Cincinnati Digs Ethereum
Last Wednesday, over 30 people showed up at Union Hall for Cincinnati’s first meetup devoted to Ethereum, a blockchain application platform that came out in 2015. There has been a lot of attention around blockchain technology in the last two years and the buzz in the room last Wednesday night indicates that word has gotten to Cincinnati.
I wanted to sit down really quick and jot down some thoughts about what went down. This was the first time this group has gotten together, so we are still tinkering with the format of the meetup.
There is so much happening in the Ethereum space at the moment that it’s hard to keep up and know what’s important. Because of this, we started off the night with “This Month in Ethereum,” an idea I took from Cincinnati’s Internet of Things meetup, which recapped some of the top Ethereum headlines from the past month. Topics included China’s “ban” on ICOs, Coinbase’s Toshi product launching on the Ethereum mainnet, Augur’s Solidity Migration, and the Basic Attention Token (BAT) Mercury Launch. I think this is a good way to get the conversation going since it touches on a lot of areas within the Ethereum ecosystem — legal, protocol, projects, and development.
After recapping the news, I gave a presentation called “Ethereum in 25 Minutes” which Vitalik Buterin gave last year at DevCon2. I thought this would be a good introduction about how Ethereum works…but I was wrong.
Working on an Ethereum project for the last month made me forget 1) not everyone is a software engineer and 2) the concept of Ethereum itself is highly technical, especially for non-technical people. Looking back on it, it should have been obvious that this was a bad idea. I mean, it was given at DevCon2, a developer conference for Ethereum. I realized this about halfway through the presentation. My bad.
People were still very engaged in what was being said though, and parts of the presentation sparked questions that prompted discussions about hard-forks, the DAO, transactions, blocks, and the history of Ethereum. So overall, I’d chalk it up as a win.
Next month Taron Foxworth, a good friend of mine, co-organizer of the meetup, and savior of our first meetup because he brought an HDMI cable, will be giving a talk called “Ethereum, Crypto, Blockchain, Wtf. A Talk for the Absolute Beginner” which should be easier for non-developers to consume. Pizza will be provided by my new company, Terrapin Ticketing.
