all right everyone thank you so much for
coming thank you for being here and
welcome to this session on popup cities
my name is tore we have an amazing set
of uh folks here up on stage and we want
to make this a very interactive session
so um we'll be passing around the mic
for some uh feedback from the folks here
if you're tuning in on the live stream
welcome as well it's so wonderful to
have you so just a quick um overview of
the agenda for today I'm going to start
with a little bit of context on the
history of social Gatherings which will
ground Us in the the the context and the
lineage of what's Happening here we'll
talk a little bit about zalu we'll share
some fun stories and then we'll get into
the relevance of this movement for
crypto and crypto adoption then we'll
talk about the design space for popups
and then some of the challenges and
opportunities but I'd love to start just
so you know who's up here with just a
very quick set of intros I'll kick off
myself my name is teore I'm one of the
co-founders of edge city um my
background is in uh building startups
which I did for about 8 years in New
York and then I was a partner at a VC
fund for 2 years I was lucky enough to
go to zalu and had a very kind of
personally meaningful experience which
pilled me on this concept
and pretty much from that point decided
to do this fulltime so that's
me Nicole hey um I'm Nicole I'm
currently working on zoo Thailand but
before this I helped start Zulu um and
yeah that's how I met everyone
here hi I'm Janine ler um I'm one of the
co-founders of age City and I helped
with getting zuu off the ground so got
really excited about this movement last
year um have been obsessed with
communities and what can happen with
social dynamics um and how we can
actually like progress the future in
some way because of
it hey uh yeah great to see everyone uh
my name's DC Posh and I'm a co-founder
of Dao uh daop pay and uh it actually
Dao started at a POA Village started
like came out of uh zalu which was an
amazing experience uh and and I I helped
build the vzer first prototype of of zup
pass um we'll talk about that in a bit
and yeah great glad to be here yeah
awesome so we have quite a range of
perspectives here uh from some of the
folks who really started this movement
to uh DC who's been one of the the
quickest uh Tech development stories to
come out of the space the space is only
a year and a half old which is an
interesting bit of uh context to have so
yeah that's that's
um that's that's that there so okay I
think a really good place to start here
will be to talk about the lineage and
the history of this movement and the
point that I really want to come across
here is that humans and human societies
have had a long history of coming
together to talk about new ideas about
how Society should be structured humans
have a lot of uh creativity and
Collective agency in this process of
shaping society and it often looks like
taking some space away from mainstream
Society to gather in a space that will
allow for discussions about new ideas
that can then spread and permeate
through the rest of
society these movements have through
history been critical and very important
in incubating new ideas and new
technology and I think this gives us a
bit of an idea about what is actually
happening with pop-up cities my personal
assertion is that pop-up cities are a
new surface area for this type of
experimentation especially for a lot of
the ideas that we're developing in the
crypto space to find actual meaningful
ground for tangible in real life
experimentation a lot of the things
we're doing are quite heady they're
quite um abstract and so what we've seen
already in the last couple of years is
that it's a very it's it's kind of
fertile ground for um for tangible
applications for how to live how to
build new tech and how to ultimately
improve Society so I I I went deep down
this Rabbit Hole I originally had maybe
20 different examples I picked five just
to give us a little bit of a sense um
for what's happening here so the first
one is The Enlightenment salons in 17th
and 18th century France these were
mostly in Paris they were social
Gatherings they were often hosted by
mostly hosted by women and they were
kind of a safe space for new ideas about
philosophy politics and science this was
you know France at the time was a
monarchy but it was the the general
prevailing sense of the Enlightenment
was is there actually a new way to
structure Society right now that feels a
little trivial maybe kind of obvious to
us but at the time it was really uh very
I mean literally revolutionary to even
be talking about ideas of moving beyond
a
monarchy and the I mean the impact of
these environments was was huge right
they spread ideas uh from the
enlightenment kind of the
classical uh ideas we think of about
liberalism like individual liberty uh
Freedom individual rights human rights
and this is kind of the the birthplace
of modern democracy um and obviously if
you study the history of the French
Revolution you see that this was
critical in making France a uh
constitutional monarchy for a brief
moment and then obviously um a full
Republic so that's kind of one one
example that we can hearken back to
another one that's slightly less well
known but I think is potentially even
closer to what's Happening Here is
What's called the chiaka movement so
this started in late 19th century us in
a place called chiaka in Upstate New
York but it very quickly spread
throughout the country so I think it's
actually a really cool model for What's
Happening Here essentially it was um a
adult and kind of family education
movement so every summer in this town
they would bring uh University
professors they would bring folks and
families to come together and and teach
each other it was kind of like a long
unconference that happened over the
course of once two months um and this
and and it had folks like Henry Ford
who's pictured here and a bunch of the
other kind of big innovators of the time
who would come and spend their Summers
there and this eventually spread around
the country so pretty much every city in
the US had a chataka in the summer some
of them happen throughout the year and
it actually kind of approximates very
closely what's happening with things
like Zulu things like Edge City Zoo
Thailand where we have these one to two
month temporary Gatherings that are then
now starting to pick up steam again um
so yeah it's just a really cool example
of a small idea that became a national
movement the next one is Black Mountain
College which was a a experiment Al
College it was a reaction to kind of the
industrial education movement um in the
early 20th century it had a lot of
interesting folks like John Cage uh
Buckminster Fuller actually invented the
geodesic dome while he was at Black
Mountain College um it was the center of
American avanguard art and poetry so it
influenced a lot of American culture um
but again it was this it was uh it was a
permanent place but for most people
their experience of it was that they
would go there for once or two months
they would go deep on some ideas they
would collaborate with other folks who
were there and out of that came a lot of
interesting philosophy art um technology
