Daria Volkova (00:00)
Hi everyone and welcome back to the Decentralized Voices podcast. My name is Daria and today I'm joined by Nathan Sexer who works at the Ethereum Foundation and leads Devcon and Devconnect.
Tune into this episode as we dive into the Ethereum event of the decade, Devconnect in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Nathan will share behind-the-scenes stories, surprising insights and help you fall in love with the Ethereum community again. Enjoy the episode and don't forget to share it with your friends.
Nathan, welcome. It's a pleasure to have you. Could you give a brief overview of your background and how did you join the Ethereum Foundation and how did you start leading Devconnect?
Nathan Sexer (00:48)
Sure. Thank you so much for having me, Daria. It's pleasure to be here. So I've joined the space in 2017, working on DeFi at first. When I joined Consensys, I was working on a DeFi project as part of the startup studio of Consensys at the time. I've also started to get involved pretty early on with Ethereum friends.
which is an NGO, the NGO behind EthCC a major Ethereum event, in Europe, if not the major one in Europe. And since then, in Consensys, I've stayed about two years and got involved in many other projects after Consensys involving gaming, ZK, and many other projects in the ecosystem. I've been helping here and there. I've done
Daria Volkova (01:17)
Yeah.
Nathan Sexer (01:31)
a few mentorship at accelerators, incubators, I've been very close to many projects in the space, but also very always involved with community building in Ethereum space.
in France, but not only. I've helped other events like the DeFi Security Summit, for example. And so I got more more involved with events and started to work at the EF as part of the Devconnect team in 2023 for Devconnect Istanbul. Started as part of the production team and then joined the programming for last year's Devcon in Bangkok, Thailand. And I started
to lead the team earlier this year for this edition in Argentina that we are very very excited about.
Daria Volkova (02:18)
Yeah, thank you very much for sharing and actually my first Devconnect was in Istanbul and I was happy to start like my era of Devcon, Devconnect with this event in Istanbul and I love it so much. Thanks for organizing it and for joining the Foundation. So could you explain
Nathan Sexer (02:35)
Great.
Good.
Daria Volkova (02:39)
the difference between Devcon and Devconnect because many people still don't know what's the difference.
Nathan Sexer (02:44)
Sure.
100%. So, because you mentioned Devconnect Istanbul, I can probably start this way. Devconnect started as a more of a decentralized kind of event, decentralized movement, if I can say even, because it's not only an event, it's more of a week during which the EF signals toward a place and organize a core, can coordinate
between many other events and organizations so that they organize their own activity and events and hackathons and meetups and all that thing. the first actually Devconnect appeared
after COVID where we were the EF and the event team that Skylar was leading at the time was where reimagining the way that events could also exist. So we could not physically or personally legally, maybe also ⁓ organize an event, the scale of Devcon. They decided to take another approach, which was more decentralized. So that was the initial concept behind Devconnect is to organize one core can events
Daria Volkova (03:41)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (03:46)
would happen all over the city. We replicated that in Istanbul where we had a big venue in the center of Istanbul and we organized a corp there and we hosted more events by still external parties and EF teams but more events as part of the main venue and still a lot of side events would happen. We are taking this a step further this year and I would say that this year
Devconnect Argentina is a hybrid model between what Devconnect used to be and what Devcon is. As a matter of fact, it's probably the biggest event we've ever done. And Devconnect, Devcon included, we are doing much, more than we used to. the level of complexity and the level
Daria Volkova (04:18)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (04:28)
of addition and cool stuff that we're gonna do at the event will be unprecedented. And so to answer maybe more precisely your question about the difference between also Devcon and Devconnect and this edition specifically, like Devcon is a big conference, seven stages, more than 500 speakers across, yeah, like four days, and as I mentioned, more than seven stages, I think. This time we have
Daria Volkova (04:39)
Yeah.
