EUROPEAN BITCOIN CONFERENCE 2011, PRAGUE NOV 25-27

[herzmeister]

Sounds great! Let Max Keiser be the new Bruce! 

[mizerydearia]

People keep asking me about conference videos:

/topic in #bitconconsultancy

"Conference videos: we've decided on high quality after conference videos vs low quality difficult-to-setup webcasts. Videos should be out during next few weeks."

For future reference see http://livestream.com/ or http://ustream.tv/ to realize how not difficult at all it is.

[sadpandatech]

People keep asking me about conference videos:

/topic in #bitconconsultancy

"Conference videos: we've decided on high quality after conference videos vs low quality difficult-to-setup webcasts. Videos should be out during next few weeks."

For future reference see http://livestream.com/ or http://ustream.tv/ to realize how not difficult at all it is.

  I see, but what does this cost; http://www.ustream.tv/production-services/conference-package

[apetersson]

i find it funny, when - i think it was Simon Dixon - stated (cited from my memory):

"I do not think it is a good idea to give away all kinds of software for free, as this kills employment" - nobody even bothered to argue against it. heard lots of people chuckle..

[xavier]

Just to add my voice to the growing list of appreciation for this conference

Thanks most of all to Mitch for organising everything. The organisation was very good, and the whole show was very professionally run. It must've taken alot of effort to bring everything together for that final day and I'm sure everyone attending appreciated it. It is good that Europe is holding its own against the rest of the world in supporting Bitcoin. Congrats to Amir as well for hosting.

It was the content and the speakers that really made this talk so good. I'd like to pass on thanks to all of the speakers for their talks, all of which were very well delivered and insightful. I and I'm sure everyone else present enjoyed everything that was said, and the effort that was put into creating every presentation.

Highlights for me were the less technical talks, as I'm not too heavily involved in the development side at the moment: David Birch, Rick Falkvinge, Detlev Schlichter.

One thing which I thought very special about the conference was the mix of older and younger speakers - older and wiser talks from the likes of David Birch, Max Keiser, Rick Falkvinge, Clemens Cap along with those actually creating the new technologies like Cameron Garnham, Amir Taaki, Stefan Thomas, Peter Kleissner, etc.

I really hope that we can continue to hold the interest of all these very knowledgeable and clever people.

I think important to listen to the more experienced speakers. Whilst its exciting to hear about the new technologies and ideas from the likes of Amir and Stefan, it is fundamental to listen to those who understand how the 'real world' works.

Also interesting to hear from Detlev Schlichter, Max Keiser and Rick Falkvinge, particularly good to have them along given what's going on in the economy. I thought they added a very interesting additional dimension to the conference that would have otherwise been missing. Congrats again to Mitch/Amir for working hard to get these people along.

All in all, I thought it was a very thoughtful and insightful event. My only thoughts are that the venue itself was a little far out from the rest of Prague and in particular the Hacker Space where a lot of people went afterwards. It was excellently positioned vis a vis the hotel however. Prague was a great location for it aswell.

Well done guys for organising everything. Once again , an amazing conference with some great talks. Hopefully the next one can be bigger and better

Xavier

[molecular]

Just to add my voice to the growing list of appreciation for this conference

Thanks most of all to Mitch for organising everything. The organisation was very good, and the whole show was very professionally run. It must've taken alot of effort to bring everything together for that final day and I'm sure everyone attending appreciated it. It is good that Europe is holding its own against the rest of the world in supporting Bitcoin. Congrats to Amir as well for hosting.

It was the content and the speakers that really made this talk so good. I'd like to pass on thanks to all of the speakers for their talks, all of which were very well delivered and insightful. I and I'm sure everyone else present enjoyed everything that was said, and the effort that was put into creating every presentation.

Highlights for me were the less technical talks, as I'm not too heavily involved in the development side at the moment: David Birch, Rick Falkvinge, Detlev Schlichter.

One thing which I thought very special about the conference was the mix of older and younger speakers - older and wiser talks from the likes of David Birch, Max Keiser, Rick Falkvinge, Clemens Cap along with those actually creating the new technologies like Cameron Garnham, Amir Taaki, Stefan Thomas, Peter Kleissner, etc.

I really hope that we can continue to hold the interest of all these very knowledgeable and clever people.

