver is seven hours behind London time and eight behind mainland Europe. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed many hours before breakfast meant clinging on with the assistance of caffeine by evening and truncated sleeping patterns became mandatory. Zoe from WebZero, the brilliant organizer of Polkadot's quite unique Treasury-funded "Blockspace Mansion" (more on that later), posted on X afterwards: "4 hours sleep a night for 8 days. Give me a week to recover and I'll want to do it again." Which rather sums up the resilience of people in Polkadot. Push us to our limits, but we tend to get up and go again.

This was my first ETHDenver, and I hope it won't be my last. It needs to be stated here and now that the enthusiasm from Parity and Polkadot people was contagious, despite the fact many of us were seven or eight hours away from our natural time zone. There was our own Shawn Tabrizi nailing an effervescent presentation on the future of Web3 that was appropriate for all types of audience. It came either side of his two separate engagements in the Mansion. Also from Parity, Erin Grasmick and Remy Le Berre went straight into a panel on our first morning, a day before the main event started, that looked at the blockchain skills gap. (Erin also gave a solo presentation on scalability).

Homogenous thinking for global adoption

On the official first day, Chrissy Hill, our chief legal officer and interim COO, gave a keynote address that had a thematic link to the Erin-Remy panel, when she challenged the industry's historical approach to talent acquisition. Chrissy argued: "The strongest teams combine technical expertise with cognitive diversity. In an industry building for global adoption, homogeneous thinking isn't just a missed opportunity - it's an existential risk to the future of Web3." Special mention too to Alex 'Birdo' Bird, another Parity staffer who was here, there and everywhere.

From beyond Parity but very much from the ecosystem agents squad, Tommi Enenkel (aka Alice_und_Bob) was one of those who was able to combine long hours in the Polkadot booth with important discussions on the side. Nobody could quite match the audacious coverage of Polkadot's most ubiquitous and vocal ambassador Lucy Coulden, however, who probably lost count herself of the speaking engagements she threw herself into across Denver. She featured alongside Birdo in a punchy panel on the meaning of "community" in a post-memecoin world. By the way, if Uber posts particularly strong figures for its Denver operations this quarter, then a decent chunk of that can be put down to the miles covered across the city by everyone who attended after-hours side events, and of course regular trips to and from the Blockspace Mansion.

Advertising by the freeway outside the Blockspace Mansion

They counted 2,094 unique check-ins to the "Mansion", a detached house close to a big freeway carrying traffic downtown and within sight of the city's famous Mile High Stadium that plays host to the Broncos in the NFL. It had a porch, a back garden, and just enough space inside to make it feel cosy but never too squashed. Following a successful application to the Polkadot events bounty, the Treasury released 27.3k DOT on January 30th to allow WebZero to hire the space: this included rent of the Mansion for 10 days, staff, a shuttle service to and from the event, and hackathon prizes.

With complimentary soft, hot and alcoholic drinks flowing throughout daylight and evening hours, and platters of food provided by a private  chef, the Mansion was all things to all crypto people: a hackerspace, a networking venue, a party zone, a place to just hang out and vibe. The wine and whiskey selection was replenished as swiftly as the piles of branded swag - and with non-Polkadot side events paying money to WebZero to use the Mansion for their own events, this mitigated the overall cost for the organizer.

Seduced by the Colorado way

If the Mansion was something of an unqualified success, what about the main conference spaces of ETHDenver? A relaxed vibe pervaded in tune with Denver's geographical position as a sort of gateway to the US West. Nobody was too rushed to have a conversation, and many took time to listen, pause, think, and respond. It was as though all non-Denver natives were seduced by the slower way of life in Colorado and it might have seemed quite unusual to those more used to the New York or European way of doing things. The aesthetics of this conference are quite unique: garishly bright colors on every stage, giant inflatables more in tune with children's theme parks - and space, so much indoor space for stages, stalls, eateries and so on. The venue is the National Western complex, renowned for its January rodeo series, but also notable for equestrian events and auctioning lambs, hogs, and cattle.

