I voted yes today to Purple’s Prop 54 to fund and support Farcon and the Farcon Hackathon. There were quite a number of questions and concerns being voiced in the Purple channel and group chat, so I thought I’d share my thoughts if it helps anyone else decide.
First off — events like Farcon are some of the most impactful and strategic events for building a community of builders, users, and fans. I saw this firsthand when we built our Connections user conference at ExactTarget and with Dreamforce (100k+ attendees) when I was at Salesforce. I believe Farcon is going to be the next Dreamforce, WWDC, or Google I/O, but built around a permissionless, decentralized protocol. How cool is that?
The value and ROI on supporting this is tremendous. If all Purple used its treasury on was retroactive Prop House rounds and funding Farcon every year, I’d be very content (though I have much larger aspirations for what we can accomplish). That’s why spending 1/3 of the treasury doesn’t bother me.
Second — let’s talk about the budget. Yes, the proposal could/should have had more details and a rough line-item budget for how the funds will be used. I think it helps tremendously for visibility and getting folks onboard. Personally, I would have been more likely to vote for it if there was absolutely zero budget, though. 10E to sponsor Farcon and help put it on? I’d vote for that all day.
I’ve personally managed event budgets in the multiple six figures, and the budget ted shared on Farcaster is very frugal on all fronts. You can tell they are not trying to waste this money while making the event as valuable as possible. Events in general (especially in a major city like LA) are EXPENSIVE. For comparison, this is well below any sponsorship level at a major conference like Consensus, Mainnet, ETH Denver, Bitcoin Miami, etc. Hosting just a simple happy hour for 200+ people can be $15-20k in most places.
This is barely scratching the surface of what it takes to put together a conference like this. They’ve been incredibly transparent in the conference planning and have shared more than any other conference organizer ever would with a sponsor.
This team is also known, OG Farcasters and Purple holders. They’ve been talking about this sponsorship and proposal for a while. They’re just moving very fast, trying to get things done and probably didn’t think a line-item budget was necessary for people to get behind it — it’s clear they’re not trying to rug the treasury.
Third — urgency here is incredibly important. The organizing team is probably under immense time constraints right now. If anything, this proposal is cutting it too close to the event itself and they needed this prop to close weeks ago. I wish we could have voted on the proposal a couple of months ago, but we’re here now.
It takes months (and years sometimes) to put together a conference, and the organizers need upfront funds to book venues, make deposits, and know they aren’t on the hook personally for thousands in liabilities. I’m sure the lack of support, asking for edits and resubmissions, etc. is impeding a great deal on their planning. That’s why I think it’s important to answer any questions in the /purple channel or with @ted and @mcbain directly over the next 48 hours and get this passed asap.
I’m choosing to assume positive intent and support builders doing superhuman things to expand and further the Farcaster ecosystem. Hopefully, this helps other voters in thinking about their decision!
