It all started off in a local incubator established to offer business services to early-stage companies. The room was full with a sort of buzz as people chatted blockchain.
Shortly after six we got started with our presentation as people still trickled in.
We did our normal disclaimer, informing new people to the space the importance of doing their homework, the importance of security and to not go using their lunch money buying crypto (the usual).
We called our presentation "Bitcoin — The Honest Currency" and it started out with a poll.
“How many here have heard of bitcoin?”
- Everyone raised their hand.
“How many know what blockchain is?”
- This time just under half raised their hands.
As we continued asking our questions we established 20% of attendees held coins, three were GPU mining and when asked who knew what cryptography was, someone in the front shrugged.
After our quick poll we got right down to business. There was a lot to go over and we had a short amount of time to cover it all (2 hours is just not enough!)
We broke our presentation down and presented the agenda for the evening.
I like using videos to get high-level concepts across. I chose the first ten minutes of Banking on Bitcoin so people could see where this movement came from and where we are now because of it.
It’s does a great job at telling the history of the space while exploring motives, failures and problems early cryptographers faced.
We tried to build that “aha” moment early into our presentation and I think our comparison to the lime Rai stones on Yap Island did the trick.
The large stones were used as a form of currency on the island and only once the community was present and observing the transaction, could ownership change hands.
We went on to explain how the villagers on the island were an immutable and transparent ledger.
It was great to see the expressions on peoples faces change as things started to click.
One of my favourite things to do is to talk to people about exciting projects in crypto so we added a slide in to briefly explain why blockchain tech is so powerful.
Obviously this list is not exhaustive but we wanted to give the scope of impact this has.
By this point we had covered a lot of material so we invited a friend to share his experience GPU mining for the past week. Turns out there were two other miners there, one who had been mining since 2013.
We then opened up the floor for questions and had a chance to discuss the difference between POS and POW, how to safely store your coins, the scaling debate and mining details.
We thanked our sponsors of the event and talked with some eager entrepreneurs about Sigwo Technologies, Tokes, & Darcrus.
I even made a little slide so people could start getting use to the projects that make our work possible.
We’re looking forward to the next time we get to present. Our focus will be to offer two different meetups tailored for a specific audience.
A 101 type meetup will always exist however offering a bi-weekly event to talk more advanced topics is necessary to cater to peoples knowledge levels. We’ll have more on this later.
We obviously skipped over to the pub for a pint and more block-talk. Until next time!