Hi Matt,
I fully understand the concern about the additional requirements for travel, which isn't well-served
by direct international flights and be conservative with people's time.
Though there are few observations, I still think doing a summit on the africa continent will take
less accumulated travel time than past destinations like Tokyo (CoreDev 2018) or Adelaide (LN Summit
2018).
On the additional requirements here the ones for French / US / UK passport
holders:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_French_citizens
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_French_citizens>
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_United_States_citizens
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_United_States_citizens>
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_British_citizens
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_British_citizens>
Visa-free countries for the intersection of the three you have Morocco, Senegal, Cameroon and South
Africa, already visited few from this list.
Note, a country with a strong Bitcoin local community like Algeria is excluded from the intersecting
list.
Indeed the main motivation to schedule well-ahead is to give a buffer time to manage the complexity
of additional operational requirements.
On the latest concern, about the Zurich 2020 organization none of the members of the organizing
committee were living in this city iirc. However few of the members were Swiss themselves, which
indeed is quite nice for the organisation. Already in touch with local Bitcoiners with a track
record for few countries.
If you're a Lightning developer and you wish to take part in next year's summit organization feel
free to reach out if you want to contribute to the organization.
I'll start a summit organization Signal group and throw Matt inside as he's quite experienced about
open-source events and has opinions on a lot of things.
Best,
Antoine
Le lun. 21 août 2023 à 01:16, Matt Corallo <lf-li...@mattcorallo.com
<mailto:lf-li...@mattcorallo.com>> a écrit :
While more lightning developers attending conference(s) in a more diverse
set of countries,
including on the african continent, sounds like a great idea, the usual LN
summit is an invite-only
developer meeting. Hosting it in a country with additional requirements for
travel and which isn't
as well-served by direct international flights doesn't carry any benefit
and only has additional
costs on peoples' time.
I'm also admittedly a little dubious of any summit or conference organized
by someone who does not
live in the city in which it is being hosted.
Matt
On 8/18/23 4:02 PM, Antoine Riard wrote:
> Hi lightning devs,
>
> Follow up on next year LN Summit organization:
>
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2023-June/003994.html
<https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2023-June/003994.html>
>
<https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2023-June/003994.html
<https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2023-June/003994.html>>
>
> After browsing the travel advisories, social situations of a good number
of geographical
areas in
> Africa, and chatting with the Built with Bitcoin folks on the state of
the local Bitcoin
community
> country by country, I would like to propose Ghana as a place of location
for next year's June
2024
> LN Summit.
>
> As announced in my previous mail, I was thinking to survey privately the
usual Lightning Summit
> attendees on the choice of location to collect a first wave of feedback.
After really digging
into
> the travel advisories country by country, it turns out if we're looking
for European / US-like
> standards of travel for a group of people of 30/40 attendees, we start
to be more operationally
> constrained.
>
> Ghana has already hosted last year's Afro Bitcoin Conference and they're
doing an edition
again in
> December of this year [0]. I've never been to Ghana so I'm currently
planning to attend this
year's
> 2023 conference to get myself familiar with the ground and that way
ensure smooth preparation
for
> next year's June LN Summit. From my Zurich 2020 experience, it's good to
organize Bitcoin
technical
> events in a country where you're familiar a bit.
>
> As a backup plan, I think we could consider countries like Morocco or
Algeria, which given
current
> composition of the organization committee is straightforward due to the
french-speaking
communities,
> or South Africa, which is itself beautiful and where they're doing
Bitcoin events [1], though
this
> latter is very far far away in term of international travel logistic.
>
> Note for Ghana, from a quick look it sounds like a visa will be required
for all Schengen, US
and
> Commonwealth passport holders will need a travel visa. ECOWAS passport
holders sound to be
exempted.
>
> In terms of financial resources, Zurich 2020 hard logistical
organization cost was around
10$k. My
> pleasure to cover the LN Summit 2024 hard logistical cost out of my
pocket.
