Bending Spacetime: Overcoming Inertia to Build in Web3

Transcript

and now let's welcome on stage to the head of product a try my lovely friend ship it is can everyone hear me yes okay so follow me please last night [Music] update the slides that I've prepared this is a different set yeah

but anyway I'll take some time while they prepare this lives um it's it's in a telegram you can pull it out for that yeah so today I'll be talking a bit about growing and metabolical ecosystems primarily although it's a very simple concept like articles which is about the idea of looking at Google systems communities as different planets [Music] I know so I'm Excuse me and I work at the tribe and what we do is we grow ecosystems primarily develop our ecosystems there's a bit of a distinction in my mind and hopefully by the end of this presentation if I agree that communities and ecosystems are actually somewhat

different things you look at biology right communities are collections of populations populations and collections of individuals and ecosystems are connections of Commodities so generally when we look at developer communities and developer ecosystems an ecosystem can make can be made up of not only developers but also lawyers even if you remember what happened there today in cash it could involved product people could involve marketing and it's these different communities that we look desperate they eventually come together to grow its own ecosystem so I'm going to try and make sure my slides are the right ones because I

think oh [Music] um so today what I intend to share a bit about is the general philosophy of growing communities and ecosystems uh primarily about brilliant developers from web 2 to web3 we quite a fair amount of different ecosystems I think the core of web3 is really centered around its developments I was watching the presentation earlier by the professor and it's absolutely right I think you want to grow a

decentralized community it is highly different than all kinds of builders that you track the kind of eaters and that will grow into the kinds of work I am no decentralization next but I think that decentralization is really the heart of wet and since I'm in Vietnam it's also the heart of ethereum and as a third year so um and you will see later in the slides a very simple sort of like physics

inspired analogy of developing systems and really if you look at all of us in a guy and each star has its own kind of gravity and developers are comments or leaders going around then I think you can get a better idea of how one might attract developers or keep them within their own orbits and I think that's a very simple analogy for fellow ecosystem Builders or people who have a problem with communities and ecosystems is the right leg of slides thanks thank you everyone so very quickly um let's get some shared context about what's happening or three this is actually the Electric Capital report

that came out in 2021 and whenever I cite this number most people don't believe it but is there really only 18 000 Market activities like there's more people in a tree even if I 100 likes this number to 1.8 million Developers it's really just a fraction of the number of software developers or what less than four percent of the global number of software developers this is probably testimony to the amount of growth that we have and as you can see from a very web tool set of slides there is a 30 million software developers I think Vietnam contributes quite a fair amount every year so thank you

and I think this reminds us the Monumental tasks that we have ahead I think a lot of us at the event here are curious about web3 or the lead that web3 is kind of inevitable and it will be a part of it how many of you have seen here less it's amazing in us okay numbers are going up it's about five percent Hoosier is important energy before this is what about folks that have used decentralized exchangers like Unison or kyber it's quite a lot so I went to your Doctrine every time I do a talk right and even when I keep

presentations every year you can more or less see this number actually double which for me is quite interesting we used to do sessions meetups where nobody ever bought a single or ever interacted when people fall and I think right now we're at a really interesting moment when um [Music] [Music] and developers are the ones I call this the developer again um

this should be a thousand times smaller but if I did I didn't get a size 14 and I can't really see anything so yeah now if I used the gravity kind of energy and energy developers are kind of Within love it of their own ecosystems their own communities right so imagine your web to death and you are auditing around the web 2 Community you have a very high amount of international that makes it very hard to attract you to entry so a combination of a high amount of leadership now where does this inertia come from right when I studied Engineering in sat in Singapore right

now it was called Web 2 tools there was one 23 course that I wasn't eligible for because I didn't take my I didn't know it's a JavaScript for God right so the amount of inertia to leave webtoons extremely high especially with the tools that we use for the habits that you have like how many of you wanted to quit Facebook and I'm still on Facebook I still am I find it really hard a lot of friends are there and all family members are there right and so the kinds of communities that you build are very sticky web training needs to have a higher amount of gravity uh to counteract that in the show that you already have but more importantly it

needs to be attractive and this is more than just like monetary salaries I think what really helps sort of overcome inertia it's a sense of community so everything that I do kind of centers around that now if you were to make up like different communities that make up General ecosystems you will probably think it looks like this right it's like different audience different planets different places that will attract you to different communities but actually I think it looks more like this and there are different uh communities that have much more