like uh like Buckman's work that's
actually him pictured here um it's a
little bit pixelated on the screen but
uh yeah just really interesting history
it's even less than just 100 years
ago orille so orille is an interesting
example in India it's actually a
permanent New Town that's still going um
and it was created as an attempt to uh
to figure out a place focused on human
unity and sustainable living and uh
especially human flourishing there are
people that live there fulltime but
again for a lot of people their
experience is ephemeral so they come for
a month or two they stay there they
learn they develop ideas um at the time
this kind of came out of the' 60s you
know uh cultural revolution happening in
the US so uh the hippie movement a lot
of talk about peace and Harmony
obviously the Vietnam War was happening
at the time um it's it's it's big
there's you know 3,000 people but uh
they've I think they've had over 100,000
in terms of like folks that have been
there um and it's a really interesting
experiment that shows that these things
can have a lot of longevity over time
and one oh yeah so the last one here is
the Santa Fe Institute which is a little
bit of a more contemporary example but I
think gives a really good sense of
what's possible here when people come
together around a particular concept of
study so SFI is um focused on the idea
of complexity science it was started by
folks that were part of the Manhattan
Project and um yeah it's a space for
people to to tackle complex problems
it's a very multidisiplinary research
space which I think is very interesting
they actually incubate a new way of
bringing together scientists and tech
people and thinkers from a variety of
different fields and finding ways to
kind of uh create collaboration points
between them um huge impact again it has
influenced a lot of scientific thinking
in modern times a lots of mathematics
economics biology and and especially
computer science and so uh yeah and
there is one honorable mention which is
Burning Man um I I wanted to include
this because I think when people think
of pop-up cities this is probably the
first thing that people think of it's
It's a literal popup City for you know
10 months of the year there's nothing
but desert in this place and then um
people start building and for a week
there are close to 100,000 people there
um it has had a huge cultural impact it
has spawned a really a global movement
of burns there are now Burns in most uh
regions around the world it's obviously
quite radical in the experience that
people have it's it's quite different
from people's traditional Lifestyles I
think so I've I've been going for a long
time I do think it's a very interesting
experiment but I do want to call out
that I think it's ultimately very
different to what we're trying to do and
I think that's important to note because
again it's like a
um it's it's an association that people
have and that they come to quite easily
but I see the burn as a a chance for
people to very momentarily kind of LARP
or um yeah like roll play a completely
different lifestyle to the one that they
currently live whereas I think the thing
we're trying to do with popup cities and
obviously there's there's infinite
variety of what people will do with this
format but um um it's much more
approximating what does what could life
actually look like if it was
thoughtfully designed um yeah so that's
that's that and the the question is so
where do we go from here we you know our
generation has a whole set of new
problems some of these old institutions
or movements were the the answer to a
prior set of problems we have our own
there's a lot going on I I don't need to
tell you um but we also have new tools
there are things that have been
developed in the last couple of decades
that have reached maturity that are now
usable um obvious examples internet Ai
and and ultimately blockchains which we
believe are very kind of foundational
tool for this kind of experimentation
we'll get into some of that later there
are new experiments starting to happen
there's new ideas like the network State
there's Zulu there's Edge City Zoo
Thailand and so I I really see these
pop-up cities is a way to prototype new
Solutions like I've been saying and each
experiment kind of brings us closer and
closer to what a uh a resilient
inclusive and flourishing Community
could look like um yeah so that's that's
my little bit great yeah thank you
awesome that was amazing um and I think
this is like something so important for
us to do generally is like look at
history of movements and so much of them
have been pretty low Tech and by the way
if you guys want to come over feel free
to um so much of them have been the sort
of lower Tech type environments and
really focused on just how do we get
people together and I think right now
we've got this very interesting
opportunity with like technology has
progressed substantially and can
actually benefit from and connect to a
lot of these sort of low take
environments to bring like low take and
high together in some magical way that
makes some of these movements like
actually longlasting or spread and
proliferate in ways that technology is
able to help with um that didn't happen
previously
so this section oh we're going to have
to do a little exit because I did a did
a whole update of these um yeah
refresh this section we're going to try
and make a little bit more interactive
with all of you um we'll go through a
little bit of the history of zulu I
think Nicole and I haven't really like
sat and spoke to a lot of people about
what that all looked like and and why
and how we were doing things so firstly
before we sort of get to that one thing
that you know I wanted to profile is
this was a really great slide that
someone put together um Bob Haywood had
put together at uh Edge that Lana this
year which was just last month and he
sort of was like okay what am I seeing
you know these popup where are they
fitting in the stack and this this idea
of sort of these poet Villages being
between you know we've got hours of time
together few days together 5 to 10 days
together and that the 30day onward Mark
or at least you know a month maybe it's
2 months we don't quite know that right
amount it's like it really is where that
like IRL community
and culture actually start to form so
there's something interesting you know
when you look at the ethereum industry
where if you pack up all of the
different crypto conferences that we all
attend we're starting to get to that
amount of time and there's like a real
culture that has developed as part of
ethereum and this what we're almost
trying to do in these popet Villages is
like can we speedrun culture building
and what does that actually look like
and how do we how do you spend this you
know period of 30 to 60 days together
and really develop something different
culturally and something that I think we
can go through as a group is just how
each of these popups in a way are
creating their own culture that is
slightly different and unique um in in
some
capacity the other was is just kind of
where vitalic ended up really spending
his time thinking was like we've seen
the dates and the meetups and the
conferences and like that structure
we've iterated on a lot um but then