Nathan Sexer (04:51)
10 stages, but we as the EF organize only a few events. So we have the Ethereum day on November 17 that you should definitely attend, which is the kickoff of the week. And we have also a few other events we're very involved with, like the ETHCon event, which is the local Ethereum event that we, that it's almost a tradition when we do Devconnect and Devcon, we work with local communities to organize
these local events. This will be in Spanish in November 18. And then there will be 40 events happening in same building that we don't necessarily organize ourselves. We have to coordinate with production, catering, AV and all that stuff. But they're doing their own programming and they're throwing their own event. They will do their own communication around that. And that's only a small part of what we're doing.
Daria Volkova (05:17)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (05:35)
The biggest innovation this year is that we're doing the first ever Ethereum World's Fair and we are very excited to have this and to showcase all the applications of Ethereum that will be split among eight districts like gaming, AI, DeFi, ⁓ social networks, L2s and privacy and collectibles and so we're very excited to have
Daria Volkova (05:52)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (05:57)
Also all these apps and it will be a first but this is something we've never done and will be very different from all the other events to have this showcase like real tangible creative live real-world live showcases of applications that people can come and try and experiment with and we want people to arrive like set up their wallet on ramp some crypto and buy their food as well with crypto.
on top of that we're activations like we have a soccer pitch, a music stage, we have many discussion corners, meeting rooms, community hubs as well, super important part of what we do. We have 15 of them and around many different topics like onchain banking, also LATAM region
many other different communities and privacy as well. Anyways, this is something that you might have seen if you've been to Devcon in Bangkok, the community hubs that were super important. But as you can see again, it's a hybrid model between Devcon and Devconnect but it's a whole new concept and a whole new event in itself that, again, the scale of it is something we've never done.
Daria Volkova (06:52)
and Devconnect.
It sounds huge. And how many people are involved in organizing Devconnect this year?
Nathan Sexer (07:05)
So the team is about 20 people, 15 to 20 people. And we also work with many, many teams on the ground. Again, we're working with all the event organizers, the community organizers. We have some more help on the production side of things. And we have the support from EF. It's about 15 to 20 people full time, as well as a production company.
Daria Volkova (07:13)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, not a big team for events of such scale, so that's probably you have quite hot days now.
Nathan Sexer (07:36)
Right.
Right, yeah, it's very busy.
Daria Volkova (07:39)
What was the most unusual or unexpected thing that you did as an event organizer during these years?
Nathan Sexer (07:47)
I think we ourselves did not realize the scale of the event ourselves at first, right? So we came up with that idea of a World's Fair, right?
For example, the Chicago's World Fair where they showcased electricity, and I think it was AC versus DC at the time, and it helped to make people realize the impact of electricity, and it helped actually to democratize the technology, it helped for people to understand the scale of what it was going to be, right? And so in the same fashion, we want to use the concept of a World's Fair to showcase real world
Daria Volkova (08:02)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (08:23)
applications.
We will showcase about 100 applications. And there are so many intricacies and so many different details and things when you come to try to represent an ecosystem as a whole and showcase the best applications.
Daria Volkova (08:23)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (08:40)
I know it won't be the normal projects or the usual projects that you see on the ground also because we've put a lot of effort in involving local communities, local projects, projects that you don't necessarily see as well, but that are bringing amazing value to the space. We're not expecting the scale of what we were going to do.
The level of coordination that you require is high. Very high. Extreme, yes.
Daria Volkova (09:06)
extreme. Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, thank you very much. So how do you see regional events like Devconnect in Argentina contributing to Ethereum's broader mission and how do they impact local regions?
Nathan Sexer (09:22)
So it's a great question and we're very sensitive to that point with our team, with our events. I would say it's even like a big or like one of the biggest differentiator with all the other major conferences that you would see is that...
we're putting a lot of effort in involving local communities and having a strong local impact on the region.
We can tell, even isolating our events, can tell how many events from, how many attendees from previous locations we've been to are coming to our events, right? So we've organized Devcon Bogota in 2022. And we can tell how many communities and people are telling us, you know, my first event was Devcon Bogota. And since then they created communities, projects, raised funds, doing so many things that,
Daria Volkova (09:55)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (10:11)
that
tells us like this is we had an impact a lot of things have been created and they're coming back stronger either coming as volunteers or participants or they're coming to showcase their project and this is amazing to see right so the communities that we create they're obviously a strong local economic impact. We are self organizing the conference like we're renting spaces we're working mostly with a local like
Daria Volkova (10:37)
Yeah.