institutional power for example when we grow developer communities and try I think we notice that generally two or three really large sources of potential developers so one actually is from universities and that is actually constrained by population so Singapore only has like four to five fingers and this means that we produce baby animals 10 000 developers a year or 2000 people that are kind of prepared to learn development but it doesn't necessarily mean that they actually join the technology industry and even lesser when it comes to web3 we found that during covet actually quite a lot of people are coming from Industries through like

developer academies including new camps and somehow they tend to converge around Career Fairs and like meetups and organizations so this is the global of LSPD you can think of it as a global Universe of like developer experiences now web 3 is really just one small element group I put into games because I know Vietnamese they understand the world in day five o'clock so it should be quite accurate but a lot of developers also enter a lot of Industries like AI for example so you imagine that actually getting developers to join the ecosystem is really actually very difficult

but web3 is not just for the law there's ethereum ecosystems where learning for example stock net requires a different language some of you might have realized well it's called Cairo I tried to understand it and I failed this really I did everything else may or may not be here and they have their own bits of quotes different tooling different activities different communities and that's just ethereum in this course person that's called it all there's different Standalone changes each of these different chains have their own sets of developer communities and Developers for you and most importantly

um [Music] anything so here lies not only is it difficult yeah they were completely in the universities I remember when you first when you first joined we actually everything seems so confusing like why do I need to get this much better to do this makes no sense as time goes by like things shouldn't be easier

now I have a question for everybody this [Music] do you consider yourself a community Builder or an ecosystem so Community Builders raise ahead okay what about ecosystem buildings okay interesting so I noticed some professors consider themselves ecosystem do that and uh I recognize some of you so developers tend to find yourself as Community Builders and I think that is actually quite accurate um but I'll be focusing a bit more on

communities but let me explain the difference so open source software in life for about 20 years so the history of Open Source is actually quite time through a lot of last Technologies they've used a lot of different results [Music] and so communities that generated will be characterized by common members and a common sense of development so when you go for the stocks with your

friends these are all community activities thank you these are actually very different points so this is just because like for example the regulatory Community will have to work with the decentralized finance Community right naturally because they are part of overall ecosystem that we call society and so the challenges the ecosystem is absolutely I'd like to exactly what I

like because actually we are all partner different events you will notice that there will always be a different change in the house all tons of different materials uh kind of keeps things very open so we are honestly tolerate but almost welcoming or anybody interested in yesterday so

this is supposed to move but uh this is actually a screenshot from that post and I'm going to spend the rest of my talk will be providing some insight into hackathons now it is my brand about their Android accounts almost every other week as part of major hack and when you look at for example Deadpool also like people then of course alone has like 376 about something ranging from Price monies that range from I think zero dollars not sure why but all the way up to a million dollars in price money and for some reason we have three communities all decided to converge from a heavy project everything then

we'll always run a hackathon on the side by theory for this is that I think genetically I'm development of like a still an excuse to eat at home and hackathons are a good way to justify your boss that you're learning something and you might bring money out of here and yes I'll just teach has changed that's different so I can post a very simple taxonomy of hackathons these are the kinds of hackathons that we try to run because I think it brings the most value to your ecosystems and if you liked it could be handling some of

these ideas but one thing underpinning all of these programs is a sense of intellectuality so when you run hackathons you must have a clear sense of purpose and I like to propose that there are generally three kinds of purposes that I think inaliable communities enjoy a lot and the new ones are running inside your thoughts are support but very significant so the first kind of hackathon I call them education hackathons and really the core idea of those is to lower the value of anything within rewards and make learning extremely accessible now what does this mean I remember the whole analogy about web 2 and web3 and the high amount of leadership well getting

developers to come for hackathons that's actually one challenge having them confused during a hackathon and I think they'd rather go and eat for prices [Music] educational hackathons can be very different almost like a mini learn and earn kind of experience instead of having everybody fight it out or to compete a more collaborative experience I think having smaller tasks that developers can use to try to just simply attempt

