Bitcoin Forum

The first question for many of you is probably "What is Assembly?". I'll answer that to begin with. Assembly (http://www.assembly.org/summer12/) is an international demo party held at Hartwall Areena in Helsinki, Finland. This year it's from the 2nd of August to 5th of August, lasting 4 days in total.

Assembly is one of the biggest events in Europe of its kind, with over 5000 visitors every year. It's a special event in the sense that the whole arena is filled with computer places. It's a massive LAN party with 2500 sold out computer places this year.

Each year different subcultures of computer enthusiasts come together for this event. There are demo competitions, music competitions and graphic competitions with significant prizes. There are also serious eSports competitions with big prizes. On top of this there are all kinds of custom competitions, concerts, robot wars and seminars. It also happens to be the 20th year of the event which makes it special.

This year Bitcoin is going to be there. We are an official sponsor for this event and we will do it all. We are going to have an epic stand, epic competitions and an epic Bitcoin seminar. This is my call to you to come to the event and help us make Bitcoin the one thing that the visitors remember when they go back home.

We are also looking for partners to join us for the event. Bitpay is already our partner. We are not looking for merchant services or exchanges as partners for the event. What we are looking for are hardware partners because mining could have a special focus in this type of an event. Major mining pools could be potential partners as well. Any merchant partners would be interesting, especially significant ones such as Casascius and Bitcoin Magazine.

This type of an event is excellent for getting more people on board the Bitcoin train. I would appreciate it if you guys supported us.

This looks like to be awesome event!

Great job for you and Bitpay sponsoring!

Please keep us update on everything  ;D

If there is anything we can do, from sponsoring together, manpower, ect. let me know!

Great news, good luck!


PS. I love watching work of demo scene since i got my first microcomputer in the eighties (zx spectrum).

Some Bitcoin demos would be awesome. How about voting with bitcoins? Or having bitcoin QR codes in the demos, so these demos will get exposure and donations even from here?

definitely cool place to promote bitcoin

A very good place to promote Bitcoin! Now I'm sure I'll come this year to check it out

Thanks for all the positive feedback. istar made a good suggestion which we do like but the problem is that it's difficult to get that sort of a big change made at short notice. They don't really know much about Bitcoin yet, I think our best bet is to get them interested and partially on board with Bitcoin this year and then suggest all kinds of big things for the next year's event.

We are planning on suggesting Bitpay for ticket payments for next year and I think that it has a good chance of succeeding if they get a good impression of what Bitcoin is about. We do like the idea for using the QR codes as donation addresses for the competition participants but I think that at this stage it would simply add complexity to the competition screenings and would not benefit much because Bitcoin is still not big enough. Next year is a different story however.

We do have a competition in the event that involves QR codes and Bitcoin payments. We will hide a bunch of codes all over the event place and participants need to find those codes and send a small amount of bitcoins to the address in the code. Most codes found (& sent) will be the winner, if multiple participants find them all the winner will be the fastest participant. That is highly unlikely however, there will be 30 codes and 10 of them will be classified as "very difficult to find". Top 3 get prizes regardless.

Try PM-ing Matthew N. Wright (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=24749) for Bitcoin Magazine and Casascius (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2676) for Casacius coins. I'm sure that they'll be willing to give some support for the Bitcoin community.
I would be happy to attend the event, but sadly I'm too far away from Finland. :'(

Indeed we are going to contact them directly soon.

Will be there a TV big screen? Video ad will be nice how International and digital bitcoin is inside Paul van Dyk clip  ;D

Okay guys, this is how it is. World gave us a great idea to let the community to create an ad for Bitcoin. Video editing happens to be perhaps the only skill that our team lacks entirely.

We have big screen ad slots for the event. The ad can be max 60 seconds and it needs to be the kind that gets people's attention (otherwise they will just look at their own screens instead). It can be in English all the way.

All we ask from the ad that it has our logo at the end for a few seconds, otherwise it can be 100% about Bitcoin. It can even be so that at the end there are 2 logos side by side, ours on the left and the Bitcoin orange logo on the right.

Is anyone up to this? This would REALLY help since our team simply lacks video editing skills.

Also we have some ad time for AssemblyTV. That needs to be a 30 second video so it needs to be a shorter version of the one shown at the big screen.

Actually now that I think about it, the Screw Banks video might work. It's exactly the right length. Not sure if it's the right type of video for this event but that could be a good backup. We can probably use that no problem since Bitpay produced it.

The 30 second AssemblyTV video is still a problem if we use Screw Banks. I think it would be hard to edit that one to make sense in a 30 second timeframe. Need to think of something for that.

Please don't use screw banks, it is totally wrong target audience  ;D

I do agree on that but it is our backup anyway. It is certainly better than nothing. I hope the community can help us make something more appropriate.

