# Collective, Non-Profit. Private | afri | Web3Privacy Now Berlin Meetup 2024 - Channel: [Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress](https://streameth.org/ethereum-cypherpunk-congress) - Date: 2024-10-07 - Duration: 24:46 - Topics: Education - Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-NW6ViGipnT8 - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW6ViGipnT8 ## Description Collective, Non-Profit. Private | afri | W3PN Berlin Meetup Afri x Department of Decentralization, ETHBerlin, Protocol Berg https://q9f.cc https://x.com/q9fcc Support - Donate: https://docs.web3privacy.info/donate/ - Become a member: https://web3privacy.info/membership/ - Contribute: https://docs.web3privacy.info/contributors/ Explore http://web3privacy.info http://github.com/web3privacy/ http://docs.web3privacy.info ## Transcript thank you thank you for this warm welcome um Collective nonprofit private is uh really cumbersome title I show for this talk but before I start I wanted to ask does any is anyone familiar with the Department of decentralization or with events like East Berlin that we are organizing um the next event we in is in actually two days so I did the slides like 30 minutes ago so if you lack any context um feel free to interrupt me um but that's probably all context you need um organizing large scale public events the hard way I'm afy I'm with the Department of decentralization for many years now um if you also want to look like a clown you can go on the East Berlin website and upload your PV pfp uh we have a beautiful uh pfp generator there you can also upload your dock or your favorite meme it's actually a lot of fun playing around so in case um you want to get distracted go ahead [Music] um the I'm going to talk about how we are operating the department of decentralization is a collective and um the next 20 minutes I want to really take the time to um frame a little bit how how we work what we do and why we do it and I think it's really important because if you organize events for many years in the space and uh if you do this regularly and um you always have a kind of competition with other cities with other events and but at some point people come to your events with certain expectations and they don't necessarily see from the outside that what we do is actually pretty different from what others do and um today I want to just take the next uh 15 to 20 minutes to uh talk about um what we do and how this is different as I said to Department of decentralization we are loose Collective um we are uh we have no real structured way of organizing we have an open uh get together here actually at cbas once a month so everyone can come and kind of contribute right now we are around 23 people more or less from Berlin we also have a legal entity in Germany that is Tex exemp by German law which is really helpful especially if you operate as a nonprofit and as I said we mainly organize events but we also have strong sections that are involved with blockchain art um or maintaining decentralized infrastructure um just to make sure we are all on the same page um all the events that we organize are free free s and free lemonade we don't sell any tickets we um um everything you get from our events is basically free it's free to attend it's free to use and um free to collaborate and on top of that we also um do not try to invite you to buy something Al we are not selling anything we're not chilling anything or trying to we also try to drastically reduce the amount of um something I I really don't like about many events in the repb spe space is all the the plastic trash you get from uh sponsors and this is you know like a lot of things going to waste what you as an attend usually don't want to and there's a lot of things that we are trying to do a bit differently during our events um but I'm just going to um frame this here so you know that what I'm talking about next makes sense this is actually a photo of our last East Berlin two years ago with Chelsea sorry Chelsea Manning um on a fireside chat at East Berlin 3 so our events are free and we are not trying to say or anything there must be like a caveat so um maybe we are selling your data actually we don't we um really couldn't care less about attendee data um there's really if you organize an events there's really no need for data unless you run a business and you want to justify in front of investors that you have a growing user base or you need to scale to sheer Limitless uh um numbers or if you I don't know just don't know sell the data on a darket that's a vb3 scam Emil list or something that um we don't do that obviously and um why I'm saying this is because this is apparently not the normal not not even in web three space and um we do this so radically to a degree that I can't even tell you who was in attended two years ago to one of our events we just don't have this data point and we don't even have a news data or anything you know every every year we basically start from scratch building a new user braase um that said there's always data you know whatever you do there's always data you always leave a trace um this is our privacy policy um it's hard to read but I marked some sections in uh in different colors red is basically what what we collect and what what we use and green is basically your right according to German or european laws and um just to quote from our privacy policy um your email address that's all we need um there's really no need if you organize an event to collect anything like literally anything anything about attend data there's no need never reason why would you need full name or even a real name or why would you need a location or you name it you know like all we need I mean email address is we need something to communicate give information for the attendance you know and um that's part of our privacy policy and I think we are kind of proud that that we got all this data we have about our attendees reduced down to like this one line of the email address that we need so that said um I want to make a case for East Berlin as event that's fairly different from other events and um there is before we even start organizing an event then we we we think about what what is our actual goal here and um we try to um I mean most of us come from from the open source Community from thec decentralization community and we come here with a very strong vision and we have often strong opinions about how the space should be shaped what the values are and so on and especially organizing heatons is uh a good entry point for many people that come young people coming from University or people coming from other ecosystems to get get started in web 3 and we always try to um align our attendees with