universities and cities and towns and
countries like those are also like very
ingrained in a specific way and this was
a um a 2 by two that I mean a graph that
biology had originally put together and
vitalic really kind of looked at this
and was like wait a minute there's sort
of this open Gap and we should maybe
just be experimenting there so a large
part of this was just like cool that's a
space for
experimentation um and that's where that
kind of
started and sort of the the next piece
is like why like why even begin to start
experimenting in that space one it's
like this dissonance with governments
like a lot of people aren't necessarily
resonating with the countries that they
living in the network State movement
sort of got that kicked off in in a in a
major way along with many other things
that were happening
um just work environments are actually
pretty stale like when you actually
start to think about just corporate work
environments there was sort of this open
question that Co really put in the air
of like okay people working remotely
what does this look like um as well as a
shift from closed Source type company
environments to more open-source
ecosystems and how do you actually build
spaces for these open- Source ecosystems
versus a company that's it's a very
clear box let's all go into this space
and and work in this
office the other pieces that like we've
you know seen both ourselves experiment
with at age city and what we
experimented with at Zulu and some
others are working around it's just like
The Chronic Health disease crisis is
pretty real um across the world in like
healthy living environments has not
necessarily been a focus but it has
become a real big
issue and then when you actually look at
education it has just gotten
progressively more expensive over the
years and not necessarily solved more
problems or made people smarter and
itate in an interesting way um and
lastly just like innovation in general
is is expensive
but those were sort of like starts of
some of the why um to stop building SIDS
experiment and then we got to where it
all started so do you want to go through
a little bit of the
beginning yeah so when zzu came about um
I can say it from like my perspective of
how I got involved um I ran into vitalic
at a little me Hacker House and there
were like 200 people around him but no
one was was talking to him so I walked
up and I was like hey I read your recent
blog on crypto cities um and we had a
little bit of a discussion and I invited
him to a hacker house that I was hosting
to which he surprisingly came um and
then there we talked rifted on
everything from like ethereum related
like account abstraction things to what
his personal life was going um to like
how can we potentially do a crypto City
so it's was actually last Devcon in
Bogata where we sat down and he finally
asked me like for 200 do you want to do
an experiment that's 200 people for 2
months um so like the rationale there
was there's so much Theory going around
why don't we just try and do something
in practice um and that was a very
casual start and from there we pulled in
a lot of different contributors um Milos
who represented Montenegro locally and
helped us connect to for example the
Prime Minister who is a very young world
leader I think the youngest at 35 at the
time and had a background in crypto um
so that's kind of why we chose
Montenegro for the first experiment we
thought we would get like a lot of Visa
support um and it was also a place where
we happened to have a venue ready to go
and we planned the whole thing in two
months so it was not perfect by any
means but Scrappy and a fun way um and
then from there we brought on Vincent
who is like a very curious guy so he
knew a lot of people in biotech of which
vitalic was very interested and he
helped be an inviter and he brought in
Janine and Lawrence and they also helped
contribute in like well Janine ended up
doing a lot of things operationally um
but that's sort of like the beginning of
the core team um so the core team helped
drive this experiment to start but I
think the experiment itself is very
co-created by a lot of different people
so we had Tech teams um we'll talk about
about this a little bit more later but
xerx Park helped start zup pass which is
a really interesting Tech identity
experiment um and then Alia and psse
team helped start the z.c permissionless
website so that became a core basis for
how we did permissionless culture um and
yeah a lot of other teams helped build
this experiment together
so when we look at some of kind of like
the original thinking a piece of it was
like okay can we make this cheaper than
living in sort of a San Francisco or New
York like what does it actually look
like to build a place that is awesome in
some capacity with like intellectual
riger as well as interesting people cuz
like ultimately at the end of the day we
all just want to be around interesting
people um and the there was a sense of
like okay can we experiment that area so
we decreased the price of um and had
some subsidy to make sure that that was
the case we also were like wow 8 weeks
long time what do we do with this um and
ultimately decided to sort of like bring
in all of these different contributors
that Nicole was mentioning to help
structure different weeks throughout the
time that we were together one learning
that we had from that is weeks are it's
a great way to bring people in that are
kind of interested in popups generally
but the longevity of some of that
learning then sort of like dissipates
once that sort of like concentrated week
of programming is gone so figuring out
how we can do like extensive learning in
some capacity has been something we've
iterated on this year but this was kind
of the original start and we just
brought so many different people in um
and this was so valuable because it
brought in many different leaders and it
made sort of how we started suu not
about a team that did at all but about
how do we Empower many leaders in this
community to go and do other things
themselves to build and contribute and
think about like what they would
structure and how they would structure
it so there's kind of this tension that
exists now that's interesting around how
much do you let different groups as we
learn and figure out like oh this type
of program worked or that type of
program worked how much do you create
structure around that versus allow
people to come in and still build their
own unique programming that like
contributes to the culture of the space
and and the people that bring it
in this is just a early um stage like
this was the website to begin with and
sort of a start of like there's
different projects and there's different
things that we're working on and there's
different ways that you can add had
sessions to the calendar and this has
been iterated on a ton so everyone in
this room who's like who here is
interested in building like pop-up City
Tech or kind of social technology in
some
capacity there is so much room for
experimentation there and there is so
much room to build um this was the start
last year and now we've got things like
social layer and everything that
simplify is doing and stuff that um
cursive is doing and stuff that lemonade