'Birdo' with the mic in a main stage panel on the value of Web3 communities

There were initial concerns that the Polkadot booth was not in prime position as it was quite far from the main entrance: but those concerns were swiftly negated. The booth was on the main "route" through the main hall and adjacent to the doorways for the main stage. Pretty much everyone had to pass right by the Polkadot arch on multiple occasions, and that was handy. When I say "Polkadot arch" I probably really mean the "UNLOCK TOMORROW" banner, a new tagline promoted by the Distractive agency who are the primary marketers for Polkadot. The Polkadot colors and branding are now well established in the space so that nobody was in any doubt where they were - and of course the Polkadot logo itself was displayed lower in front of the "reception" desks. At times it was the busiest booth in the hall, and even at quieter times there was always a steady trickle of walk-ups.

DOT holders, and those generally familiar with the protocol, are loyal people on the whole who are aware of the high-quality tech the network provides. They were not all swept off their feet by the "Ethereum-compatible smart contracts, native to Polkadot, by Q3" narrative that I tried to engage some of them with. Happily, however, plenty were. And what was really interesting was that every long-term tokenholder I met was positive about the future for Polkadot, including a jovial guy in a Pittsburgh Steelers who had nothing to with ETHDenver, but bumped into Remy and me as we walked to the venue on the first morning, and saw the logo on my sweatshirt.

Distractive sent a pretty big team to Denver to ensure the booth was well-staffed from start to finish. Their numbers were boosted by ecosystem agents, Parity staff, and project teams who had screens and desks of their own to exhibit their wares (including Moonbeam, Nova Wallet, Unique Network, PBA, TVVIN, Evrloot, Moonbeam, Acurast, StellaSwap, and BlockDeep Labs). This meant that at times, particularly during the first two days when representatives of all these orgs were lurking around the booth, the space looked really busy and encouraged bypassers to think "there must be something going on here - let's check it out".

Distractive's Eric Holst, whose LinkedIn page has him down as the agency's "Ecosystem Community Evangelist for Polkadot" provided a sure, calm hand on the tiller. And although there was a rota of sorts, we were encouraged to be there as much as possible to keep things ticking along smoothly. This approach worked well: at no point was any individual inundated with a flood of people to engage with, and when people queued up in numbers at times, they were processed efficiently.

Inside the Blockspace Mansion, a panel featuring Shawn Tabrizi (right)

The Polkadot Treasury paid a significant amount for top-tier sponsorship, releasing 41.7k DOT on December 27th to Distractive. For this outlay, Distractive was able to secure the booth as well as a number of prominent talks, including two on the main stage. Funded through a separate OpenGov initiative, Polkadot was also named sponsor of a very well-attended closing party at a huge nightclub.

A move to general tech events?

As is traditional, a number of other opinions have been expressed about what went well and what could have been improved upon, with Birdo and Shawn having laid down their thoughts while still in Denver. I don't want to extend the debate further here, apart from to say that the idea of looking at more non-Web3 tech conferences in the future for Polkadot to leverage is gathering momentum internally.

Principally, this is because Polkadot's long-term vision does seem to sit at odds with so many other projects in the space. There were, for example, a large number of new start-ups in Denver insisting they had the best AI-meets-blockchain offering, without really being able to clarify what their unique selling point was. There was a project offering "unruggable liquidity for your memecoin", whatever that is. As for the operators who have been around a bit longer, I really liked the high-school vibe of the Polygon booth (complete with dented lockers), but when I snuck into the Midnight Happy Hour I found that something was maybe missing. It included a pretty dry announcement of a partnership with OpenZeppelin - but I need to add that everyone there was friendly, thoughtful, and keen to engage.

And I think that would really be my biggest takeaway of all. In contrast to certain other meetups/conferences/events in this space I've attended over the years where little cliques emerge and invisible shutters go up between groups, in Denver it was entirely different. Further conversations will surely continue: from around 25,000 attendees, the Distractive team was able to capture contact details of more than 7,000 people.

The idea is some of those will become enterprise partners of the future while a significant number of developers we met are now pursuing careers at Parity for the first time. Ultimately, ETHDenver - for us Polkadot folk - was partially framed as an opportunity to start conversations with new contacts, and in that way at least it proved to be a qualified success. Just how big a success it was cannot accurately be determined right now - it will depend on where those conversations ultimately lead to.