with is uh a strong Vision not you know it's not only about um creating the next token toilet or making magic internet money but it's there's so much more to this technology and what we do or what we have done in the past is writing uh a new Manifesto for every event we organize and um it's absolutely worse a read I I thought about quoting some parts of it but it's just it's just too long so maybe if you have time or want to get distracted read our Manifesto on East berlin. org um but one thing I want to highlight is um defining a vision and Mission is important for these events but also what we did over the past years is uh to Define values um what what should you work on or what should you consider if you hack on a project at East Berlin so um to further map out this Vision that we have for this event um we we also try to Define key attributes that give you like sorry that give you like some orientation to navigate like a Heaton especially if you have not done this before we Define these attributes let me just read them out um we encourage hackers to focus on the following attributes private there's no need for your name data or ID usable it has to be accessible and user friendly direct it does not ask for permission subversive it transformed established orders and structures of power social it empowers people that makes a difference in somebody's life clandestine it will not comply independent it will not rely on governments corporates or investors impactful it intends to make a difference secure it does not put anyone at risk Libra it will be free both as in free speech and free lemonade and I'm I'm reading them out because I really believe these values are really important especially or if you organize Heaton and it really helps to not only ground the community to to certain soil but also to help them to navigate such an event and I think it's very important going forward for the entire Community um and the ecosystem to have more events like this with more strong or strictly defined vision and values but there's more to that and um that's also something um I'm really happy to talk about today is uh you have a vision maybe Define some values but um do you stop there so what we do is we also try to really bring uh everyone's attending our events to um get fed or yeah get dog fed the technology we are using you know we we don't run a Discord to manage our community because we really want we want fully Federated uh encrypted and open source communication St right we could couldn't do this with telegram or Discord we just don't want this and we don't use this till today uh if you coordinate as a collective you need to sometimes meet virtually so we use uh encrypted peer-to-peer video conferences with with jitsy I mean it's not fully peer-to-peer but uh this is fully uh encrypted and open source and we uh use um many other open source tools and my entire point being uh just to tell you this is absolutely possible to do this and it's also absolutely worthwhile to try this and um just um the most important Cornerstone as said Matrix we we host our own Matrix uh uh server so we have full control over our entire Communications infrastructure um we we have our all our users all our chat rooms and Matrix spaces all on our own server and this in addition is synchron uh Federated with with the entire Matrix Network this is really really important point you know if you if you use a Discord server you don't have this control and and you even have to sell your users basically to to a third party company or like make them sign up for these services this is something we absolutely don't want uh internally we uh coordinate through theum Foundation jitsy servers or really glad they host one um but there are others I mean once you open the scan of Open Source warms there are like many different options um for us as jitsy currently so thank youum foundation for letting us use this and something that is really a Cornerstone of uh our um collaboration is document management uh with scrip pad you can sell force it it's fully encrypted open source and uh seamlessly integrates with only office which is um like a in browser document suit and this has been very helpful and we have been organizing events on this for at least two years now and the list goes on I mean um how much time do I have um we we use free Scout for emails have desk pre- talks pre- ticks for tickets speakers coordination schedule uh we have a ghost block uh feel free to to read it it's on block. dod. also NGO uh also s hosted and uh sometimes we even build our own custom open source software more on that later so we Define a vision for our attendees we dock feed the entire open source Tech stack what else can we do this year yes this year we decided to go one step further and um try to uh boost open source development by incentivizing hackers at our events to actually make meaningful contributions to open source software to existing open source software and we uh call this The Meta award if you decide to hack for 48 hours on something that improves our technology stack or like one of the software projects that I just listed or even others or add features to to our stack or even create something new we just created this new category to um encourage people to um build open source or contribute to open source and I think this is a very important Cornerstone um again because this is something that is not necessarily normal and um it's still adds a lot of value to our ecosystem my opinion so what what what whatever you call it again the department of self hosting yeah um there are boundaries to what you can do pragmatically um if you run your own Collective if you have do an actual event with hundreds or thousands of attendees at the end of the day it needs to work and um we started in 2018 with the first East Berlin and we we tried to get um we we maintained like peer-to-peer Communications on statos like a really uh interesting um peer-to-peer communication protocol we had live streaming on live pier and not necessarily saying this is a bad thing but it comes with um a lot of struggles and at some point if you really want to deliver a good event you need to sometimes compromise and for us or for me personally it it turned out the The Sweet Spot is sfe hosting um open source software so if the software is uh fully open source fully encrypted and even if it can Federate even better um so most of the techn we use is uh rather self hosted than fully decentralized as I said um it comes with challenges um if I didn't mention this before um I do this now we spend all our free time on this and um sometimes even our own money it's not our job to do this um most of us have a full-time job and um yeah I wrote on a side