I flew in from London to attend the conference and thought it was great. My main observations and reflections were:
* The quality of the dialogue was extremely high. A core understanding of Bitcoin and how it works was assumed - which enabled the discussions (lunch, panels, presentations, etc) to focus on more advanced topics. Examples: the frequent references to coloured (sorry, "colored") coins, the altcoin panel and the various speakers on payments system (e.g. BitPay and Paymium) --- they all assumed an intelligent *and* knowledgeable audience, which allowed them to go far further than a typical conference session.
If I have to sit through one more presentation which starts out with a history lesson about 'first, humans used barter, then blah, blah, blah' I swear I'm going to puke. I walked out of at least one presentation at the start for this reason.
About the only thing which is more annoying is when a person asking a question takes 5 minutes of everyone else's time to describe how much they want to suck the presenter's dick or whatever. Sometimes they don't even get to the question at all.
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* The colored coin concept is HUGELY powerful - I had thought it an interesting diversion before I came but, after it was explained a few times, it made me realise just how versatile the core "distributed ledger" metaphor really it.
Of course. Everyone likes a free lunch and sees a way to get rich by sponging off the work of others.
* The Paytunia/Paymium presenter included a *really* powerful slide that I think could be used to explain Bitcoin in more contexts. It had three diagrams. 1) four boxes representing the Visa/Mastercard payment system (merchant/merchant acquirer/issuer/customer), 2) three boxes representing Amex/Paypal and 3) two boxes representing cash and Bitcoin - i.e. direct payment from payer to seller with no intermediaries, etc. In one chart, it explained why Bitcoin was different to everything that has gone before and justified the claim of others that Bitcoin is "cash with wings". I presented on the conference to some colleagues yesterday evening and used this slide --- it helped their understanding immensely.
I missed Boussac's presentations being more interested in the tech end of things, but got a chance to catch up with him in person. Paymium either bought or was given coins that I entrusted with ~jav, then either lost or stole them. This gave me a good reason to wish to meet him. Pleasant conversation in spite of the misfortune though.
* I was hugely impressed by Gavin. Beforehand, I wasn't sure what to expect from his "state of the coin" keynote but I thought the tone was just right. It was essentially a list of: "here are the things I worry about" --- *exactly* what I would expect from a chief architect/lead developer on a complex project. I thought he got the tone just right
I didn't meet up with him this time, but I've met him in the past. I'm still waiting for an answer to my question about what he would do if the government 'just said no' to Bitcoin. No danger of figuring that out at something like the conference though so I was not to surprised.
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* I caught the end of Erik Voorhee's talk and all of his panel discussion. Both were excellent. He is extremely eloquent, articulate and thoughtful in how he presents the topic.
Didn't get a chance to say 'Hi' to Erik either, and kind of wanted to since we worked on a minor project in the distant past. As for being 'thoughtful', if he had done anything more than regurgitate Austrian school hokum and bunkum I'd be shocked. Again, I found more interesting things to see so I missed his stuff.
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My favorite presentation was Eli Ben-Sasson's thing. I can see a large number of places where the work could be applicable to distributed-crypto-currency-like systems and tangential tasks. I'll be looking forward with great interests to developments in his team's work.