launch your first token that could actually be a very large gap that is bridge by new developers that people that are seasoned in the space have completely forgotten educational hackathons are really designed and great the second kind of hackathon is what I see the most in this space my guess is because most hackathon budgets come from marketing and they tend to be nearly social and the goal of such hackathons is really to try and drive momentum so if you look at e Global for example use it as analogy because I assume people are a bit more familiar with it

but e-global holds about six pack dollars a year and they always pick them they're very important moments these are all places that have a higher amount as well and mobility and lots of people come down and so social happy thoughts really shouldn't be too serious and you will find that there is way too many scientists so social hackathons the whole purpose of that is to try and get together and generally when I talk to the students that I work with and they go for academic social nature they tend to get very nervous what if I don't win well if I don't form a team what if my

project between the city honestly to buy you that poetry is not just about Market Central technology but it's the people behind and if you want social technology I think one thing that I really appreciate is the ability to interact with people that view the tools that you use like it's a whole different experience to use hard hat for example and eating a hard time content so at Defcon when you talk to people that solidity thems it's not that they code on certainly is that they code and make it

solidity meeting these people are completely different experience and it actually highlights a lot about each different ecosystems Specialties for example in Argentina did you know the woman's [Music] provide the kinds of inspiration and social bonds that have overcome initial initial industry and the last kind of hackathon I find to be most defined by Saturday night funds and generally turn them recruit random hackathons sometimes they could be enablement I could notice that concept

is really question about the idea here is to nurture a good developers to enter a ecosystem and it had to be quite monetary in nature this generally seems to work well when an ecosystem is already fairly established and you will find that um and she's a little different they tend to already know what they want or they might already have projects that they are trying to finish so an example of this was one project that we ran for the monetary authority of Singapore it wasn't recruitment I mean it's pretty hiring but it was a challenge to call different companies like this is a couple of

central packages so such decades are actually really different rather than having a social nature of Education you mostly want to attract experts in the field already so that the quality of discussions are actually pretty high and it can be really really intimidating now this works both ways um it makes your losses that's fine if they are there so that works quite well also more importantly The Clash of ideas and so good moderators kind of balance that tension is really important if not the communities are afraid and uh so a very simple taxonomy of hackathons

can be about it I think you might be familiar with and provide a bit more insight into the kinds of technicals and hopefully next time when you go forward in your life but really everybody this is one of the taxonomy of community it's just a single modernity and I think we're quite familiar with but if you look at it from my uh technothons are really just events that consolidate bounties and people but you can also have pack the houses that

consolidate more people than less about kids and along with that Spectrum these are all different Community touch points to try and grow with developer communities now like I think sometimes they share a bit about some interesting examples I've come across and inviting the crowd we share some interesting Community touch points that you come across because I I know this is supposed to be a workshop but it feels like I'm in a more detail I don't know we can try something and see how it goes yeah so I'd like to start with one example that actually Blends together all three of these different classifications and it's a personal favorite of mine has anybody heard of build space

no okay interesting um he was a white company like that and his initial project was to try and revolutionize just about education in America um instead he decided to come up with self-serve projects where people would come on board learn basic tools so very similar to education kinds of hackathons right but instead of giving up price like that what people did was that they would get entities and these energies served as a form of

credentialing and you notice that there are some parallels to other hackathons like I've seen the incubator say like hey you know I managed to get the winner of the E Global analog there it is but a few space there and he went with me and I really appreciate a social element of the real space Community was sort of elevated where they ran a shock tank kind of event or competition or Dragon's Den if you happen to be community and what would happen is they invited the entire Community to come together something like an American style kind of

thing you pitch their own projects but instead of having a panel of Judges which is honestly or just they believe quite hard but they got the community to actually evoke with the amount of energies that they share and the number of entities that they have was kind of correlated with a lot of projects that they did and therefore gave them a higher numbers I'd really like to see all kinds of projects that combine some of these ideas together because it really spices up the kinds of events that we're at and it increases the amounts of participation that we have in this case so this is one project I like to highlight I think I still have time okay we have 10 minutes left so I can

take this time to maybe here for some of the audiences our audience what are some like events that you have come across that you really enjoy uh and you can maybe try out the taxonomy we have and we can see how this might play out I've never run a world so let's try again anybody like to volunteer come on yeah I guess um I was at an event called Susie house last day it's about The Hacker House [Music]

