Why I Started a Crypto Meetup and What I’ve Learned
The Start
If I’m going to write about making a crypto meetup, I might as well start at the beginning. My story with crypto goes like this:
I first heard about Bitcoin in early 2011 on the internet; probably reddit or Hacker News. I only really “got it” enough to realize that by the way it was described, something new and different was happening. These bitcoins represented digital ownership of a thing that couldn’t be taken from you. That was as far as I got into my understanding at the time.
It was intriguing enough to me to go through the effort of setting up a Dwolla account, a “bitcoinmarkets.com”, a Mt. Gox account, and getting $100 to the exchange. I bought about 5 bitcoin with that $100 in June 2011 (during the first run up from $0.75 to $30 lol) and sold them for a loss in August 2011. Womp womp 😞.
I’d always been fairly frugal, wasn’t making much money at my day job, and didn’t want $100 in this online bitcoin account thing when it would have been more fluid and useful for me in my regular bank account. So, my experiment was over. I bought and sold some of these bitcoins, and then I was done.
Cue to me getting back to work, changing jobs, getting married, having a kid, doing life, and becoming better at designing software and bigger technical systems. Then all of a sudden, it’s mid-2016 and I notice that a bitcoin is now worth $450! I remembered how I bought and sold 5 of them for $100 TOTAL a couple of years ago, and the seed that had been planted back in 2011 finally started to grow.
The Breaking Point
By March 2017 I had spent the previous 9 or so months studying how Bitcoin worked. As a software program, as a distributed network, and as a selfishly-incentivized economic model. It was fascinating to me. It pushed all of my buttons. I’d been using a group chat with my friends to talk, argue, and learn about crypto. It was a pretty dominating topic for our conversation for a few months. But I needed more.
At the time, I was working at a great place called DXY and had met a new employee named Parker who also had a more-than-casual interest in cryptocurrency and blockchain systems. He was deep in the local meetup scene and encouraged me to start one focused on crypto. There were a couple older existing Bitcoin and Ethereum specific local meetups, but they had been inactive for years. I reached out to their admins about getting them going again, but they said they didn’t care to reboot their meetups and gave me the green light to start my own.
Crypto Cleveland’s first meetup happened Wednesday, March 29th, 2017. There was a good turnout and I spent a lot of time talking about how a blockchain worked, given my current level of understanding. Explaining things to other people is one of the best ways to solidify the understanding of that thing for yourself.
Here’s a picture from our second meetup, which took place Wednesday, April 26th.
We spent the next few months meeting monthly and talking about all the different hot blockchain-related topics. Scrolling through the list of past events will show how much was content was covered, and it always felt like there was so much more to discuss at the end of each meetup.
The Monthly Grind & Doin’ it My Way
I’d never even been to a meetup before starting Crypto Cleveland, so I feel very lucky to have this thing “stick” on my first try. I’m a stubborn developer and have a tendency to think that I know what’s best, so I ran this meetup My Way, which (I stubbornly think) attributed to its success.
Timing played a big role, of course. Early 2017 was THE TIME to start a cryptocurrency meetup, considering the ridiculous bull run and increased social exposure experienced that year.
Content played a big role. I made sure to approach each month with a topic in mind. The blockchain ecosystem is vast and provides a wide array of topics to dive into deeply. One of my goals was to identify a topic each month and make sure enough of a structure was in place around that topic to have a good discussion about it. Sometimes that meant I would put a presentation together and teach at the room, other times it meant that community members would lead discussions about topics that they were passionate about. Regardless, there had to be a topic, and people had to be stimulated.
Food played a big role. This should go without saying but give people pizza and beer if you want them to show up at a place around dinnertime. I’m proud to say that every meetup has provided complimentary pizza and beer to attendees. Except our new Bagels and Blockchain weekly morning meetup series. Those have bagels and coffee.
