From lf-lists at mattcorallo.com Mon Aug 21 00:16:25 2023 From: lf-lists at mattcorallo.com (Matt Corallo) Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2023 17:16:25 -0700 Subject: [Lightning-dev] LN Summit 2024 Organization In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: While more lightning developers attending conference(s) in a more diverse set of countries, including on the african continent, sounds like a great idea, the usual LN summit is an invite-only developer meeting. Hosting it in a country with additional requirements for travel and which isn't as well-served by direct international flights doesn't carry any benefit and only has additional costs on peoples' time. I'm also admittedly a little dubious of any summit or conference organized by someone who does not live in the city in which it is being hosted. Matt On 8/18/23 4:02?PM, Antoine Riard wrote: > Hi lightning devs, > > Follow up on next year LN Summit organization: > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2023-June/003994.html > > > After browsing the travel advisories, social situations of a good number of geographical areas in > Africa, and chatting with the Built with Bitcoin folks on the state of the local Bitcoin community > country by country, I would like to propose Ghana as a place of location for next year's June 2024 > LN Summit. > > As announced in my previous mail, I was thinking to survey privately the usual Lightning Summit > attendees on the choice of location to collect a first wave?of feedback. After really digging into > the travel advisories country by country, it turns out if we're looking for European / US-like > standards of travel for a group of people of 30/40 attendees, we start to be more operationally > constrained. > > Ghana has already hosted last year's Afro Bitcoin Conference and they're doing an edition again in > December of this year [0]. I've never been to Ghana so I'm currently planning to attend this year's > 2023 conference to get myself familiar with the ground and that way ensure smooth preparation for > next year's June LN Summit. From my Zurich 2020 experience, it's good to organize Bitcoin technical > events in a country where you're familiar a bit. > > As a backup plan, I think we could consider countries like Morocco or Algeria, which given current > composition of the organization committee is straightforward due to the french-speaking communities, > or South Africa, which is itself beautiful and where they're doing Bitcoin events [1], though this > latter is very far far away in term of international travel logistic. > > Note for Ghana, from a quick look it sounds like a visa will be required for all Schengen, US and > Commonwealth passport holders will need a travel visa. ECOWAS passport holders sound to be exempted. > > In terms of financial resources, Zurich 2020 hard logistical organization cost was around 10$k. My > pleasure to cover the LN Summit 2024 hard logistical cost out of my pocket. > > For clarity, I'm speaking about the LN Summit which is an invitation-only event reserved to the > Lightning developers and researchers based on technical proof-of-work of which the previous edition > happens in Adelaide?2018, Berlin 2019 (one evening event on the sport), Zurich 2021 (covid edition), > Oakland 2022 and NYC 2023. > > This is _not_ to be confused with the Lightning conference which has been traditionally organized by > Fulmo, and of which the latest _official_ edition has been Berlin 2019 iirc. > > As it has been suggested by nully0x, it can be interesting to organize a co-event with Qala Africa, > I'm already in touch with few folks there due to FOSS things and I'll reach out of band to them, > though I'll take personal accountability on the LN Summit, _only, not any other satellite event around. > > Overall, I think it's wise for the 1st protocol dev event (CoreDev included [2]) beyond the US / > Europe / Australia / Japan geographical boundaries to plan well ahead and start small. > > Cheers, > Antoine > > [0] https://www.afrobitcoin.org > [1] https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/ > [2] https://coredev.tech/pastevents.html > > Le?ven. 23 juin 2023 ??10:39, Antoine Riard > a ?crit?: > > Hi lightning devs, > > Proposing myself to organize next year's LN Summit in Africa, with a rough date somewhere in > June 2024. > > There are a lot of reasons to hold a summit there. Africa is a beautiful continent, there is a > rich cultural and historical past, a lot of fragmentation in the financial systems of the 56 > states that can be solved with a compatible payment protocol, an explosive demography with a lot > of energy to get things done, more and more Lightning developers coming from this continent and > formidable perspectives to grow "full-stack" local Lightning economies. > > Usually, we don't announce the organization of CoreDev or LN Summit on open communication > channels, as there is a goal of serenity of the engineering conversation (and as we would like > to avoid being trolled by BSV fans or tabloid-style of journalism). For this time, given the > operational challenges can be a bit more complex (e.g visas travels, "tropical weather"), better > to have this announced far ahead [0]. Operations and financial resources should be okay, though > nice if we have a multi-stakeholder approach, "skin in the game" from a bunch of folks is the > best way to guarantee fairness and transparency of the process. > > If you have any objection to my personna contribution to the organization of the LN Summit 2024, > thanks for letting me know during the coming weeks, either in public or on this thread, or > privately by mail. As usual, I'll do my best to set strong transparency and accountability > standards. In matters of open-source, talk is cheap, better to speak by your actions. > > With any project, the best advice is always to start small, so the first step sounds to be to > survey all the countries with reasonable operational stability that can fit the location > (Algeria, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, etc). I'll look into it and share the feedback privately to > the Lightning attendees (based on neutral and technical proof of works heuristics), somewhere at > the end of the summer. > > Setted up a dedicated communication endpoint for this: lnsummit2024 at ariard.me > > > If you're a LN dev, don't hesitate to reach out if you wanna to be part of the organization, > this is a good opportunity to transfer knowledge between generations of contributors. > > Cheers, > Antoine > > [0] Already co-organized the CoreDev event in Zurich back in 2021 so I do have already the > operational templates. > > > _______________________________________________ > Lightning-dev mailing list > Lightning-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/lightning-dev