Nathan Sexer (10:37)
And
so there is a strong local impact, course, on tourism, hotels, restaurants. The whole city is booked and with like hundreds and hundreds of side events are happening. Tens of thousands of people that coming to the city and living in the city for a few weeks. And generally also people with a generous income, especially with the countries we're targeting. And then I would say that something that we're putting a lot of efforts into
is also involving government officials. We're to regulators and we're talking to, we're people that could have a meaningful impact in their own country. We're also working with inviting officials from other countries to see what our event is like and also what, especially with Argentina.
It's so much involved or so much present in the daily life of everyone that we want to show that to the world. For example, now in Thailand, the central bank
⁓ released a stablecoin and we believe that, or at least we want to believe that Devcon played a huge part in that role and as a matter of fact we invited the Central Bank to the event to participate and they were here and seeing what we were doing.
Daria Volkova (11:40)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (11:54)
Again, with these events, we can show the real impact of Ethereum and inspire attendees, of course, to have students and newcomers, also governance and institutions to realize how Ethereum can be used in the real life. And that generally has a strong impact and we've noticed that in the past.
Daria Volkova (12:09)
Mm-hmm.
Thanks for sharing. I saw this impact in Bangkok last year during Devcon.
I compared it with Taylor Swift because when she comes to some regions everyone do the same like book hotels, buy tickets, restaurants, transportation, so all infrastructure around her concerts works
Nathan Sexer (12:31)
Exactly.
Daria Volkova (12:37)
to benefit local communities. And the same for Devconnect, for Devcon, because, as you mentioned, so many people are coming and probably this edition will be the biggest one. By the way, how many people do you expect to see?
Nathan Sexer (12:47)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Around 10,000 attendees, I think in the city is probably more like, like in the city attending all side events, probably between 10 and 15,000 people. And we were around the same numbers in Bogota. A lot of people are also coming to Devconnect and just attending side events, which we don't recommend to do obviously. You should definitely come to the main venue and...
attend many of the events and see all the showcase and see all the crazy cool things we're doing.
Daria Volkova (13:22)
Yeah, thank you. And now I will ask you the question that is interesting to many local communities. What's required from local community that want to apply to host Devcon or Devconnect? Are there any specific metrics or criteria?
Nathan Sexer (13:36)
Alright.
Interesting. So are you interested to host in your home country?
Daria Volkova (13:43)
Poland. I'm interested in general, like what should country or community have to be eligible to host such a big event.
Nathan Sexer (13:44)
Interesting.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
So we are looking at many, many, many factors, right? Having a very strong local community, of course, is a very interesting factor that we obviously look at. Because usually there are
strong reasons why there are these strong local communities. It's usually because they have strong universities, because they have many projects coming from this place or this country, this city. They have many developers.
Well, you know, it has a meaningful presence or impact in the region. I mean, this is the case of Istanbul or Argentina. Like in Istanbul, you were landing in Istanbul and you were seeing ads of crypto exchanges all over the airport. And so you can see that this is very present. But anyways, having a local community is interesting for many different reasons. And also because we work with local community members. I think it's strong local community, but
Daria Volkova (14:30)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (14:48)
regulatory environment, favorable maybe government that could be interested or willing to have our conference. A big aspect of it will be also the accessibility, the visa. So that comes with a government that could be interested in having our event or even interested in helping us onboarding people to the event, which is, the way, something we've set in place for Argentina, where we're working with immigration offices to
Daria Volkova (14:49)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (15:16)
send visas to a lot of African countries and every country that normally struggles to get visa abroad, have that for this year. Accessibility is a big aspect, accessibility in terms of visa but also geographical accessibility. We know that it's a bit far from a lot of places Argentina this year, but despite that, people are taking flights. And I talked yesterday to someone
Daria Volkova (15:25)
Yeah.
Nathan Sexer (15:41)
from Nigeria that spent more than three days on the plane doing like four or five stops just to come to Buenos Aires and we're seeing many such cases and we're so excited to welcome them all. But anyways, those are some of the factors. I haven't mentioned one, maybe last but not least, the venue, obviously, where we need to host events in venues that can host us and that can...