is doing and the all these different
projects that are now trying to build
and I think it's a very interesting
space that is going to have a lot more
people operating popup Villages and
pop-up cities around the world and like
if we can actually just get a lot of
technology that helps with that
coordination it would be super
interesting should we talk about tech
yeah a story so with that let's get the
story of zupa starting yeah sure oh man
um so
my okay all right
um uh my my story with uh with zalu
started just a bit after um what Nicole
and Janine were just talking about and
it was through uh some of my friends at
zerox Park I was talking to them
about uh this event so I heard about it
through them and then I was you know
immediately interested okay this sounds
like something out of Neil Stevenson
right this is a lot of like you know
ethereum core I was very fascinated with
ethereum at that time I was working on a
like you know a Bitcoin light client
that runs on ethereum so I was like uh
something I've been building
and a lot of people in you know core R&D
and people who are digital Nomads and
they're moving to this like you know
post Yugoslav micro state for two months
like this is an incredible thing to be
happening and um then you know a bit
into
this I I also realized that that uh you
know there was a lot of scramble to to
make it happen um I was talking to you
know Ivan chop good friend of mine um
over at zerox Park and uh used saying
yeah we need to to build this zero
knowledge proof based passport for
zalu um okay like and when does this
start three
weeks
right uh so I ended up saying okay you
know I can help ship this if if I can
join if I can come to this right uh and
uh then we ended up just you know in the
uh like sort of like lowering ourselves
down the M shaft for for those three
weeks and and and doing this uh a lot of
good memories that was really fun
actually um actually I'm curious I'm
with like you know so zoo pass has sort
of iterated and evolved a ton since then
I I was part of just the initial
prototyping and the version of it that I
built built the version of it that
existed for zalu like number
one how many people here have used any
of the zero knowledge proof stuff in
zpass the answer is probably everyone
here because Devcon is actually using it
well Devon's using it but I think it's
Devon's using it in like a scan the QR
capacity exactly um for zalu we were
actually doing things where so like one
of the original things and the where the
Z and zo like part of it where comes
from is uh I
mean you could make zero knowledge
proofs that you are a zalu resident
without revealing which one and so we
ended up doing some really fun
experiments um at uh at the event that
were related to this around you know
Anonymous polls Anonymous messaging um
but not you know like internet wide
Anonymous messaging like you know
everyone who's writing on there is is
people who you're living with they're
they're one of the you know two 300
people um
so yeah I think we'll talk about a
little bit more about that in in in just
a bit but I think one of the ways that
you know we're here at an ethereum
conference I think one of the ways this
really relates is that um popup cities
popup Villages are an amazing way to
basically um bootstrap critical mass for
new ideas and they're an amazing
prototyping tool and you can try things
that you know would be very hard to like
get it to work sort of like on the open
internet and would also be very hard to
get it to work with just five people if
you need to do something with a thousand
people this is a pretty amazing way to
do it so DC is the founder of an
incredible startup called Doo you should
check it out if you haven't but I'm
curious DC if you're open to sharing how
you had the idea for Doo and then the
kind of progressive steps of developing
it at Progressive uh pop-up
CS sure totally um
it's funny actually you know it kind of
can connect the dots looking backwards
more easily than at the time right
uh so one of the
things zalo was was an amazing time
um one interesting thing is that a lot
of the people there even though they're
like a lot of these people are people
are like dedicating their lives to
ethereum right like that's like they're
deep in it the amount that people are
actually using ethereum day today was
not very much um and you would see
people you know uh and and we sort
of you know there's a few of us there
who are looking at this and saying like
you know how do we just make this much
easier to use how do we make this more
useful and uh Doo V1 came out of that
where it's like all right let's make
something that is like uh you know
PayPal revolute like we pay whatever it
is but runs on stable coin rails runs on
rollups like this was actually we were
kind of leading it off a little bit you
know the little skate where the pock is
going like at the time you know we
were saying okay like this is going to
be like free instant transactions one to
one we were actually sponsoring like 50
cents of gas for each one but we knew
that that was going to come down and
then you know like a year later 4844 now
it's like 1 cent 1 second transactions
it's like okay if this is about to
happen let's build the thing for that
World um and then you know like what
we're doing now Diop I think it's funny
part of that came out of the the
subsequent you know Zoo connect right we
spent a a couple of weeks in uh
Turkey right before uh Dev connect that
was sort of the the the start of it and
then we like really like you know
figured that out
in we had conviction about that like
later when we went to you know Argentina
you go to places where people use a lot
of stable coins and where people are
like doing uh you know I think the the
sort of most widely distributed version
of what you could call real world
ethereum or real world crypto right it's
places like turkey it's places like
Argentina it's we talked to a bunch of
people in Africa who are working remote
getting paid in Stables um and and this
is like uh it's a whole different world
from I think a lot of what you see in
like Western crypto world where sort of
like you know outside of the like core
like sort of intellectually curious R&D
audience there's a lot of people who
just like want to buy something they
wanted to go up right like for those
people no this was like they're using
the permissionless nature of the chain
to be able to do things they couldn't
otherwise do I thought that was very
compelling the really hard part there
was a lot of those people you know are
not deeply into self- custody they're
like yeah we love lemon for example in
Argentina lemon being a like custodial
staple coin app that will give you you
know certain like nice features that
rely on it being custodial actually that
people really like um same in Turkey
same in Argentina and so uh what we're
doing now is something it's like okay if
you want to do anything on ethereum in
like one transfer right even if it's
from a custodial app how do you
facilitate that someone wants to place a
poly Market pet how do you let them do
it directly from lemon so that that's
what Diop is so we had our whole like
Arc of of of what we're up to closely
related to things that that we learned
