NEWSLETTER
Yesterday, Our Users from all over the United States gathered at the main bitcoin bar in New York City. Publishing key for Nostr Village, a mini-conference focused on open protocol enabling censorship-resistant global social networks and more.
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Who comes to twitter.com/hashtag/NostrVillage?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#NostrVillage tomorrow?
It's a day of censorship-resistant courage for the creative expression of courage and zaps, and it's all happening on PubKey starting at 2 p.m.
Meet your favorite noses and ask anything!
Can't attend the entire event? Come at 6 pm to… pic.twitter.com/SkCecbzJdR
— PUBKEY (@PubKey_NYC) twitter.com/PubKey_NYC/status/1795988838042530139?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>May 30, 2024
The name of the conference included a nod to the neighborhood in which PubKey is located, New York's historic Greenwich Village. It was also a play on Nostrville, the name of a 2023 Nostr conference held in Nashville, Tennessee, attended by Daniel Modell, PubKey's chief marketing officer and Nostr Village organizer.
“Nostr is something I was involved in before being part of PubKey and I wanted to bring it to more people,” Modell told bitcoin Magazine at the event.
“We are still very early in the Nostr adoption curve, so we have to be the ones to spread the word, just like with bitcoin in the early days,” he added.
The atmosphere at Nostr Village was a lot like what I imagined the atmosphere would be at a smaller bitcoin conference in bitcoin's fourth year of existence (Nostr went live in November 2020): exciting and enlightening, but a bit uncomfortable, since Nostr is still a very nascent technology and no one yet knows what it will become.
However, with so many active Nostr users attending the event, there was no shortage of people sharing what they understand about Nostr in an effort to educate other attendees.
In panels like “Design and Code: User Experience is Everything” and “Value for Value and Community: Nostr is for Creators,” everyone from developers to creatives contributed to expanding the knowledge base of attendees.
Avi Burra, author of the fiction book bitcoin amazon.com/24-Avi-Burra/dp/B0CN9NS87B”>24 and host of Radio Plebchain podcast, participated in two of the panels – “You Can't Cancel This: Censorship Resistance at Nostr” and “Nostr for Newbies” – and emphasized that Nostr is much more than just a decentralized social network.
“The biggest misperception of Nostr is that it is just a social media app,” Burra told bitcoin Magazine at the event.
“I'm hopeful that Nostr's design at the protocol level can enable a truly censorship-resistant communications platform, but also other things that can be built on top of it: YouTube replacements, Spotify replacements,” he added.
(Editor's note: Sam Means, co-founder of wiggle lakea music streaming platform built on Nostr that allows fans to stream sats to their favorite musicians (an alternative to the Spotify model) was present at the event).
Burra also highlighted the success of the event simply because it gave “Nostriches,” a slang term for avid Nostr users, a chance to connect in real life.
But not all those present at the event were Nostr professionals. Some attendees were there to learn more about what exactly Nostr is and how to use Nostr clients like Primitive, Flockstr and Coracle.
Parker Worthington, director of My trust in you is brokena documentary about btc payment serveralso attended the event and commented on how important events like this are for those new to the Nostr space.
“One of my favorite things about smaller bitcoin or Nostr meetups is that there are always (some) people who have never heard of bitcoin or have never heard of Nostr in the room,” Worthington told bitcoin Magazine at the event. .
“It spreads to them so quickly that now they have this group to turn to,” he added.
While the event wasn't technically a gathering, it did feel like a larger version of one, and this was part of Modell's intention.
“What we do at PubKey is different from traditional bitcoin conferences, because we consider ourselves almost an anti-conference space,” Modell explained.
“We do these smaller events, (but) people who weren't even here and who were watching on the live stream, on zap.stream — posted things like 'This is a real conference,'” he added.
It was a real conference and, according to Modell, will probably be the first of many to come.
“I would love to be able to set up Nostr Village every year and see how we grow year after year and what technologies are developed at Nostr,” Modell concluded. “We've only been doing this (referring to teaching each other about Nostr) for a short time, so there's a lot more to do.”
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