mostly because the way social houses but in fact I think 200 meters away from the election [Music] is generally a Loosely coupled and centered around family meals now this is interesting because very rarely do you see an event that is centered around creating a familiar Spirit but I would imagine that Family Ties would have a very strong amount of gravity right so thank you though oh yes

now I understand why I'm from Malaysia so there's this hackathon organized by a bank which was the team was better than I was wondering what is a bank doing okay you know sponsoring a hangover and then I understand okay that now this is very clear they're recruiting okay people to basically build a form of metabolism and that is absolutely true we have ran some hackathons for banks in Singapore also and they are outright recruiting at the dance in fact they were they are designed right they really wrapped it up for people to project otherwise mostly you just see how things

mostly because I think the key idea of events like this is to see some sort of like internet of us and events like this good for certain kinds of animal established communities where maybe it's a bit harder to find Panic yeah but yeah as you say like Banks definitely that's like this quite a lot in fact you will find that these events tend to be more and more but they are coached in more benign kind of like games so you will find like they're not living things I'm not necessarily saying that organization doesn't like this but for example um for example that's like maybe Global

challenges like uh actually the U.N has its own fund also they are trying to find a talent right that they can use or really can be a part of or be a part of the human Network and those are usually very distributed manner with minimal support So once [Music] less stressful ways of doing it and more stressful and anxiety inducing ways of eating but thanks very much I think it's still some time I can't really see how much time do I have okay so I have a question so you were talking

about what tree needs to build a larger gravity right okay in order to pull grab two because webtoon has really such a huge inertia against it what must what can your opinion must change or be better in your opinion when it comes to you know hackathons and stuff that's a really good question um so if I was to extend the gravity and energy and think a bit about how planets form right it all starts with a core and more mass gets attracted to it right so how does that work in this space right I think uh hackathons are high effort but one off so if you move down one level you need to have some sort of system to

try to attract more mass and so actually smaller meetups are actually a really good way of growing content is so maybe for some concern always trying to show up for a local student events because that's where you get talent and uh and they are in between like two and one three right so there's less inertia and getting these talented to your gravity well or your community is actually a really good way of growing your own gravity different ecosystems have different strategies but one key idea to us that it has to be consistent

thank you and one last Point sometimes different organizations randomly for example say certain function doesn't do it doesn't just give you an example uh sometimes like developer groups like different projects might have say uh HQ kind of style and they try and get local students to run events what happens is that you end up kind of a relying structure which doesn't lead to interesting projects like this right so not only do you have to run consistent events to grow mass of your community like literally it's like a

mess but giving these individual communities the own opportunity to coalesce in ways that make the most sense is actually a key and then sometimes requires a little satisfaction and standing there now you never know what kinds of constellations when you look at it in reverse you see that binary stars like two sounds that revolve around each other you might see gas giants different kinds of planets can and should exist and they are good for different kinds of communities and giving them face before Less in ways that you might not expect or you're actually quite a lot of surprises so I'm going to wrap up my top

to share a bit about try naturally I think it fits very well into the model that I presented and the specific technical activities that we do bring from ongoing people to what we call learn and earn activities really the core idea here is to de-risk learning so rather than having you pay to learn by actually think about it it makes more sense to have you get into work because we are trying to attract you to a new community and so we've come out of a model that kind of works and boot camps came to run them through like scholarships naturally I think that if you're trying to attract people into a

community they shouldn't have high barriers to entry and financial gains are one of them right it's like trying to get investors so once that exists we engage them through like hackathons and hacker houses and the same kinds of community touch points can be designed from different organizations also depending on the level of maturity but that's a whole different conversation and finally uh you know Target recruitment I consider them a building phase right where good projects with proteins and high potential still need to be indulgent and I like to caution against the factory analogy I think the idea here is that you will stand up for

startups but to give the space for startups to grow in the same economy which actually is very challenging in rapidly I would reckon even more challenging than anywhere too for many reasons right body can be very distracting two I think there are risks that I actually hidden that requires a certain level of ecosystem context to help these communities navigate and so that's why we do it right so and I hope you learn something from this presentation and if you would like to ask any more questions feel free to email me or follow me on Twitter even though my name is Tuesday I'm a bit of a fan of Madrid's painting So my Twitter

is and I hope you enjoyed talk so thank you and I'll see you around okay