Would be cool to invite all the gamers mine for a while and invite them to donate the BTC to something nice...
Speaking of demo parties, there was a Bitcoiner at the last Alternative Party and many were interested in the concept, the old school demo people are quite crypto-anarchist snyway

Nice! That sounds really good. It means that the seminar will likely get a good attendance as well.

If we could have a Bitcoin demo competition, with Bitcoin prices we could get some cool visuals. It could be just a usual demo with atleast one bitcoin image or 3d logo thrown in. As for ad, maybe you could use the one created for memory dealers and the one showing the github work on the client. They both suit the audience.

There is some fantastic synergy between bitcoin and gaming. I hope you reach a lot of people.

That looks like a group that would pick up on Bitcoin potential right away. Incorporating Bitcoin into gaming makes sense to us, but it will take clever messages to reach mainstream gamers. Demos and game intros would be cool ways to demonstrate Bitcoin. BTW, I didn't see anything Bitcoin related in the sponsors page yet, but the military defense contractor sponsor looked interesting. I would love to buy a fighter jet with Bitcoin someday!

We are there, just search the page for Bitcoin. The logo is from Bittiraha.fi (which means "Bitmoney" in Finnish). It is a Finnish language Bitcoin portal. Bitcoin isn't sponsoring the event, we are. :)

Our site is basically an expanded version of "we use coins", we don't offer only information we offer an exchange, a Finnish version of Bitpay and a forum, Finnish language Bitcoin news, blogs etc.

It makes sense to try to get Finnish people to our site because it's the best source for Bitcoin information in Finnish and it provides crucial services in Finnish. However we will give Bitcoin itself direct exposure in the event of course. We will have the Bitcoin logo in many places at the event and the ads we produce will be about Bitcoin. Also the seminar is about Bitcoin itself of course, not us.

Our stand is split between exposure for us and Bitcoin, in the end it will depend on the amount of partners we get. More partners mean more exposure for Bitcoin and our partners, less partners and there will be more exposure for us because we have to justify the cost somehow.

Obviously exposure for us means exposure for Bitcoin as well because our site is a Bitcoin site. It's just not an international site, and Assembly also has a lot of international visitors. That's why we need to split the exposure between us and Bitcoin in general.

What types of competitions are you planning?

None of the competitions are set in stone yet but the implementation is already underway on the first one and it's basically a done deal. The second one is easy to organize but we haven't done anything about it yet.

Basically the main competition is about finding QR codes hidden all around the event place. 30 codes total, with 10 in fairly evident places, 10 in semi-difficult locations and 10 well hidden onces. Participant scans the code or writes down the plain text Bitcoin address below it and then sends a small amount of coins to the address. We will give out free bitcents for each participant in case they need them.

In that competition each participant has to report to the stand and show the actual device and the list of transactions, we also have some decoy methods we'll use to make sure cheating is impossible and people who attempt to cheat are banned immediately. The winner is the one who finds the most codes and succeeds in sending bitcoins to them. Top 3 are rewarded. Prizes for both competitions will be bitcoins.

The other competition is a "fastest miner" competition. Only people at the venue can participate, and only with hardware that is present at the event place. We will physically check each participant and their mining hash result to confirm that it's a valid entry. Top 3 is rewarded once again. The prizes for this one will be a bit lower than for the main competition, but they will be good amounts of bitcoins nonetheless.

You might even try a Buried Keys type game as a scavenger hunt. The answers will solve a brain wallet key for a Bitcoin prize.

It's going to be some great exposure for Bitcoin, and we are happy to be part of it!

If you have a nice video ads you can also try to use http://www.google.com/ads/tv/ and target up to 42 million U.S. households.

I've thought a demo (in the Assembly sense, not in the general bitcoin sense) based on the blockchain would be pretty cool. Imagine something like the 4k competition where you are implementing a dll that will be called with a file descriptor of the blockchain up to a given checkpoint. It would be a lot of good seed material for procedural stuff, and you might even get some cool graph visualization stuff out of it. Perhaps a 64k limit would be better...


-bgc

When is this event actually happening?

The event is being held from August 2nd to 5th.

See http://www.assembly.org/summer12/ (http://www.assembly.org/summer12/) for more information.

I'm happy to announce that we will be presenting localbitcoins.com (http://localbitcoins.com) and easywallet.org (http://easywallet.org) there, at the same stand as Bittiraha.fi people!

If you could get Hesburger to accept Bitcoins during the event, it would rock.

I was thinking that we could offer some sort of delivery service for the food at Assembly. A service that is only available with bitcoins. We would deliver food to computer places directly and accept bitcoins. If this is allowed we might just do it.

