Bitcoin Mining Parties

[EconomicOracle]

Hey! I have a neat idea on how to get people interested in bitcoin: Have a Bitcoin Mining Party! Windows 7 did this with much success, and I think it would work well for bitcoins too.

What I'm talking about is getting a group of friends over with their alienware laptops, and showing them how to install the client, build an MtGoX and/or TradeHill (using your referral code of course) account, and getting started mining.

I really hope people start getting in to this. Maybe we could collab and rent a few concert halls to show hundreds of people at once.

Be sure to post pictures of your mining parties! Loads of fun!

<-- the smiling attendees at my bitcoin party

[IlbiStarz]

And when everyone gets it working...then what? Everyone sits there and watch hashes lol?

[EconomicOracle]

And when everyone gets it working...then what? Everyone sits there and watch hashes lol?

Once they start hashing, they'll setup their MtGoX account. It's not like they'll just be staring at a screen. There's so much to do when you're talking about bitcoin!. And maybe the host will give out free bitcoins to attendees.

[Vladimir]

And than host gets his fuses blown. 

[EconomicOracle]

I'm noticing a lot of negativity. The whole point is to spread the Good news of bitcoin. If you don't let your friends know about this new crypto-currency, who will? I'm just trying to get more people to notice bitcoin. To get interested in bitcoin. If we can't get bitcoin to spread, then we'll never get anywhere.

[Bitcoin Swami]

Awesome idea.  Go for it.  Beer and bitcoin!!!

[bitcon]

drink that bitbrew

[TraderTimm]

I'd encourage this only if you emphasize solo-mining over pools. I think we need 'other' on this chart http://bitcoinwatch.com/ (at the bottom) to be at least 25% - 33% of the pie for adequate balance. Just to get some robustness into the equation and remove the potential DDoS central-point-of-failure that pools present.

But getting people to learn about bitcoin, perhaps with a pre-installed client on a bootable linux USB drive, would help to get the message out there. I also like the resulting acronym from "Bitcoin User Group", since we have a unofficial "bitcoin bug" logo floating out there

[bitcoinBull]

Another thing to do is key-signing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_signing_party). 

Use your GPG keys to register on #bitcoin-otc, rate each other and help build the bitcoin Web of Trust.

[coinvestor]

The conference is a good idea. Set up the mining operation first without even explaining much. Use the rest of the time to just talk about the potential for bitcoin and what it represents and at the end of the conference ask them to check their earnings. They may be surprised.

[mike678]

Windows 7 did this with much success, and I think it would work well for bitcoins too.

If you mean those windows 7 school rep's then you got to be joking There's no organization from what I saw.

One of my friends is one of those and microsoft sent him around 400 dollars in free money with no explanation on how to use it. He ended up just pawning out all the stuff to his friends. I ended up getting several free cd keys for windows 7 ultimate and some cash