because sometimes especially close to the bigger events we organize uh it feels like your main job is what you do on the side right um but why this is challenging for many also contributors inside our Collective is that you often if you have like a job even if you work in web 3 you are like often forced to sign up for a Google business account you need to I don't know create databases a notion or anything like this and this is um it comes with this sweet convenience of it works you know even though I personally don't like these services but often if you work in a professional context just does a job basically and you get used to it and then you get out of work and in the evening you try to organize an event and then someone in the collector suggest to use I don't know Matrix or CP pad you know and then um it is a bit challenging sometimes especially as open source software sometimes has drawbacks when it comes to user experience maybe it's sometimes it's buggy doesn't have to be I'm actually quite uh um happy about our Co St right now but it it always comes with some mainly usability drawback sometimes a feature is missing and then you have to figure it out and this is not not something you like to do especially if you have like a full-time job on the side and um the other contrast on the external side is that um this is also not normal for events in web 3 and this is um something I'm actually surprised about because what does web3 or or the decentralized community stand for and um I'm surprised how many con conferences heatons and other events in the space are actually for profit do they have to be I don't know and um in the worst case is that some even like collect your data to to pass it on to sell it and um this puts us in a position where we often have to justify what we do and how we do it and um we have to explain that over and over again so what's the point we are different but uh we don't want to be um actually I think what what we do should be the standard as especially for community events and especially in a in a community with such a strong vision as web 3 and um my message today is um consider like just like um isper not that in in in the Czech Republic or like web web privacy now movement you know start your own local Collective um host your Federated Community um organize your free events because it's absolutely possible and that's something we are trying to show with events that we are organizing like East Berlin it's um uh it's not only fun to organize this but it's also possible to be different you know self don't rely on anyone's server encrypt don't put anyone at risk Federate connect with other [Music] communities and with that I would like to thank um all these beautiful people of the Department of decentralization St uh also you for coming and listening to this talk and um if you haven't done so please check out one of our websites or events come to our events and with that I open I don't know do we have questions do I have question no yes May thank you check you want press the red button press the red button test test test um uh anyone questions um here we go I've got a question sorry I've actually also lost my voice very conveniently um I've got a question about how you do funding when you don't do any um you know like marketing activities that other other interested parties would usually be interested in when they sponsor an event like this uh thank you it's a good question there actually hidden slide um um so running a nonprofit if it's in web spere or not it's not something we invented so this is like a very old thing if it's if it's I don't know campaigning for the politics or whatever you do there are like so many different um ways to raise uh funds um and it's there there's so many different ways it could be donations U retroactive funding grants from foundations and because you probably ask how we specifically are funded um we do all of this except we don't have any members because we don't want to store their data um but we used to run events in the past through sponsorship models um currently we are mainly funded through donations retroactive funding and um grants from foundations which puts us in a kind little bit more privileged spot because we don't have to go with everything that comes with sponsorships but that's basically what um what what you can do the last one oh perfect perfect okay then one more um yeah anyways we're waiting for FMA how did you invent the name and when DOD I mean it is um it should sound official you know it's like uh I mean I I didn't invent it it's someone uh from our Collective I don't even recall I don't know if anyone in the room knows who came up with this but um it should be uh official the fun fun fact about the story is we try to register this as like a legal entity and they refused because it sounded too official um so yeah Hey so uh my question is on the lines of authentication like for example you use email is the only thing you need what have you tried or what are the assessments and protocols like Noster or so which I haven't actually gotten into testing but like decentralized blockchain what's the question actually I mean uh we we use whatever works right uh we we currently um have a collaboration with um Zupas to um create pcds for all attendees The Next Step could be using Zas to check in authenticate so you basically don't even need need their email address anymore I mean someone would need to go over this uh uh step to um create this um account on Zas but as uh having a zero knowledge proof to prove that you are actually an attendee or even a judge or any other role sorry Mo that's absolutely possible and um we are very close to uh implementing this too you can breef out maybe two minutes let's do one more oh come on uh the last one with everything being so decentralized how do you do governance like when is something the department of decentralization says official and how do you decide when you raise funds how you spend them like what what's the yeah how do you do this kind of decision- making um decision- making is rough consensus so so um everyone should kind of agree and no one should have like a strong objection no microphone no question I mean um the this is this is actually a very open-ended question because this is not something that's easily be solved and uh we don't vote on things you know internally and we also try not to be have have one person responsible for everything and trying to find a middle ground somewhere that is not voting or dictatorship um it's something that's also very common in protocol governance or open source governance is just having rough consensus and this is also try something we try to implement oh thanks Round of Applause [Applause]