from these sort of like intensive
experiments I think that's an amazing
segue into the relevance of this entire
movement for crypto adoption and
accelerating crypto adoption which is
what um this talk is about it's it's
such a good example of a product that
was developed in the context of where
people will actually use it so inside a
pop-up City and then with Progressive
popup cities you know you have like four
months 5 months in between them you can
actually develop the product and then
the next time you go so between zalu and
zconnect you were able to build
something for for this new market where
we were all going to be suddenly and for
the 400 people who were there in the
pop-up City to actually use it iterate
it they had a baklava stand we had to
use Dao and you'd spend a dollar on some
amazing Bava which was really really
cool and then actually be able to start
to expand your reach and go out to
progressively bigger and bigger markets
until you get somewhere like Argentina
where it's like wow
not just the people in the city but
everyone here actually needs something
like
this now I wish I threw that picture in
the slide deck of of Nan and sitting
there with the the the red hats with the
Bak aan that was a good
time yeah and and that that goes to sort
of some of the recognition here have
this
building building take e like what does
an ecosystem need versus a company right
like with ethereum is an e ecosystem
with many different projects in it and
this push towards open source and kind
of like thinking what does that type of
way of working need and way of living
need that's different to the current
constructive of um companies where it's
like shiing a space and then send it out
to to customers it's we're in a spot of
like iteration and you know getting
feedback getting people to build in one
another's ecosystem getting people to
build on um and use the open source
technology that we've got so these
pop-up City environments are a space
to test and iterate and share what we
are doing um and what you are working on
in a way that we haven't necessarily had
previously and we're just seeing teams
come to life with that like they are so
excited about this idea of like being
able to build a thing have users
instantly that are totally captive and
excited to support and build on and
connect them with other groups and
there's just sort of this network that
grows which is quite similar to what we
have seen grow with the popup City
Network so instead of us being a project
that you know with Zulu there was this
kind of open question of like can we
actually progressively decentralize but
then have a call what does that look
like do we do we run Zulu do we not
there was sort of this big open question
and
after Zulu Montenegro which sort of how
we structured it was you know it there
was chaos it was absolute this last sort
of last minute of 6 weeks of planning to
give um to give you guys context there
it was like you know they had found a
spot but when when I came on to the team
it was we we had like 10 weeks before
susulu had started my wedding was the
first week of zulu um I was very excited
to I you know my plan was like I was
planning other events at the time and I
was working at getcoin and like my what
I really cared about was bringing
together um folks to think about like
how can we fund Community shared needs
and that was sort of this focus of like
public goods it's like public goods are
fascinating for communities funding
people shared needs should happen in
some capacity um and I wanted to bring
it IRL like ethereum was a space that
was just doing this in an interesting
way online but I very distinctly
remember coming into the space and
saying like I never really wanted to
have a Twitter presence I was like I
don't understand that world I understand
like the inperson and like tangible
world and that's what I want to build
for and it's just going to take longer
um but then zuu sort of popped up as
this thing and I was like this is
definitely exactly aligned with like
what I've been trying to think about
working on um at the time I was building
a IRL community in Austin
and then looking at like how ethereum
could be supporting that type of
structure so um when vitalic and Vincent
asked me to join the team and was like
oh this is great but I have my wedding
in 10 weeks time so my wedding was the
first week of zezu the the team really
held down the for with that um and we
all just like scrambled to make it
happen and I think it was beautiful
about zzu was how much we had to rely on
the community from the beginning because
we had so little planned like I remember
when we started you know people were
like accepting you know wanting to join
for two months we were like wow someone
actually wants to come we've we've got
people this is amazing then we're like
do we open the Discord do we not we
don't have any plans yet um and there
was sort of this push towards like build
and public build with
everyone and that building with everyone
sort of led to a culture from the
beginning that veloped around letting
many
different flowers bloom and letting many
different projects sort of come out of
this and many different people
contribute so after Zulu
Montenegro everyone was like when's the
next Zulu when's the next Zulu and we're
like well let's try and like build
something that's not Zulu but it's just
a using the zoo to get to have people um
have attention but doing we called it
Zoo connect um because it was a lot of
us from the same team everyone was like
that's zuu and there was this idea of
like okay well I want to go to the zuu
thing moving forward versus like
allowing many different projects to come
out of it so there was this hard
decision that was made around just
decentralized in a way that like
generally had no no call to Z and it was
scary to so many people cuz it was like
this thing that we had built as a
community was was it going to disappear
forever was it going to like become
something else like there there was
definitely a lot of fear there for
people um and for for us as a team as
well
and it was a decision that was like so
beautiful because you start looking at
this ecosystem and this is a year in um
and you've we've gotten here it's like
so from Zulu
monegro there was zuo connect that
happened that spun off um the is kind of
connected to being part of the core
actually this should be a line that goes
across here this is still someone mapped
this out for us um and they've sort of
spun out a whole bunch of different
things that also spun out megazoo that
you've got now sort of metac camp and
what's being built there um seeing
Network State generally like the network
State book is kind of like a core that
uh span off sort of zulu Montenegro a
network school was something that um in
speaking to biology earlier this year he
was not sure what he was going to win or
how he was going to sort of build
Network school but because of zuu and
because of edges meralda that we did
earlier this year he was like I've now
got two proof points that sort of have
me like wanting to test in this sort of
way so there's a couple of things that
have spurred out from this side of it
then when you start of look at the like
what we said of zuu as a name shouldn't
be used but like use zoo and get people
