I lost track of which day this is, but it surely is a weekday. Although, it's a public holiday here in Germany. Something about Jesus going to heaven, or, if you are a guy who likes to drink in public, it's "Father's Day."
Not that I get to join any of the customary festivities; what's worse, I'm also missing Nagano conducting Wagners' Valkyrie in my city.
All that because I'm once again sitting in an airport omw to a conference.
I used to find airports exciting. Now, I'm just trying to avoid them as much as possible.
Last year, I flew too much, and I came to dislike them. That's a very first-world problem.
I know.
In Peter Bichsels' book about boredom, the first short story concerns airports. He opens by finding them rather dull, and despite not having any concrete improvement suggestions, he thinks that the worst thing is that we are seemingly never done with flying.
That's how I feel.
In crypto, it seems we're also never done with it.
We fly across the world to random locations to meet the same people over and over. At times, I find this hardly justifiable. And it's not like these conferences or hackathons are spread equally across the world either, in terms of making it easily accessible for anyone.
I recall that when the ETH Hackathon schedule was announced, there was some outrage about the complete lack of so-called "third-world" countries, which happen to be home to a majority of the world's population, especially the young.
Ironically, we might even have seen more of the world than our own immediate surroundings.
If the prime place the important connections happen is conferences, something is wrong big time in an industry priding itself on decentralization and other noble principles. Fortunately, I've seen platforms like Farcaster make it easier to connect with like-minded peers.
Anyway, back to airports.
The place you go to to leave.
The place where drinking at any time is permissible.
The place where water costs $5.
Airports are sterile. I've yet to encounter one that'd invite staying. I guess that isn't their point. You're supposed to leave as uninspiring as it gets.
It's a bad place to say a potential goodbye forever (you never know what happens in life).
Bad place to cry.
I'd much prefer a train station to kiss a lover goodbye (not that I have one)
Especially the type Monet was obsessed with, La Gare Saint-Lazare.

Peter Bichsel concludes that airports are places for people who find everything obvious, who order Whiskey even though they don't really want it, and who see no difference between arrival and departure. They are places for people who believe everyone to be a hopeless novice, a place for people who have no questions.
"Airports are for Connaisseurs, places of furbished boredom."
In my private life, I'm committed to not flying anywhere this year.
Sure, there's a whole world, but there's also a huge country I live in. I've barely seen a third off despite living in its North, Far South, and now East.
Plus, train journeys are much more my pace. Especially if you have no fixed time to arrive anywhere.
There's some spontaneity in that.
Maybe, not everything going to plan, too is a great plan for my holidays.
fwiw I don’t think the loudest voices scrambling to claim next Farcon is best for the community I appreciate the recent crew, but I DON’T abdicate my role in making Farcon work lol As a guy who prepaid $8K for a venue when nobody wanted to come, we’re pushing a lot of unnecessary risk + work to new organizers
@grin and I have never been able to “make” anyone do anything here But post Farcon 1, we saw exactly how many people wanted to take our community win and exploit it for their own gain By all means, please keep discussing bc we need it, but personally I’m not gonna support just anything that calls itself Farcon
Leadership is about managing transitions. In a generally functional organization, it’s often the ONLY time when you actually need someone to coordinate + focus energy. To the extent it ends up valuable to Farcasters, we’re still here to help 🫡
It’s a good time to reread this https://grin.io/farcon-formula
a good read. would love to hear more from @grin about the organizer v. attendee balance
Glad to hear I wasn’t the only one who learned that view on what leadership is (or focuses on)
yea brother 🫡
8k 👀 For me: farcon on the beach
sounds lovely
TY. I think the move by Farcon 2 folks to release any claim to it is noble and well intentioned, but also naive. We're post-permissionless, most people here were not invited by Dan. There are psychopaths are among us, and they will gladly take whatever we hand to them.
“Psychopaths among us” sounds like a killer metal album name. Also yes to all of that.
I would look under the hood at what /pizzadao is doing and take the learnings from that as well as some of the same from /nouns there is a lot of data and a ton of people globally that are doing similar things already and it would be a huge menefit to learn from them
Trade offer: I'll take over Farcon 3 off all your hard work, grow it too big and spammy, claim it as my own success and in return I'll give you a DAO token.
compelling offer 🤔🤔🤔
I was thinking this + Farcaster will be 10x bigger next year and none of the people talking about '25 seem to be planning for that.
there is def a lot to figure out here
is anyone actually planning for anything? thought people were just doing memes at this point
how do you feel about this take? paragraph.xyz/@cryptonao/airports should Farcon be a Mecca?
while i won't put words in their mouth, i can agree w parts (especially the feelings), but ultimately we're bags of meat that walk and we perceive things differently when irl - and that's why togetherness rituals matter in the first place
We just discussed it a bit on recap show (recording soon). Big thing is: do potential organizers know what they are getting into from a time & money perspective? It’s a big undertaking and you’re starting at 0.
How do you think we should decide who organizes the next farcon?
a significant subset of web3 culture has always been heavy on attention-economy popularity-contest mechanics, especially when it goes IRL. the trend has hit farcaster culture pretty hard as well. imho the best parts of web3 culture are opposite though: small meetups, indy builders, 1:1 dms, accts *under* 400 follows.
yea there’s a better balance to be struck here for sure
In the latest blog, @naomiii shares thoughts on the frequent travels in crypto and the seeming inescapability of airports. Pushes for more accessible conferences globally and vouches for alternatives like Farcaster. Promises personal commitment to grounded travel for a year.