The Clash of Concepts that Inspired a Community
This is essay #7 of 7 as part of The Tech Progressive Writing Challenge. Join the discussion with build_ in the Discord.
Having just recently launched this grand web3 experiment called build_, our mission is to build, accommodate, and invest in a collective of innovators vested in the best interests of their respective localities (see full build_paper here). To accomplish this mission, we broke it down into 4 distinct phases:
Phase #1: build_community (fostering authentic IRL/URL connections)
Phase #2: build_lite (IRL coworking spaces)
Phase #3: build_assets (real estate and venture investment DAO)
Phase #4: build_cities (build startup cities around the globe)
For a few months now, we ran all sorts of experiments on phase #1 and tried to define what it meant to find the right signal. Should it be the volume of Discord chatter? How do we measure offline engagement? Is the word “community” overused? Do we need to launch yet another 10K NFT collection?
It wasn’t until I met Grant Nissly who came through our community with a new variant of his existing startup that he wanted to try out with build_ and the 1729 community called The Tech Progressive Writing Challenge. 7 days, 7 essays, ~500 words each. It was a slog for sure but we all got through it together, stronger at the end.
About halfway through the challenge I realized that it wasn’t really about our own community-building KPIs, DAO structure, or A/B testing Discord setups. While those tactical items are important to get right it dawned on me that the #1 way we are going to create our community is to build what the community wants together. Whether it be a writing challenge, a hardware prototype, a DAO, etc., by rallying the community behind these projects, we empower the members proposing a project, the members who are looking to get involved, and the build_community as a whole. The answer has literally been in the name the whole time!
It’s well-known that shared hardships build bonds between people (building startups, military training, etc.) and this writing challenge was no exception. Because of this week-long challenge, I’ve gotten to know some incredible minds from around the world and in many cases our writings built off of one another. Here’s a collection of one sample from each author in the Tech Progressive Writing Challenge that resonated with me the most even though it was hard to pick just one:
Joni Baboci draws on the evolution of experiences in online communities from the 56 kpbs dial-up days to the current landscape of Discords and digital value transfer.
Antoine Dusséaux took the opportunity of the writing challenge to document his recent trip to El Salvador first hand and a detailed overview of Bitcoin’s new role in the country.
Jason Peters reverse engineers the DAO-stack of Ethereum Name Service to help us better understand the best tools and practices that have contributed to the success of ENS.
Kevin Klammer gives a detailed and nuanced overview of the Network State, not shying away from the intricacies that will inevitably arise.
Grant Nissly, the challenge organizer, writes about the changing face of education credential from legacy degrees to more concrete portfolios such as GitHub Repos or Substacks.
Nicholas Ptacek does a deep-dive on what is possible with claiming a domain name on the Ethereum Name Service. Turns out, there’s a lot to include claiming an emoji domain like 🙃.eth
Abhisek Anand does an incredible deep-dive on Fungible and Non-Fungible Tokens. Abhisek’s writing during the challenge was hands down the most in-depth.
Botong breaks down some of the differences between building in the physical and digital worlds. In the physical world, you don’t really have the concept of version control.
Coleman Foley kicked off the writing challenge by positing that in building the future, we have an opportunity to approach it with the mindset of abundance, especially with respect to the energy sector.
Jim unearthed a series of previous literary and media references that all deliberately or unintentionally predicted events in the future that actually ended up coming true, in some case 50+ years forward!
Amidst the chaos that you might see in a Discord or Twitter feed, Qyng makes the case for long-term thinking and the long-tail of benefits that follow.
We can’t wait to see where Grant Nissly chooses to take The Tech Progressive Writing Challenge from here but we do know for certain that our community get behind him every step of the way. If you have an idea for a startup, project, or even just trying to get an accountability partner, stop by the build_ community and say hello.