pleb.fi potlucks

pleb together stronk

pleb.fi’s genesis is as an event for and by the community. the v i b e s at the first two pleb.fi events were tremendous, and it was clear the community wanted more. to scale out the pleb.fi events as a concept we put together some guidelines for how to organize your own pleb.fi event. you don’t have to follow these guidelines, but if you don’t it might not be a pleb.fi event that you’re putting on, capiche? we call these events potlucks to emphasize how all participants and attendees bring something to the table to share. confused? think, “pleb.fi is to pleb.fi/potluck as TED is TEDx”.

To Organize

1. Organizer should have previously attended a non-potluck pleb.fi (exceptions granted)
2. Open an issue on the pleb repo and tag @JeremyRubin
3. Open a PR with an event page

Ground Rules

• Minimally you should follow the rules on the disclaimers page and enforce them as organizers.
• You can augment these rules as needed
• Inclusive: everyone is welcome at the potluck, attendees should be open minded and ready to share and learn in good faith.

Sponsors

• You should have one underwriting sponsor who can cover all costs of the event.
• You can take on additional sponsors as needed.
• Pleb.fi is not pay-to-play. Sponsors should not get much more than their logo on the event page and option to send some material (swag) to the event or a limited number of messages to attendees. there are no tiers or anything.
• Logos should be hand drawn or crafty (see austin’s page).
• Ideally, find a local non-profit to work with to handle receipt of sponsorships (in the future, we may have an org set up to handle this).
• Anon sponsorship encouraged too :)
• Sponsors can get a gratis ticket to the event or two, but keep it in check. Sponsors should not be there to promote, they should participate in the event normally.
• Do not give sponsors a list of attendee emails, except those who opt-in to sharing. Seriously >:(.

Food

• Make sure to check attendees dietary restrictions
• Highly preferable to use local catering or brands; give out of towners a taste of something specific to your hometown
• Plebs like Tacos
• It’s a good idea to plan an after social venue where you put down a open bar tab with enough $ for ~1 drink per person (can ticket if needed)
• snacks are never wrong

Tickets

• Cost per day should not be excessive; aim for breakeven all said and done, excesses to be used charitably at discretion of organizers.
• Encouraged $20/day minimum to ensure attendance.
• OK to separately ticket e.g. Hackathon & Speakers
• It’s best to gate admissions through applications asking:
  • nym / email
  • dietary stuff
  • portfolio/profiles (github, twitter, etc)
  • student / non student
  • requires subsidy?
  • intention for attending (3 sentence min)

Subsidies

• It’s really good if you can comp travel / hotels / tickets for folks.
• Prioritize number of and diversity of attendees
• Ask how much they would need, set a cap & collect receipts after (refund only if attended)

Swag

• Sponsors are free to send swag if they want, can be used for hackathon prizes or to all attendees
• If you make your own swag, remember that most people don’t need yet another free shirt. Make it a statement.

Hackathon

• If you are putting on a hackathon that’s awesome!
• Hackathon should go after talks.
• Don’t schedule talks during hackathon
• Limit Team Size
• Do set policies (see austin’s) on cheating
• Have a remote hacker policy
• Collect team info towards end of hackathon

Judging & Prizes

• No participation trophies
• Typically you want 1, 2, 3 prize and then some category prizes winnable by anyone
• At the end of the event have people present – you can also have judges go around and view projects 1 on 1 time permitting
• Judges should cordon off and deliberate (this takes longer than you think)

Agenda

• the three C’s: Curate, Curate, Curate
  • Set a narrative arc for the event. Start with inspirational content & then move to more concrete/workshoppy stuff. Think through end to end: what is an attendee going to get out of this? How does it connect to the talk before? The talk after? Is it coherent?
  • No one has to give a talk at pleb.fi. If the content doesn’t fit, but you like the speaker, cut it.
  • Sponsors don’t automatically get a talk. It has to be on point.
  • Reach out to speakers you want with concepts of what they could talk about that fits your narrative.
    • Especially reach out to people outside of the Bitcoin community (e.g., Eth, ZCash, NFTs, etc) to grace the potluck and teach people things they otherwise might not get exposed to. you should have at least one or two folks like this on the agenda! Such a participant hould not be pitching a particular project or investment, but about learnings that are outside the ‘plebs zone’ of familiarity.

M.C. Duties

• Have an M.C. for the event (ideally that’s their only job that day)
• They need to keep things on track time wise, manage questions, and herd speakers to stage on time
• Be familiar with speakers talks to give intros and stuff

Speakers

Panels

• Panels should have 1 Moderator and 3 Panelists, 4 maximum if absolutely necessary (better to split the panels).
• Rule of thumb: 10 minutes per panel guest
• No “Mini Talk Per Panelist” – Panels should be dynamic and focus on engagement between panelists.
• Leave time for Q&A.
• Pre conference chat!

Fireside Chats

• Two people
• The people should have some big disagreement (they are the fire) they can respectfully work through
• Pre conference chat!

Workshops

• Should come later in the day
• strongly advise that all workshops can run in a Docker Container
• Have participants download the material beforehand, or run a local FTP server or something for file sharing. Otherwise this will crash your network and no one can follow along.

Speed Round Workshops

• If there is a lot of ‘similar content’ workshops (e.g. cool new API for Lightning Network) run them as a 10 minute per workshop ‘pitch’ and then 1 hour breakout groups.
• Breakout groups focus on engagement with instructors and hands on –> try to make sure that there are enough workshops:participants to prevent overcrowding.
• Dockerized format a must.
• Small Sat bounties for completion a great idea; cap it at ~$100 so as not to compete on who pays for eyeballs (ok for organizers to reimburse)

Tech

AV

• talk to exfrog for tips
• you will want recordings to be uploadable after the event
• no livestreams, unless you have like a tier 1 internet connection and 2 dedicated volunteers (1 to do camera work, 1 to manage comments).
• Should have a few mics on stage + one to float the audience

Internet

• No, your connection quality is not good enough
• Advise people to only connect one device (laptop, not phone).
• This is really freakin’ hard to get right
• Have a local FTP/git server or something running and have speakers be able to add their files to it. This could save the event

Budgeting

• Do make a master spreadsheet which breaks down and accurately reflects all expenses of the event.
• Try to keep the budget balanced at all times.
• (TODO: Need inspiration? here’s a template budget to copy)

Venue

• Ensure the Venue has sufficient space for attendees
• If having a hackathon, you need tables and chargers and wifi
• Bathrooms etc
• Try to limit how widely you broadcast the specific location for security

Media Licensing & Copyright

• You must assign copyright (royalty free world wide nonexclusive transferrable commerical yadda yadda the equivalent to if it were public domain to Jeremy Rubin / pleb.fi) of archival videos and audio from the event so that we can host and publish it however we please.
• Speakers should ensure they have the rights / their talk is covered by fair use.