We're pleased to announce the full agenda for the first AraCon, happening in Berlin on January 29-30, 2019.

This is an important moment for our industry. Almost a decade after Satoshi marked the Genesis block of Bitcoin with "Chancellor on the brink of a second bailout," our trust in institutions continues to plummet. There is, everywhere, a significant pent-up desire to build and be a part of something new.

It is no surprise, then, that blockchains and crypto have captured the imagination of millions. As regulators around the world catch up and investors sour on the market, it is more important than ever to ask ourselves what vision of the future we're trying to build towards, and what we need to achieve it.

This is the backdrop for AraCon. Our first event is not only a gathering for the community and projects working around Aragon but a chance for shared exploration around some of the most important questions we face.

We've organized the content to address these questions around four themes

DAOs & emergent forms of organization

The opportunity and challenge of decentralized governance

Ethereum & the decentralized web

Aragon community, technology & opportunity.

DAOs & Emergent Forms Of Organization

Two decades of advances in digital technology have fundamentally transformed the way we learn and communicate. What's more, they've changed the way we organize and act. The traditional organizational forms of the past often feel cumbersome and unwieldy compared to the highly dynamic, adaptive networks and communities that emerge online around passions, causes, and ideas. They are, in a real sense, coordination artifacts of a bygone era.

Blockchain technologies create a massive new opportunity to unlock human potential. Trustless, disintermediated value exchange enables networks to align incentives and reward participants who contribute. Immutable public ledgers help communities better organize themselves around decisions and reach consensus. Decentralization that eliminates central points of failure means that organizations can be truly unstoppable.

AraCon will feature numerous deep dives into emerging forms of organization: how they are organized; what challenges they create and what advantages they offer; and of course, for what purpose they're being applied.

Example Sessions

New Types of Organizations

Moderator: Griff Green

Panelists: Aron Fischer, Yalda Mousavinia, Jacob Arluck, Jeremy Macaluso

Continuous DAOs

Thibauld Favre

DAOs And Their Interaction With The Physical World

Primavera De Filippi & Maria Gomez

Current State of Token Curated Registries

Moderator: Luke Duncan

Panelists: Matt Lockyer, Trent McConaughy, Joe Urgo, Jeff Emmett

The Opportunity and Challenge of Decentralized Governance

For years, the web has seen communities spontaneously form to take some specific action - such as raise funds for a cause. Up until now, however, those networks haven't had the tools to grow into full-fledged autonomous organizations, capable of evolving and adapting over time.

We are now entering an era of decentralized governance, where communities can form persistent decentralized autonomous organizations. Tools are coming online to help communities reach consensus with finality around issues from resource allocation to task prioritization.

Yet it is still early days. The value of and best approaches to governance in blockchains is poised to be one of the most important conversations of 2019.

Example Sessions

Using Metamodels for Cross-blockchain Governance

Will Warren

Governing Decentralized Organizations

Moderator: Alison Berreman

Panelists: Constance Choi, Kenny Rowe, Mario Laul

Power by Proxy: The Case for Crypto Cartels

Meltem Demirors

Ethereum & the Decentralized Web

Since the beginning of the ICO explosion in 2017, the narrative around Ethereum was consumed by the use of ERC-20 tokens as a fundraising mechanism.

As that use case settles, it is becoming clear that fundraising was one tiny part of a much larger landscape of opportunities that Ethereum and smart contracts create to reorganize key social and financial activities away from centralized gatekeepers and rent-seeking intermediaries.

Example Sessions

Evolving Web3 Infrastructure

Moderator: Evan van Ness

Panelists: Jutta Steiner, Lane Rettig, Martin Köppelmann, Adan Sanchez de Pedro

A history of decentralized thought

Daniel Shavit

Recruiting For A Diverse Web3

Moderator: Monica Zeng

Panelists: Raine Revere, Sara Reynolds, Samer Hassan, Taylor Monahan

Aragon Community, Technology and Opportunity

Aragon is working to build the tools to help people around the world achieve the opportunities described above. In a very short time, we've seen incredible interest and work from a diverse array of networks and communities. Alongside the set of broader, industry-spanning conversations about DAOs, governance and the decentralized web, there will also be significant time set aside for teams building on Aragon to talk, discover, and collaborate.

Example Sessions

Aragon Network

Luke Duncan & Bingen Eguzkitza

aragonSDK

Arthur Lunn

Aragon Community Governance

John Light

Aragon One in 2019

Brett Sun

To see the full agenda, including all the speaker bios, visit the website: https://AraCon.one/agenda