to build Zoo Villages all over being you
know something we wanted to see there's
just been so many different projects
that have been built and have their own
beautiful culture that's like super
super unique um some some kind of
different like pieces of culture like
some people are diving into the health
stuff some people are diving into like
we only want ethereum to developers and
they've got a ship and they've got a
ship the whole time um some are trying
to focus on a specific group of diaspora
like for sees is really focused on how
do we support the Chinese diaspora and
like making sure that is the core one of
the core values that they hold true uh
so recognizing that like new Society
gets built with so many different like
small nuances but having a you know n
some way um to help rally people around
has been beautiful to see and like that
collection I think will only take will
take many many years to kind of figure
out who's doing what and how do we
connect them all together but that was a
bit of bit of backstory over there I can
add a little bit more um I feel like a
lot of things that look like happy
accidents were like small decisions that
vitalic made in a split second which
ended up making a lot of sense like he
was always right at the end of the day
so even at the first ever zizu
Montenegro opening ceremony and the way
that was set up all of us were just like
seated on bean bags there like eight
people on a stage um and he already
welcomed Forks he was like I want you
guys to Fork this I want you guys to
take this however you want I want to see
more leaders um and the reason being the
first Zulu was very Broad and almost by
intention and there was no centrally set
vision and that was very deliberate um
because we want people to take this in
different ways um and that's been like I
think what's most powerful about pop-up
cities is what you've seen is like
strong leaders people movements and
people that rally around certain values
have been able to use this as a conduit
and as a framework to build community so
we've seen that like Ed city has been
able to build a very strong community
and do repeat events we've seen moo do
that um moo is a entirely Grassroots um
sort of fork of zulu and they've done
like three four events now and they
always involve locals so what we've seen
is like individual leaders are good at
different things care about different
things and because of that they can take
this in different ways um so when
vitalic decided to decentralize this I
think a lot of people are scared but
it's definitely proven to be the right
choice because we've had 20 plus pop-ups
just this year and if it were just one
team there's like a z% chance we could
have done 20 pop-ups ourselves um so
yeah 20 popups um all vitalic did was he
started this press play in the
experiment and he provides funding so he
matched a quadratic funding round or two
actually um for both events and Tech
teams and that's been a nice little like
um pool of money that helps people kick
off their own pop-ups but for sure it
definitely is still biased towards
people who are high contexts who've done
these before but we almost want to
welcome more people to come in like we
want to grow this bigger we want more
pop-up City organizers we want more
initiatives um rallying around different
things
um and I think the last thing here
before we actually shift to like more of
a workshop type thing is zuu was really
just like a seed that was planted and
see it like as a seed versus an umbrella
um with so many different ideas that
we'd love to continue seeing being built
and different groups Building Technology
to support these building actual built
environments that can host popups
building operational teams that can
support popups in different ways
bringing in different community members
um to you know actually drive things
forward like it it truly was the seed
that has allowed many different groups
and projects
and ideas to flourish and the hope is
that there's just so much more that
comes out of this over the next couple
years I think social technology is such
a powerful idea and it does take both
low-fi and high-fi environments to sort
of like bring that together so on that
note who has laptops cuz we had a fake
Jam planned but I'm only seeing a few
laptops in the
crowd so instead why don't we do a set
of questions and just kind of go around
and keep it a little bit more
informal questions are also if folks I
mean I guess something brought you here
this morning right unless you just
stumbled into the wrong room but even
then if you have thoughts or Curiosities
if maybe you haven't been to one of
these you want to build technology for
one of them you want to build one
yourself
curious if anyone has anything to
share yeah I can come around with a mic
as well so everyone on the stream okay
you shout and then we'll repeat what you
say yeah that's a good idea just to open
the floor we're building a network state
in Japan is our first back I want to
learn you guys experience building these
opportunities trying what is it called
yat yat is a new network state in Japan
yeah that sounds awesome
what are you guys going to be focused on
what's kind of a core idea yeah our our
core commandment is well our moral
Innovation is that building is moral and
so the core commandment is we we build
and so we're bringing together a forign
and Native entrepreneurs and helping to
do crosscultural learning communication
over a six Monon to 10e period longterm
longterm thing starting with one site
and then we're going wide and St tall so
is doing Singapore 2.0 we're doing 100
150 person sites so all all in Japan all
in Japan wow
cool the shape of that sounds a bit like
uh cresimo down in Argentina I'm curious
if that's something that you were
inspired by or is it's it's different
from that honestly I've heard of them I
haven't connected with them yet so I'd
love to thank you for the reference I'll
try to L up with them them please p in
front of you over there totally very
nice and they're they're doing something
so cimento is a movement that was
incubated um at Edge City Denver in the
sauna actually which is some lore and uh
so that was around 10 months ago and it
very quickly spun very quickly grew legs
um props to Juan Ben and and many many
others who have been pushing that
forward um Janine organized a trip to
Argentina like a month later and then
they managed to do an incredible popup
city called Alf in August and the the
only way that that actually happened was
because of tapping
into this whole group like at Ed City we
were literally in the SAA and Juan was
like I want to I think there's an
opportunity in Argentina and I was like
you are not
Argentine and neither am I so we need to
make sure that like this is something
that is led by locals um and the son
from the moo was actually at AG City
Denver and he was just hanging out and I
was like son I need you this you're
going down to Argentina in like two
weeks time and you're planning to sort
of build a popup of sorts down there can
you start like thinking about and
looping in different folks and they were
incredible um with just like quickly
bringing together people to do a call
and we had a cool to share about like
