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Some history and the IEN hibernation

The Evangelist IOTA Network was founded by Kevin Chen in August 2017. According to Kevin, in an interview I did with him for IOTA Hispano:

IOTA Evangelist Network (IEN) is an eclectic, tight-knit, human mesh network of dedicated IOTA enthusiasts, community leaders, and innovators from various walks of life worldwide. Our DNA make-up include developers, hardware engineers, solution architects, entrepreneurs, data scientists, makers, roboticists, researchers, futurists, designers, project managers, business developers, executives, bankers, business/financial analysts, sales reps, marketers, consultants, filmmakers, DJs, restaurateurs, pharmacists, teachers, and students, and more. We work in startups, large corporates, universities, state governments, and nonprofits alike across diverse industries. We join forces around our passion for IOTA technology and volunteer time and energy to support IOTA Foundation’s goal to educate and promote IOTA globally to achieve ubiquitous adoption via co-creation. We do this through meetups, events, workshops, and use case/PoC implementations.

I joined the IOTA Evangelist Network on March 2018, after a few months of having Kevin Chen trying to onboard me on Slack. On my first call, Peter Willemsen revealed the state of his work integrating IOTA into Ledger Nano. Soon after Lman Chu started working on IOTA based solutions with Taipei, Nino Ulrich came out with what would end up being Iampass, Terry Shane gave his amazing “100 Billion Reasons Why” talk, Daniel Trauth introduced me to the IOTA DataMarket and the amazing work being done by his team in the Aachen Lab, Dennis Shouten founded Skaly, Kumar Anirudh started working with IOTA and many others started PoCs (it would require another post to name everyone).

Damn, those were amazing days and the amount of talented people you could access by being an IEN member was just motivating: I myself ended up founding a project to bridge the XDK110 with the Tangle (xdk2mam).

Together with all this technological development, Meetups were organized all over the world by IEN members, Paper IOTA magazines were created (EinfachIOTA) and products were sold using IOTA through IOTA Shops.

It really was like an ocean of bright minds and creative people tinkering with all sorts of IOTA related things, producing amazing and innovative results. To me it was just beautiful to see, and I was honored to be part of that group.

Sadly, different circumstances had many of IEN members having to dedicate their time to other ongoing projects and the IEN went slowly into hibernation mode. Don’t get me wrong, most of the people named above continued their work with IOTA, but at some point we lost Kevin Chen and the whole network started losing traction.

The comeback: a new IEN era

In July of 2019 I visited Daniel Trauth in his Lab at Aachen and we discussed the idea of bringing IEN back to life. Both had little to no time to dedicate to this endeavor. At the same time, we knew how important IEN was and would be for IOTA future. That day, during lunch, the resurgence seed was planted.

After discussing the idea of taking over the wheel of the IEN with members of the IOTA Foundation and those IEN members still integrating the Steering Committee, I got an unexpected consensus and stepped in as the new head of the IEN together with Kumar Anirudha, Daniel Trauth, Dennis Shönke and Lman Chu on the SC.

As I understand, the mission of the IEN should be to encourage projects and connect the dots while spreading the word about what IOTA is in order to raise and stimulate adoption. Regardless of your profile/profession, if you have an interest in the IOTA protocol and you want to be part of the next step, you should seriously consider applying to become part of IEN. It is just the right place for you to get the extra boost you just may need to start materializing your project, from experienced people who already did it and will guide you through the process.

But, why now? The answer is crystal clear to me: as the IOTA Protocol evolves to become what the founders originally envisioned, the IEN should be of great help. We are finally getting closer to Coordicide and lots of validation from our network will be needed in order to successfully complete these last steps towards decentralization and protocol performance.

First steps

Our plan to reboot the IEN has to start with a clear overview of who still wants to be actively involved with the network. For this, we are already validating if our close to 160 members will want to keep working as a part of IEN in this new era. Once we have a clear view of the network tissue, we will start the admission process to strengthen the weakest regions.

Even though the IEN is a 100% community-driven -independent from IF- collective of people, our labor will be aligned with what the IOTA Foundation is planning for and needs. I am happy to say that we have achieved a complete consensus with the IF for this new IEN era.

Further details of our plan and activity will be announced soon. For now, all I can say is that many new things are on the table. The IEN is coming back stronger than ever.

I want to thank Kevin Chen for his willingness to help me with this new challenge I am embarking in, the complete IEN Steering Committee and all the IOTA Foundation members that analyzed my proposal of taking control of the IEN with good eyes. Because of all the factors mentioned above I decided to pursue this amazing opportunity.