Daria Volkova (15:46)
my god, it's so long.
Yeah.
Nathan Sexer (16:07)
handle the level of production and the number of attendees that we're targeting and this plays a huge part and obviously we're trying to rotate also the
Daria Volkova (16:12)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (16:17)
the location so we don't want to come back to a country that we're where we've been to like yes we're coming back to South America but the idea is to rotate and go to places we've never been and so that in itself is also a factor we're taking into consideration. I might be forgetting a few
a few items but generally we're trying to have the strongest local impact as possible and so this is there is a lot of factors that we take into account.
Daria Volkova (16:43)
Yeah.
Thanks for sharing. I'm really interested because like now I'm based in Eastern Europe. I'm Ukrainian, but I live in Poland and I'm super interested in having Devcon or Devconnect here because Warsaw and Poland now is like a magnet for everyone from Europe and from Central and Eastern Europe. Anyway, I asked just in case.
Nathan Sexer (16:58)
and
Daria Volkova (17:11)
How are you working to ensure diversity and inclusion? So you mentioned a bit that local government of Argentina helped you to secure visas,
but maybe you can highlight a bit more things that you work on to bring this diversity and inclusion to the ecosystem.
Nathan Sexer (17:22)
Mm-hmm.
We want everyone to be able to come from any country. So I think this is probably the most, the biggest accessibility measure we could set up. Selecting a country where people can come easily and or when that's not the case, working with governments or public officials to make sure that
they can attend our event is probably the biggest measure of them all because again like we want these events to be as open as possible to everyone and so this is very very important.
We're working again with many local communities. We want to make sure that men and women are represented. We want to make sure that a lot of countries are coming, regardless of, again, where they're coming from. We do have local focus, regional focus. So we focus on Argentina this time, but
that we also want to involve and we are involving a lot of LATAM communities.
Because you're talking about diversity, mean, you will realize how much present are the women and how active are the women also in Argentina. I think it's it's struck me how much women are in position of power or leadership. And I haven't seen that in many other countries, I have to say. I'm very, very happy to be surprised to see to see that.
I don't say there doesn't need to be any proactive measures on our side, but it's amazing to be also in a country where it's happening and you can see all these women having leadership positions in very important companies.
Daria Volkova (18:56)
thank you very much. And I have the last question to you. What one thing you're personally most excited about Devconnect and why listeners and viewers of this episode should join Devconnect in Argentina?
Nathan Sexer (19:09)
I would say the first Ethereum World's Fair is the thing that is the most exciting concept for an event ever, in my opinion. We are doing something extremely ambitious of an unprecedented scale. We're as excited as
scared about the outcome of this potential event. But we really are excited by all the great projects that we will showcase, all the crazy super active local communities that are getting involved, and all the enthusiasm around the event from local builders are extremely proud to host our event in this also such iconic venue, which is La Rural.
Daria Volkova (19:27)
You
Nathan Sexer (19:47)
It's hard to tell at this stage, right? We're working very hard to make sure that it will go as smoothly and as well as we have it in our mind. But yeah, this is something that we're very, very excited about. We're very excited about also these real world tangible way
of people interacting with Ethereum.
It will be a challenge, but we're excited to see people coming in the venue, setting up a wallet, on ramping, getting some money into their wallet and paying their food with crypto. And as we are targeting a lot of newcomers, we are very excited to see these newcomers coming into the venue, setting up a wallet and getting on board as we see them in real life to crypto and to Ethereum.
Daria Volkova (20:21)
Mm-hmm.
I'm sure it would be great and amazing and as I mentioned maybe it would be like the event of a decade for Ethereum.
We celebrated 10 years of Ethereum some time ago, so probably it would be like a huge birthday party for the Ethereum community and the whole ecosystem. So thank you, Nathan, for sharing these insights. And guys, I will leave all the links under this episode, so you can follow Nathan, you can check out Devconnect and see what's happening and actually buy tickets or secure
spots if you haven't done this before. Thank you, Nathan, again and see you soon!
Nathan Sexer (21:07)
Thank you so much, Daria. See you soon!