I think important to listen to the more experienced speakers. Whilst its exciting to hear about the new technologies and ideas from the likes of Amir and Stefan, it is fundamental to listen to those who understand how the 'real world' works.

Also interesting to hear from Detlev Schlichter, Max Keiser and Rick Falkvinge, particularly good to have them along given what's going on in the economy. I thought they added a very interesting additional dimension to the conference that would have otherwise been missing. Congrats again to Mitch/Amir for working hard to get these people along.

All in all, I thought it was a very thoughtful and insightful event. My only thoughts are that the venue itself was a little far out from the rest of Prague and in particular the Hacker Space where a lot of people went afterwards. It was excellently positioned vis a vis the hotel however. Prague was a great location for it aswell.

Well done guys for organising everything. Once again , an amazing conference with some great talks. Hopefully the next one can be bigger and better

Xavier

+1. I think this conference might be viewed as a cornerstone for bitcoin in retrospect. It all came together: science, entrepreneurialism, people, politics and money.

[amencon]

when you mess with the bulls, you get the herpes.

I don't think they are worried.  You can't get herpes twice.


Can you??

I guess if you already have the same type of herpes, you just get a different kind instead.

Ask a doctor, not trolls.

I wanted a second opinion.

Now I see there is a whole new scary double herpes world out there.  Just when you thought you were safe...

[molecular]

16 second takeout: Rick Falkvinge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw85GURiS58

[Jaagu]

David Birch was a must have! Although he does not believe in Bitcoin like 90% of his audience I have no doubt that 90% enjoyed his refreshing style and insights.
Simon Dixon did speak well. Inspiring but somehow there were no buzz concepts I found worthy to note down.

By my mind both of them were 'must not have'. David B. didn't say a word about bitcoin and he acknowledged of being bitcoin 'sceptic' (not to say 'against' bitcoin). Simon D.'s presentation was all about making traditional banks stronger. And, 'accidentally' both guys supported each other during panel.

[slush]

David B. didn't say a word about bitcoin and he acknowledged of being bitcoin 'sceptic'.

I enjoyed his skepticism because he's watching on bitcoin from the view of "normal people". We have to leave our bitcoin cave if we want to make it successful - this was his message to us as I understood it.

[Matthew N. Wright]

David B. didn't say a word about bitcoin and he acknowledged of being bitcoin 'sceptic'.

I enjoyed his skepticism because he's watching on bitcoin from the view of "normal people". We have to leave our bitcoin cave if we want to make it successful - this was his message to us as I understood it.

I like this guy already.

[kangasbros]

My take, don't remember every talk that well since I was coding at the same time.

Sergey Kurtsev: Not really about decentralized exchange, but potential concept nonetheless.

Amir Taaki: His first speech on friday was interesting (and a little funny), but overall he wasn't a good choice for as a moderator. Too much ideological/political stuff to my tastes, too little concrete stuff.

Jim Burton: I would have liked more about technical stuff about multibit client, such as watch advantages does it offer over the traditional client (speed?). The swatches do not inspire me. The bitcoin merchant wasn't either too interesting, for example I don't support using openid/etc login methods on web shop, I think they lower the conversion rate and with bitcoin much more efficient checkout process is possible.

David Birch: I didn't get this guys "criticism" (as I understood it was meant as such). For example, he was talking long about how computers are only for nerds and mobile is going to be the stuff in the future. How is this relevant? Bitcoin is not technology tied to specific platform, and there are lots of bitcoin-related mobile software already. Interesting stories, but not related much to bitcoin.

Simon Dixon: mostly boring pro-banking stuff.

Jason Chia: This guy was definitely in the wrong place. Goverments buying all the bitcoins?

Peter Kleissner: Interesting stuff, but not that in-depth.

Cameron Garnham: Open transactions project has a marketing problem. I don't get what it is useful for, and I didn't understand that after the presentation. I unfedstood that with their technology you can currently issue centralized "tokens". The vision is de-centralized, however I don't understand how that could be achieved. And generally I don't really understand what the open-transactions project is practically useful for. More practical examples, please!

Clemens Cap: Some ideas how to promote the bitcoin project etc, not that interesting/new to me.

Rick Falkvinge: Somewhat inspiring talk, however nothing new to me since I'm a fan and read his blog pretty regularly (the only political blog I read).