Regarding doing things My Way, I identify my pizza policy as one of those things. I’ve never asked for money from attendees to fund the food and drinks. I wanted the meetup to grow, and my idea was that to incentivize someone to do something difficult (like show up at a place at a time), offer them something in return (judgement-free, free-as-in-beer, pizza and beer). So, sometimes DXY paid, sometimes I paid out of my own pocket, sometimes it came out of the paltry “marketing budget” of my new company, decent. (Parker has written more about how decent got started, go give him a clap).
Only lately have I accepted the idea that refreshments can (and probably should) be sponsored. If I tried to “get funding” too early, I thought it could put the whole dynamic of the meetup at risk. Money is power, and the longer money stayed out of the meetup the more it could organically grow without any questionable behaviors by anyone. Now that the meetup has gained some traction, it makes more sense to allow its influence to be used as a platform by and for supporters. On that note, thanks to the Unify Project and Rascal House Pizza for previously sponsoring Crypto Cleveland meetups.
What I’ve Learned
Learn from those who have done it before you, but don’t copy them. Do things your own way all the time, but allow your way to be constantly molded and modified by past gained experience and the experiences of others.
Doug Meil runs another successful tech meetup and gave me some good advice:
- always be on the lookout and hunt for people to give small talks about a thing, as long as they’re not simply selling a product
- neutrality is important. In that regard, I’ve been making an effort to keep the meetup location “decentralized” since we outgrew DXY.
- Recruiters and Sales & Marketing people need love too! Granted, there are not many local blockchain recruiters (yet?), and there aren’t many local projects that have Sales & Marketing budgets, either.
- Always take pictures! This one is important regardless of whether or not the event is live-streamed and/or recorded. I need to be more conscience of this, as I realize how few good pictures of past meetups I have for this article 😖
I’ve realized the importance of having strong opinions and being a leader. Don’t be afraid to push boundaries, make statements, or question why or how things are being done. No one has all of the answers. A new thought or idea might be just as accurate/relevant (or even more-so!), as an old one.
But, like, be cool. When making a strong opinion in a public forum, it might be best to sleep on it for a night first. I’ve made some strong public opinions that, while I don’t necessarily wish to revoke, I do wish I had waited a day, re-written in a politer tone, and then clicked “send”. What Am I Talking About? This, which was sent as an email to all ~700 members. I’ll save you the click.
Title:
Crypto Cleveland is Rebranding
Beginning of Message:
Just kidding.
I’ve been receiving a lot of “advice” lately about distancing myself, and this community, from “crypto” and to be more focused on “blockchain”.
…
These are just words. There is no substance behind that advice.
“Crypto” means cryptography. “Crypto” means cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is applied cryptography, and is the incentivized fuel that allows blockchains to be built and secured in a distributed manner.
Without “cryptocurrency” there IS NO BLOCKCHAIN. Period.
< this goes on for many paragraphs >
Yikes.
If I could rewrite it, I would leave off the snarky title, the snarky tone of the whole piece, and begin it like this:
I’ve been receiving some of well-intentioned advice lately about having the meetup focus more on the “blockchain” and less on the “crypto”, due in part to rightfully-publicly-perceived shadiness of ICOs and other cryptocurrency projects. However, I have some fundamental thoughts that make it hard for me to genuinely downplay the importance of “crypto” in “blockchain”, and I’d like to take the opportunity here to publicly state my case.
…
It feels good to say that.
The best teachers are students. Listen to everyone, and let their ideas help shape yours. You’ll be surprised who you learn the most from.
What’s Next?
My limited research on meetup.com shows that Crypto Cleveland is the largest crypto / blockchain related meetup in Ohio, in terms of member count. That’s very cool and kind of shocking. It’s been amazing watching the community grow, and I’m grateful to be in the middle of it. At the end of the day, bringing people together to convene around an idea, or a movement, feels good. I hope for Crypto Cleveland to continue being a pillar for the local crypto and blockchain community, to be used as a resource for education, thought-leadership, and networking.
Whatever comes next, it’ll be big, and fun, and I won’t have any idea what I’m doing.