the sort of opportunity in Argentina
that Juan um had sort of like identified
and some people locally had kind of
thought through and we had this call
like two weeks later with like 10
different Founders and Builders um and
creators that presented from like
Argentine folks that were just like
amazing um and we had like 300 people on
that call and we're like wow this is
just an amazing community like we should
go down and spend spend time down there
so we went down while the moo was still
happening Petra was someone who was at
zuu and you know I was able to be like
Petra can you help in some way like who
who should who should people here meet
um Petra is Argentine right okay yeah
great ra and we had sort of a series of
like breakfasts and workshops and meals
and there were just people in the
community there that were ready inspired
to do something that we could support
get off the ground um and that was
something that you know then I was like
okay August timeline because this new
government um in Argentina doesn't have
a huge window it's like four years is a
really short amount of time like we need
to do something bigger in August and
Juan had spent a lot of time um at
different Edge City environments where
he was just like I want to like use this
model to kick off some of this like to
spark these initiatives and then it was
just like a local team and individuals
that were so passionate about the
project there was probably 70 people
that were like working on it um other
people internationally came in and
helped as well so it was really a again
like another initiative that just spun
up really quickly because of this
network getting started and you know the
the people who are now carrying it
Forward are within the network but like
doing it in their own way like there's
no you know there's no top down
leadership that's that's driving
that yeah I'd be interested you just
said they like the model the model what
is the model what is the what stays
continues is it like for example
principles like berning man has or what
is the core and do you have a playbook
for different locations to get started
we've got a Playbook um we've got an
edge City Playbook we have an old zuu
Playbook I think when when we say the
model
Loosely long amount of time with many
people and I actually I I've seen some
people get um you know want a model of
like they're like it has to be 150
people to be a Zulu and I'm like wait
what that was just what we had like that
was an idea that you know more than dun
Bar's number is useful um but I think
iteration around that is really
important but I do just think like
Loosely it is you know long long time
frame around some core values burning
man took 30 years to like come up with a
principles and I think this is another
thing of like coming up with principles
too early um can sometimes sort of
pigeon hole you into like it has to be a
specific way when there's still a lot of
learning that we have to
do so the you can take a look at the
playbooks we've tried to like be more
operational on those versus like this is
the the principles that you need to
follow
yeah I think like every single popup has
completely different values and the
overall pop-up City movement is just
very vaguely empowering people to do
their own experiments um and that's why
I think like I want to see more people
go crazier with it like I want people to
completely break the current pop-up City
model and do something new that takes
off um the original format I think
people are just enjoy um so I would
elimin like to grow this to something
new like I would say hacker houses if
it's smaller than like 100 people then
you're probably not a pop-up City you're
probably a hacker house if it's shorter
than a month you're probably more of a
conference residency and if you only
have like one Focus then maybe that is
also considered a residency like the
core values of the original Zulu were
sort of playing at intersections and
playing like these new novel experiments
so yeah the experiment itself is to do
more novel
experiments yeah any uh a few minutes
left people have any more questions
comments
roasts yes do we have like online
element community so that
like City that kind of stay connected
and you're so part of that online
community and you keep
on yeah connection so uh to the prior
point we're still very much in the in
the process of experimentation around
these things we are very much IRL Maxis
in the sense that we feel like 9 9% of
the possible kind of connection moments
happen in person but people have
spontaneously started to um you know
gather do little meetups around the
world in the cities that they happen to
share time in so that's something that's
being cultivated we don't necessarily
want to have we don't want to fall into
the same trap of some of the mistakes
that uh we've seen some communities make
of trying to lean too hard into like
okay everyone has to be on on Discord
you know all the time you always have to
monitor what's happening there's a lot
of like cognitive load that happens
there but tldr we're experimenting we're
still going to yeah try new things yeah
there's not there's not like one sort of
shelling Point online community where
all of the even even just specifically
as all folks
are Town Hall yeah actually okay so we
have open Town Halls that people can
join they happen monthly now um and it's
a lot of the different pop-ups coming
together and having discussion
so that's like a good place and maybe we
should share that link somewhere um and
I think like a separate thing I actually
think this is a big problem of zulu is
it's like very in illegible like and
there's no real way of like engaging in
long form contribution so one thing so
I'm hosting a popup after this called
Zoo Thailand and one thing we're doing
with that is trying to build it entirely
in public so we are going to have an
open discourse so not Discord just like
the standard Forum um for people to like
talk about popup cities if they would
like um so that would be a potential
starting
point and yeah some something that sort
of we've seen is people have tried to go
online often like people have tried to
build the community between and it's
there's still a lot of iteration that is
needed in order to sort of like keep the
momentum or actually like provide a lot
of value in the in between but I think
that there's also the side of things
happening more often in person something
that I've recognized is projects that
have tried to get off the ground in like
Edge City environments that we've had
and even at you know we didn't really
have Zoo connect I think was a was a
good one here or some some of the other
pop-ups even with cesy Mento where
they're like hey can you use my tool
like I really want this tool to be used
but actually I don't I don't have the
time to come and be there and like
there's a tension between wanting to see
a lot of people's like projects out in
the world and and used
and a deep recognition that we've had is
like people that are trying to iterate
from afar and build for a POA but not
being there have not succeeded super
well because there's a there's the value
is in the iteration on the ground um so
being being at these spaces where you
can iterate and get feedback and like