Hi everyone and welcome back to the Decentralized Voices podcast. My name is Daria and today I'm joined by Nathan Sexer who works at the Ethereum Foundation and leads Devcon and Devconnect.
Tune into this episode as we dive into the Ethereum event of the decade, Devconnect in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Nathan will share behind-the-scenes stories, surprising insights and help you fall in love with the Ethereum community again. Enjoy the episode and don't forget to share it with your friends.
Nathan, welcome. It's a pleasure to have you. Could you give a brief overview of your background and how did you join the Ethereum Foundation and how did you start leading Devconnect?
Nathan Sexer (00:48)
Sure. Thank you so much for having me, Daria. It's pleasure to be here. So I've joined the space in 2017, working on DeFi at first. When I joined Consensys, I was working on a DeFi project as part of the startup studio of Consensys at the time. I've also started to get involved pretty early on with Ethereum friends.
which is an NGO, the NGO behind EthCC a major Ethereum event, in Europe, if not the major one in Europe. And since then, in Consensys, I've stayed about two years and got involved in many other projects after Consensys involving gaming, ZK, and many other projects in the ecosystem. I've been helping here and there. I've done
Daria Volkova (01:17)
Yeah.
Nathan Sexer (01:31)
a few mentorship at accelerators, incubators, I've been very close to many projects in the space, but also very always involved with community building in Ethereum space.
in France, but not only. I've helped other events like the DeFi Security Summit, for example. And so I got more more involved with events and started to work at the EF as part of the Devconnect team in 2023 for Devconnect Istanbul. Started as part of the production team and then joined the programming for last year's Devcon in Bangkok, Thailand. And I started
to lead the team earlier this year for this edition in Argentina that we are very very excited about.
Daria Volkova (02:18)
Yeah, thank you very much for sharing and actually my first Devconnect was in Istanbul and I was happy to start like my era of Devcon, Devconnect with this event in Istanbul and I love it so much. Thanks for organizing it and for joining the Foundation. So could you explain
Nathan Sexer (02:35)
Great.
Good.
Daria Volkova (02:39)
the difference between Devcon and Devconnect because many people still don't know what's the difference.
Nathan Sexer (02:44)
Sure.
100%. So, because you mentioned Devconnect Istanbul, I can probably start this way. Devconnect started as a more of a decentralized kind of event, decentralized movement, if I can say even, because it's not only an event, it's more of a week during which the EF signals toward a place and organize a core, can coordinate
between many other events and organizations so that they organize their own activity and events and hackathons and meetups and all that thing. the first actually Devconnect appeared
after COVID where we were the EF and the event team that Skylar was leading at the time was where reimagining the way that events could also exist. So we could not physically or personally legally, maybe also ⁓ organize an event, the scale of Devcon. They decided to take another approach, which was more decentralized. So that was the initial concept behind Devconnect is to organize one core can events
Daria Volkova (03:41)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (03:46)
would happen all over the city. We replicated that in Istanbul where we had a big venue in the center of Istanbul and we organized a corp there and we hosted more events by still external parties and EF teams but more events as part of the main venue and still a lot of side events would happen. We are taking this a step further this year and I would say that this year
Devconnect Argentina is a hybrid model between what Devconnect used to be and what Devcon is. As a matter of fact, it's probably the biggest event we've ever done. And Devconnect, Devcon included, we are doing much, more than we used to. the level of complexity and the level
Daria Volkova (04:18)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (04:28)
of addition and cool stuff that we're gonna do at the event will be unprecedented. And so to answer maybe more precisely your question about the difference between also Devcon and Devconnect and this edition specifically, like Devcon is a big conference, seven stages, more than 500 speakers across, yeah, like four days, and as I mentioned, more than seven stages, I think. This time we have
Daria Volkova (04:39)
Yeah.
Nathan Sexer (04:51)
10 stages, but we as the EF organize only a few events. So we have the Ethereum day on November 17 that you should definitely attend, which is the kickoff of the week. And we have also a few other events we're very involved with, like the ETHCon event, which is the local Ethereum event that we, that it's almost a tradition when we do Devconnect and Devcon, we work with local communities to organize
these local events. This will be in Spanish in November 18. And then there will be 40 events happening in same building that we don't necessarily organize ourselves. We have to coordinate with production, catering, AV and all that stuff. But they're doing their own programming and they're throwing their own event. They will do their own communication around that. And that's only a small part of what we're doing.