Max Keiser: boring.

Overall I was a little disappointed, too much speech about economics/politics/etc and too little about technology/businesses.  Of course it is about personal tastes, though.

Thanks for the conference, it was great meeting some bitcoin people.

[molecular]

By my mind both of them were 'must not have'. David B. didn't say a word about bitcoin and he acknowledged of being bitcoin 'sceptic' (not to say 'against' bitcoin).

How are you going to have a fruitfull discussion if everyone is of the same opinion. We didn't meet to pad ourselves on the back and look at our shiny casascius coins (well, not only, that is).

One of the organizers told me they tried to get 6 speakers "against" bitcoin. Most of the people they contacted refused for lack of balls, which I can understand.

I think it's great Birch came and he offered interesting facts and opinions and he's correct about one thing: We must be on the phone in order to succeed in gaining wider adoption.

[Matthew N. Wright]

I would have gone with my girlfriend but it was a bit too expensive to fly out from Korea.

I guess I'll head to out to the Texas one. At least then Atlas and I can have a real pissing contest. I hear he has a piss fetish anyway.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Simon Dixon: mostly boring pro-banking stuff.

I must have been stuck in a strange wormhole timewarp thingy where what I heard from Simon's talk was different from everyone else. To me it seems he put banks in the same category as killing people and the planet, and criticized their fractional reserve and lending policies.

Jason Chia: This guy was definitely in the wrong place. Goverments buying all the bitcoins?

The "governments buying bitcoins" part isn't that far-fetched. It was the "and then deleting them" that was silly.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Simon Dixon: mostly boring pro-banking stuff.

I must have been stuck in a strange wormhole timewarp thingy where what I heard from Simon's talk was different from everyone else. To me it seems he put banks in the same category as killing people and the planet, and criticized their fractional reserve and lending policies.

Jason Chia: This guy was definitely in the wrong place. Goverments buying all the bitcoins?

The "governments buying bitcoins" part isn't that far-fetched. It was the "and then deleting them" that was silly.

That's the ultimate troll though. I'm tempted to myself....

While Bitcoin allows for such a ridiculous concept, it deserves to be tested.

[caveden]

Simon Dixon: mostly boring pro-banking stuff.

This guy needs to learn some economics. His take on "free things cause unemployment" was so wrong... He could start reading some Bastiat; http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

Cameron Garnham: Open transactions project has a marketing problem. I don't get what it is useful for, and I didn't understand that after the presentation. I unfedstood that with their technology you can currently issue centralized "tokens". The vision is de-centralized, however I don't understand how that could be achieved. And generally I don't really understand what the open-transactions project is practically useful for. More practical examples, please!

If I understood it correctly, it is a common protocol for issuing centralized tokens for anything. The idea is that people can exchange different tokens, from different issuers, digitally, using the same protocol.
I also don't know much about Open Transaction, I would need to learn more. I wonder if with alternative chains and merged mining we couldn't actually completely decentralize the double-spend verification part of the Open Transaction protocol, making it less centralized. It is inherently centralized anyway, since we're talking about token issuers.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Simon Dixon: mostly boring pro-banking stuff.

This guy needs to learn some economics. His take on "free things cause unemployment" was so wrong... He could start reading some Bastiat; http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

Yeah, he's a luddite. Though in his defense I do sympathize with a related sentiment - while it's great when people offer free stuff, it's bad when people demand to be given stuff for free. This dries up the incentives to create high-quality products and services, and the people end up with free stuff worth exactly what they paid for them.

[molecular]

Simon Dixon: mostly boring pro-banking stuff.

This guy needs to learn some economics. His take on "free things cause unemployment" was so wrong... He could start reading some Bastiat; http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

Yeah, he's a luddite. Though in his defense I do sympathize with a related sentiment - while it's great when people offer free stuff, it's bad when people demand to be given stuff for free. This dries up the incentives to create high-quality products and services, and the people end up with free stuff worth exactly what they paid for them.

I never understood as a kid, why everybody wanted to work so badly. It seemed so much more attractive to just play all day.

Maybe we should, as a global society, rethink some stuff from the ground up, and talk to children in the process, they might have some good ideas

[caveden]

while it's great when people offer free stuff, it's bad when people demand to be given stuff for free.

I fully agree there.