real feedback and you know are dedicated
to that I think is super
valuable hi my name is Jason and uh um I
think today is my first time I genuinely
have a touch point with zalu so um I
find it a very interesting experiment
I'd like to ask okay each and every one
of you what is where was the the last
zalu and what is one thing okay that
caught you off
guard
so there was a moment where I found
myself dejing with Grimes and that
definitely caught me off guard at zalu
this was a very strange set of
occurrences that had to happen for that
to be the case but there I was on the
montenegrin seaside with that happening
um and that kind of it's it's a funny
story but it illustrates the diversity
of experience that's possible in
environments like this it was a
diversity that led to me having a very
personally meaningful experience where I
felt like many sides of my personality
were activated in the time that I spent
in that space and I think that's kind of
a strength of popup cities they really
allow for this just like breadth and
depth of of experience so yeah what
about you
guys um so I think to this point it's
like pop-up cities I I would actually
say that zuu again was the seed versus
an umbrella and the umbrella is more
cities um so okay I
um I think a moment that caught me off
guard recently was we just did Edge City
Lana which was in um changai and it was
a really awesome experiment like seeing
the progression just even in the past 18
months of community of the technology of
people that are building of how people
understanding these these spaces was was
truly amazing and a moment that I had
that CAU me off guard was
an idea from last year was like oh we
should have more families in these
spaces cuz we don't want to create a
spot that no one actually wants to get
to the next step of life like we don't
want Peter Pans we want people that
actually like think about building a
better Society um and it was very much
so this recognition of like if we don't
have kids we will build a lot of Peter
Pan syndrome and we will fall into the
Trap of like
what companies today and what work
environments today have almost fallen
into which is like many women having to
choose between work or
family and it's like it doesn't have to
be that way like we should be able to
participate in the workforce in whatever
way that we can contribute versus like
the stay-at-home mom syndrome and maybe
it's I just have a personal fear of
being a stay-at-home mom and never want
to do that um but the the moment that
sort of like really caught me off guard
was seeing that idea be seated at zuu of
like I don't want a future of Peter Pans
I want a future of people building
something building the future together
and being at Edge that this year with
many families and one moment of a mother
with her two daughters um being at a
workout class which was also another
thing that I really wanted to push at
zuu was like make making sure we did
have health and like we we're broughten
longevity folks but I was like okay but
like we have to like stick if we are
going to say that we're a healthy place
like we have to stick to that which they
had put sort of a
gym h i remember this wow they put a gym
like a 45 minute walk up a hill in a
tent and they were like there's your gym
and I was like no one's going to go
there like you need to optimize for the
laziest self when it comes to working
out and
I was like a probably 2: a.m. and I was
like you know what screw it we need to
put the gym in the town and they would
they wouldn't let us cuz they were
saying like well it's going to miss our
little pretty Marina up and like there's
no way you can so I like mapped out all
of the apartments that we had um like
rented out for the time and I was like
which apartment has the largest balcony
and I was like fine I'll stay in this
apartment um so that like I I have this
we can use this balcony space and I was
like move the gym to the balcony because
that was private land that they couldn't
control they weren't stoked about it but
like they had to sort of comply so I had
a gym on my balcony and it was truly
like you know a l Stitch effort at like
making sure we had a space that at least
people could work out but getting to see
the progression this year of having many
many workout classes like one aspect
that we want with ag city is to focus on
like building a healthy city um and
having you know workout classes having
gyms having access to you know you can
be active at any given time and seeing
this moment of like a mom with her two
daughters and a workout instructor that
we had brought out that was that had
become like this beloved relationship
where the mom and daughter were
attending every single morning with with
this um workout instructor and she was
leave the workout instructor was leaving
the next day and both daughters and Mom
were like in absolute tears after two
weeks of being able to do workout
classes together in a space and I was
like this is just a really cool moment
where we sort of engineered like a
completely different social environment
to something that was normal but it was
kind of this like seeds that had become
something
bigger yeah caught me off guard um a lot
of things but I guess like this time
when bag was planning the network school
um there was a moment where I was just
like answering all the questions and
they were like what else can we do and I
realized that like some of this all of
this is just so easy and all everyone
just needs to do it and by doing it
you'll have experience so seeing that
like someone like him who initiated this
coming back and just asking for
operational advice is like very surreal
um seeing that there was like 10 plus
popups before um Devcon in changai that
was surreal um there's just this
movement has really taken off and I
really did not think um it would do so
so quickly and yeah I don't know very
happy about
that this one's maybe a bit further a
field but uh
one one experience that definitely
caught me off guard uh so I
mean we
were just to make it not make it sound
like this was like a big vacation people
were like pretty locked in we were
working for the most part at zalu um but
uh towards the end there you know
there's a gr of us that went uh uh wake
boarding uh wake surfing and I ended up
talking to the uh this Russian wake
surfing instructor um right and uh
completely like uh like unprompted he
was telling us you know like his stories
and he was telling us about how he
uh did a lot of things off of uh stable
coins usdt like paid his kids tuition in
usdt
because he's locked out of regular
banking right and he had escaped
basically to monegro uh you know at the
start of the conflict so that that he
wouldn't get embroiled in that um and
that was pretty visceral I'm on small
boat with this guy right really friendly
guy and that was pretty amazing you know
seeing people who are sort of using the
uh you know permissionless nature of of
of the system
to permissionless nature of ethereum to
basically
Escape uh authoritarianism and claim
some freedom for themselves that was
really cool to
see all right I think we have to wrap up
there but thank you everyone so much for
joining us this was really wonderful
and yeah we'll be around a little bit
outside if anyone has any questions so
yeah