Daria Volkova (05:17)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (05:35)
The biggest innovation this year is that we're doing the first ever Ethereum World's Fair and we are very excited to have this and to showcase all the applications of Ethereum that will be split among eight districts like gaming, AI, DeFi, ⁓ social networks, L2s and privacy and collectibles and so we're very excited to have
Daria Volkova (05:52)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (05:57)
Also all these apps and it will be a first but this is something we've never done and will be very different from all the other events to have this showcase like real tangible creative live real-world live showcases of applications that people can come and try and experiment with and we want people to arrive like set up their wallet on ramp some crypto and buy their food as well with crypto.
on top of that we're activations like we have a soccer pitch, a music stage, we have many discussion corners, meeting rooms, community hubs as well, super important part of what we do. We have 15 of them and around many different topics like onchain banking, also LATAM region
many other different communities and privacy as well. Anyways, this is something that you might have seen if you've been to Devcon in Bangkok, the community hubs that were super important. But as you can see again, it's a hybrid model between Devcon and Devconnect but it's a whole new concept and a whole new event in itself that, again, the scale of it is something we've never done.
Daria Volkova (06:52)
and Devconnect.
It sounds huge. And how many people are involved in organizing Devconnect this year?
Nathan Sexer (07:05)
So the team is about 20 people, 15 to 20 people. And we also work with many, many teams on the ground. Again, we're working with all the event organizers, the community organizers. We have some more help on the production side of things. And we have the support from EF. It's about 15 to 20 people full time, as well as a production company.
Daria Volkova (07:13)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, not a big team for events of such scale, so that's probably you have quite hot days now.
Nathan Sexer (07:36)
Right.
Right, yeah, it's very busy.
Daria Volkova (07:39)
What was the most unusual or unexpected thing that you did as an event organizer during these years?
Nathan Sexer (07:47)
I think we ourselves did not realize the scale of the event ourselves at first, right? So we came up with that idea of a World's Fair, right?
For example, the Chicago's World Fair where they showcased electricity, and I think it was AC versus DC at the time, and it helped to make people realize the impact of electricity, and it helped actually to democratize the technology, it helped for people to understand the scale of what it was going to be, right? And so in the same fashion, we want to use the concept of a World's Fair to showcase real world
Daria Volkova (08:02)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (08:23)
applications.
We will showcase about 100 applications. And there are so many intricacies and so many different details and things when you come to try to represent an ecosystem as a whole and showcase the best applications.
Daria Volkova (08:23)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (08:40)
I know it won't be the normal projects or the usual projects that you see on the ground also because we've put a lot of effort in involving local communities, local projects, projects that you don't necessarily see as well, but that are bringing amazing value to the space. We're not expecting the scale of what we were going to do.
The level of coordination that you require is high. Very high. Extreme, yes.
Daria Volkova (09:06)
extreme. Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, thank you very much. So how do you see regional events like Devconnect in Argentina contributing to Ethereum's broader mission and how do they impact local regions?
Nathan Sexer (09:22)
So it's a great question and we're very sensitive to that point with our team, with our events. I would say it's even like a big or like one of the biggest differentiator with all the other major conferences that you would see is that...
we're putting a lot of effort in involving local communities and having a strong local impact on the region.
We can tell, even isolating our events, can tell how many events from, how many attendees from previous locations we've been to are coming to our events, right? So we've organized Devcon Bogota in 2022. And we can tell how many communities and people are telling us, you know, my first event was Devcon Bogota. And since then they created communities, projects, raised funds, doing so many things that,
Daria Volkova (09:55)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (10:11)
that
tells us like this is we had an impact a lot of things have been created and they're coming back stronger either coming as volunteers or participants or they're coming to showcase their project and this is amazing to see right so the communities that we create they're obviously a strong local economic impact. We are self organizing the conference like we're renting spaces we're working mostly with a local like
Daria Volkova (10:37)
Yeah.