Mining pool operators take notice! You have an opportunity to get more users as our partner at Assembly. If you join us we can direct everyone participating for the "Fastest Bitcoin Miner" competition to your pool by including your pool in the instructions for the competition. Partnership would also include a logo at our stand and a Finnish article at our portal that promotes your pool. Partnership cost varies depenging on what role the partner has but the cost for this would be around 50 bitcoins.

Hardware partners have an opportunity as well of course. Currently our partners for the event are Bitpay, Easywallet and Localbitcoins. Exchanges, merchant services and e-wallets are not accepted as partners at this time due to conflict of interest. Any legit merchants and other service providers are accepted in general if the deal is acceptable for both parties.

Wow this is really cool stuff you are doing here! I hope you're gonna take some pictures to show us how it the event went!

Yeah, we will take pictures. Definitely. :)

Awesome! Would it be possible to host a Bitcoin compo? :)

We will organize two Bitcoin compos at the event. First one is Bitcoin Scavenger Hunt, which will be interesting. Participants find hidden QR codes and send bitcoins to the addresses in those codes. The other is fastest Bitcoin miner, where we basically find out who is the fastest miner at Assembly. The hardware used for the mining must be present at Assembly.

Do you have something else in mind? We've had some ideas but I think that our focus will be on those two competitions.

Will this event be close to that restaurant in Finland that recently announced it's accepting bitcoins? 

Might make for some good lunch breaks :)

Oops! It seems I didn't actually read the thread before sharing my enthusiasm. Sorry! :D

It's not close but it's in the same city so you can get there fairly quick with public transport. The guy who owns the restaurant is trying to set something up with Assembly though. They might advertise at the event and make food deliveries there. That would be great.

NFC-tags with the same purpose, I have some nfc-tags and an NFC read/writer.

And if you don't find any pool operator, why don't run a p2p-pool, that's even more into the spirit of distributed technology. I can host one for ya.

Assembly seminars have been published. You can find the Bitcoin seminar from there as well.

http://www.assembly.org/summer12/seminars

There is going to be an international Bitcoin meetup at Assembly. We will meet outside the main entrance so even people without Assembly tickets can join. The time and date has not been decided yet, I will confirm it once the Assembly schedule is announced. That way we can choose a time when nothing too interesting is happening at Assembly.

We've published a detailed article on everything Bitcoin related during the Assembly weekend.

https://bittiraha.fi/content/bitcoin-assembly-2012

There will be a Bitcoin meetup during the event, I made a separate thread about that meeting specifically. That meeting can be attended without an Assembly ticket.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=96081.0

Please follow us at Twitter (http://twitter.com/Bittirahafi) and retweet! We will post updates regularly before and during the event.

Looks great!  This is exactly the kind of professional exposure that Bitcoin needs.

I have to publicly thank Stefan Thomas, Tony from BitPay and Ryan Poirier, the editor of the Screw Banks video. We didn't have the resources to get any video footage to the Assembly event but thanks to them we have both the We Use Coins video and the Screw Banks video. They will be shown at the big screen at Assembly and at AssemblyTV which in addition to being an online TV channel, is actually a national TV channel during the weekend.

Basically thanks to them Bitcoin will have a significantly larger visibility at the event, which is obviously a good thing.

I will try take a lot of pictures so even those who can't attend can feel the awesomeness! :)

tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKrfZt3CGN0

Assembly Summer 2012 seminar.

Title: Bitcoin - the future of money
Author: Henry Brade

If the slides were published ... link please.

I'll upload them when I have time. Sooo busy here. :)

I send this video to all my FB friends very informative! THX

Great video!!

It was a great event, lots of interested people passed the stand. There were lots of kids, who had no trouble "getting" bitcoin, which seemed very positive to me. I didn't see much bitcoin opponents - only on libertarian/liberal type, who thought that commodity money is a better solution than bitcoin :)

To me it seemed that many had doubts and unclear issues, but when we had discussed there, they left the stand with a more positive attitude towards bitcoin.

Here are the slides for the presentation:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/38956180/asm12/Bitcoin.ppt

I'll restate here what I stated in another thread:

YLE TV2, which is a major TV channel in Finland, filmed big time at Assembly. They are doing a show on Bitcoin which will air next Tuesday and it's one section of one of the most watched shows in Finland.

They have interviews from me and various other Bitcoin dudes including Sirius (the second major developer after Satoshi and the founder of this forum). They also got an interview of Vili Lehdonvirta whom some think is Satoshi. I met the guy and trust me, he is not Satoshi. Ideological background is very different and on top of that he is no cryptographer.

They also got somekind of statements from the bank of Finland and the police. Interesting to see what kind of a piece it is, the length is only around 10 minutes.

Can someone record the video? thx