>
> For clarity, I'm speaking about the LN Summit which is an
invitation-only event reserved to the
> Lightning developers and researchers based on technical proof-of-work of
which the previous
edition
> happens in Adelaide 2018, Berlin 2019 (one evening event on the sport),
Zurich 2021 (covid
edition),
> Oakland 2022 and NYC 2023.
>
> This is _not_ to be confused with the Lightning conference which has
been traditionally
organized by
> Fulmo, and of which the latest _official_ edition has been Berlin 2019
iirc.
>
> As it has been suggested by nully0x, it can be interesting to organize a
co-event with Qala
Africa,
> I'm already in touch with few folks there due to FOSS things and I'll
reach out of band to them,
> though I'll take personal accountability on the LN Summit, _only, not
any other satellite
event around.
>
> Overall, I think it's wise for the 1st protocol dev event (CoreDev
included [2]) beyond the US /
> Europe / Australia / Japan geographical boundaries to plan well ahead
and start small.
>
> Cheers,
> Antoine
>
> [0] https://www.afrobitcoin.org <https://www.afrobitcoin.org>
<https://www.afrobitcoin.org
<https://www.afrobitcoin.org>>
> [1] https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/
<https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/>
<https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/
<https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/>>
> [2] https://coredev.tech/pastevents.html
<https://coredev.tech/pastevents.html>
<https://coredev.tech/pastevents.html
<https://coredev.tech/pastevents.html>>
>
> Le ven. 23 juin 2023 à 10:39, Antoine Riard <antoine.ri...@gmail.com
<mailto:antoine.ri...@gmail.com>
> <mailto:antoine.ri...@gmail.com <mailto:antoine.ri...@gmail.com>>> a
écrit :
>
> Hi lightning devs,
>
> Proposing myself to organize next year's LN Summit in Africa, with a
rough date somewhere in
> June 2024.
>
> There are a lot of reasons to hold a summit there. Africa is a
beautiful continent, there
is a
> rich cultural and historical past, a lot of fragmentation in the
financial systems of the 56
> states that can be solved with a compatible payment protocol, an
explosive demography
with a lot
> of energy to get things done, more and more Lightning developers
coming from this
continent and
> formidable perspectives to grow "full-stack" local Lightning
economies.
>
> Usually, we don't announce the organization of CoreDev or LN Summit
on open communication
> channels, as there is a goal of serenity of the engineering
conversation (and as we would
like
> to avoid being trolled by BSV fans or tabloid-style of journalism).
For this time, given the
> operational challenges can be a bit more complex (e.g visas travels,
"tropical weather"),
better
> to have this announced far ahead [0]. Operations and financial
resources should be okay,
though
> nice if we have a multi-stakeholder approach, "skin in the game"
from a bunch of folks is the
> best way to guarantee fairness and transparency of the process.
>
> If you have any objection to my personna contribution to the
organization of the LN
Summit 2024,
> thanks for letting me know during the coming weeks, either in public
or on this thread, or
> privately by mail. As usual, I'll do my best to set strong
transparency and accountability
> standards. In matters of open-source, talk is cheap, better to speak
by your actions.
>
> With any project, the best advice is always to start small, so the
first step sounds to be to
> survey all the countries with reasonable operational stability that
can fit the location
> (Algeria, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, etc). I'll look into it and share
the feedback
privately to
> the Lightning attendees (based on neutral and technical proof of
works heuristics),
somewhere at
> the end of the summer.
>
> Setted up a dedicated communication endpoint for this:
lnsummit2...@ariard.me
<mailto:lnsummit2...@ariard.me>
> <mailto:lnsummit2...@ariard.me <mailto:lnsummit2...@ariard.me>>
>
> If you're a LN dev, don't hesitate to reach out if you wanna to be
part of the organization,
> this is a good opportunity to transfer knowledge between generations
of contributors.
>
> Cheers,
> Antoine
>
> [0] Already co-organized the CoreDev event in Zurich back in 2021 so
I do have already the
> operational templates.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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