Nathan Sexer (10:37)
And
so there is a strong local impact, course, on tourism, hotels, restaurants. The whole city is booked and with like hundreds and hundreds of side events are happening. Tens of thousands of people that coming to the city and living in the city for a few weeks. And generally also people with a generous income, especially with the countries we're targeting. And then I would say that something that we're putting a lot of efforts into
is also involving government officials. We're to regulators and we're talking to, we're people that could have a meaningful impact in their own country. We're also working with inviting officials from other countries to see what our event is like and also what, especially with Argentina.
It's so much involved or so much present in the daily life of everyone that we want to show that to the world. For example, now in Thailand, the central bank
⁓ released a stablecoin and we believe that, or at least we want to believe that Devcon played a huge part in that role and as a matter of fact we invited the Central Bank to the event to participate and they were here and seeing what we were doing.
Daria Volkova (11:40)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (11:54)
Again, with these events, we can show the real impact of Ethereum and inspire attendees, of course, to have students and newcomers, also governance and institutions to realize how Ethereum can be used in the real life. And that generally has a strong impact and we've noticed that in the past.
Daria Volkova (12:09)
Mm-hmm.
Thanks for sharing. I saw this impact in Bangkok last year during Devcon.
I compared it with Taylor Swift because when she comes to some regions everyone do the same like book hotels, buy tickets, restaurants, transportation, so all infrastructure around her concerts works
Nathan Sexer (12:31)
Exactly.
Daria Volkova (12:37)
to benefit local communities. And the same for Devconnect, for Devcon, because, as you mentioned, so many people are coming and probably this edition will be the biggest one. By the way, how many people do you expect to see?
Nathan Sexer (12:47)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Around 10,000 attendees, I think in the city is probably more like, like in the city attending all side events, probably between 10 and 15,000 people. And we were around the same numbers in Bogota. A lot of people are also coming to Devconnect and just attending side events, which we don't recommend to do obviously. You should definitely come to the main venue and...
attend many of the events and see all the showcase and see all the crazy cool things we're doing.
Daria Volkova (13:22)
Yeah, thank you. And now I will ask you the question that is interesting to many local communities. What's required from local community that want to apply to host Devcon or Devconnect? Are there any specific metrics or criteria?
Nathan Sexer (13:36)
Alright.
Interesting. So are you interested to host in your home country?
Daria Volkova (13:43)
Poland. I'm interested in general, like what should country or community have to be eligible to host such a big event.
Nathan Sexer (13:44)
Interesting.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
So we are looking at many, many, many factors, right? Having a very strong local community, of course, is a very interesting factor that we obviously look at. Because usually there are
strong reasons why there are these strong local communities. It's usually because they have strong universities, because they have many projects coming from this place or this country, this city. They have many developers.
Well, you know, it has a meaningful presence or impact in the region. I mean, this is the case of Istanbul or Argentina. Like in Istanbul, you were landing in Istanbul and you were seeing ads of crypto exchanges all over the airport. And so you can see that this is very present. But anyways, having a local community is interesting for many different reasons. And also because we work with local community members. I think it's strong local community, but
Daria Volkova (14:30)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (14:48)
regulatory environment, favorable maybe government that could be interested or willing to have our conference. A big aspect of it will be also the accessibility, the visa. So that comes with a government that could be interested in having our event or even interested in helping us onboarding people to the event, which is, the way, something we've set in place for Argentina, where we're working with immigration offices to
Daria Volkova (14:49)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (15:16)
send visas to a lot of African countries and every country that normally struggles to get visa abroad, have that for this year. Accessibility is a big aspect, accessibility in terms of visa but also geographical accessibility. We know that it's a bit far from a lot of places Argentina this year, but despite that, people are taking flights. And I talked yesterday to someone
Daria Volkova (15:25)
Yeah.
Nathan Sexer (15:41)
from Nigeria that spent more than three days on the plane doing like four or five stops just to come to Buenos Aires and we're seeing many such cases and we're so excited to welcome them all. But anyways, those are some of the factors. I haven't mentioned one, maybe last but not least, the venue, obviously, where we need to host events in venues that can host us and that can...
Daria Volkova (15:46)
my god, it's so long.
Yeah.
Nathan Sexer (16:07)
handle the level of production and the number of attendees that we're targeting and this plays a huge part and obviously we're trying to rotate also the
Daria Volkova (16:12)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Sexer (16:17)
the location so we don't want to come back to a country that we're where we've been to like yes we're coming back to South America but the idea is to rotate and go to places we've never been and so that in itself is also a factor we're taking into consideration. I might be forgetting a few
a few items but generally we're trying to have the strongest local impact as possible and so this is there is a lot of factors that we take into account.
Daria Volkova (16:43)
Yeah.
Thanks for sharing. I'm really interested because like now I'm based in Eastern Europe. I'm Ukrainian, but I live in Poland and I'm super interested in having Devcon or Devconnect here because Warsaw and Poland now is like a magnet for everyone from Europe and from Central and Eastern Europe. Anyway, I asked just in case.
Nathan Sexer (16:58)
and
Daria Volkova (17:11)
How are you working to ensure diversity and inclusion? So you mentioned a bit that local government of Argentina helped you to secure visas,
but maybe you can highlight a bit more things that you work on to bring this diversity and inclusion to the ecosystem.
Nathan Sexer (17:22)
Mm-hmm.
We want everyone to be able to come from any country. So I think this is probably the most, the biggest accessibility measure we could set up. Selecting a country where people can come easily and or when that's not the case, working with governments or public officials to make sure that
they can attend our event is probably the biggest measure of them all because again like we want these events to be as open as possible to everyone and so this is very very important.
We're working again with many local communities. We want to make sure that men and women are represented. We want to make sure that a lot of countries are coming, regardless of, again, where they're coming from. We do have local focus, regional focus. So we focus on Argentina this time, but
that we also want to involve and we are involving a lot of LATAM communities.
Because you're talking about diversity, mean, you will realize how much present are the women and how active are the women also in Argentina. I think it's it's struck me how much women are in position of power or leadership. And I haven't seen that in many other countries, I have to say. I'm very, very happy to be surprised to see to see that.
I don't say there doesn't need to be any proactive measures on our side, but it's amazing to be also in a country where it's happening and you can see all these women having leadership positions in very important companies.
Daria Volkova (18:56)
thank you very much. And I have the last question to you. What one thing you're personally most excited about Devconnect and why listeners and viewers of this episode should join Devconnect in Argentina?
Nathan Sexer (19:09)
I would say the first Ethereum World's Fair is the thing that is the most exciting concept for an event ever, in my opinion. We are doing something extremely ambitious of an unprecedented scale. We're as excited as
scared about the outcome of this potential event. But we really are excited by all the great projects that we will showcase, all the crazy super active local communities that are getting involved, and all the enthusiasm around the event from local builders are extremely proud to host our event in this also such iconic venue, which is La Rural.
Daria Volkova (19:27)
You
Nathan Sexer (19:47)
It's hard to tell at this stage, right? We're working very hard to make sure that it will go as smoothly and as well as we have it in our mind. But yeah, this is something that we're very, very excited about. We're very excited about also these real world tangible way
of people interacting with Ethereum.
It will be a challenge, but we're excited to see people coming in the venue, setting up a wallet, on ramping, getting some money into their wallet and paying their food with crypto. And as we are targeting a lot of newcomers, we are very excited to see these newcomers coming into the venue, setting up a wallet and getting on board as we see them in real life to crypto and to Ethereum.
Daria Volkova (20:21)
Mm-hmm.
I'm sure it would be great and amazing and as I mentioned maybe it would be like the event of a decade for Ethereum.
We celebrated 10 years of Ethereum some time ago, so probably it would be like a huge birthday party for the Ethereum community and the whole ecosystem. So thank you, Nathan, for sharing these insights. And guys, I will leave all the links under this episode, so you can follow Nathan, you can check out Devconnect and see what's happening and actually buy tickets or secure
spots if you haven't done this before. Thank you, Nathan, again and see you soon!
Nathan Sexer (21:07)
Thank you so much, Daria. See you soon!
