Planning the Ultimate Skycoin Meetup

Assemble Skycoin’s ‘Boots on the Ground’ in your City

Skycoin’s lead developer and one of its founders recently said that the Skycoin project had reached a phase where what they needed most was “boots on the ground”. That is, communities of Skycoin enthusiasts in cities around the world who are ready to deploy Skywire in their area. (Skywire, for the uninitiated, is a new, totally decentralized and distributed end-to-end encrypted Internet, designed to be uncensorable and indestructible, without gatekeepers like today’s Internet Service Providers.)

To that end, there is a renewed emphasis in the Skycoin community on organizing meetups, with the goal being two-fold:

Introduce new people to the Skycoin ecosystem, help them to see the vision of the project, set up a wallet, and invest. Organize like-minded community members to set up Skywire nodes and antennas, so that Skywire will be able to roll out seamlessly when the time is right.

So if you believe in what Skycoin is trying to accomplish, as I do, it is incumbent upon us to take the lead in helping bring that goal to fruition. You have the opportunity to be a pioneer of the new Internet, and here are some ideas of how you can get more motivated ‘boots on the ground’ in your city. These ideas are not meant to be proscriptive; they can be taken individually or in tandem in whatever way helps you have a successful event.

The best place to begin: https://t.me/SkycoinMeetups

Join the Skycoin Meetups room on Telegram

Visit t.me/SkycoinMeetups to join the official Skycoin Meetups room on Telegram. This is a great place to start, for a number of reason:

You can ask questions of other community members who have held meetups, and share ideas. If you can demonstrate your intent, and have enough planning already in place, you might be able to score some Skycoin swag that you can distribute at your meetup, like t-shirts, hats, stickers, and brochures. You can find templates for announcements and invitations that you can modify with the details of your meetup, and distribute on social media. You can download a pre-made presentation that helps introduce Skycoin to beginners. When you get to the room, be sure to read the pinned message for any updated links, suggestions, or details.

What Kind of Meetup Do You Want?

Meetup Agenda

What kind of meetup do YOU want to have? Not every meetup needs a formal presentation, of course. Take a look at the presentation that is linked in the pinned message at t.me/SkycoinMeetups, and see if you think it will work for you. You don’t have to have a projector or monitor to display the presentation as you deliver it; you can print copies for attendees, or send them the link so they can follow along on their devices.

As long as your thoughts are organized beforehand, you should be able to lead people through the Skycoin ecosystem without any issues. It’s okay if you don’t know the answer to a question, because you probably know where to direct people to get an answer. There are several Skycoin infographics available that can help you as you walk people through the various components of the ecosystem.

One popular activity at a meetup is to help people download the Skycoin wallet software and create a Skycoin wallet address. If you’re feeling generous, you can even send them some Skycoin to demonstrate how easy and fast transactions are on the Skycoin blockchain.

Now THIS is a conversation starter.

If you have a Skyminer, or even a DIY Skywire node, bring them to the meetup! They are a great conversation piece, and something tangible that people can see in order to understand how Skycoin is producing actual real-world hardware, and how that relates to the coin itself as well as Coin Hours. In addition to helping attendees start to visualize how Skywire will roll out, they will see that it’s possible for someone like themselves to participate, and they may consider buying a Skyminer as well. This, of course, is an ideal outcome, as more Skywire nodes in your city will lay the groundwork for when it is time to install antennas and get your town running on Skywire.

A Familiar Meetup

Invite family and friends! A meetup doesn’t need to include strangers, just people who are new to Skycoin. Often your first meetup can consist solely of friends, and take the form of a relaxed evening at someone’s home. Often it is easier to have a meetup with people who know and like you, as it takes some of the pressure off of you as a presenter, and they are likely to be more interested din what you have to say. For a more informal meetup such as this, invitations can simply be a group text or email.

A DIY Skyminer and some Skycoin swag on the table at a recent meetup.

Since you’re reading this, you likely feel strongly about sharing the potential of the Skycoin project with friends and family anyway; a meetup with them would probably end up ultimately end up saving you time, just by doing it all at once, with everyone in the same place, rather than one-by-one.

One big reason for gathering the people you know in one place in order to explain Skycoin is to avoid a scene five years from now when those same friends corner you and ask why you never let them know about this Skycoin thing you invested in back in the day, which has (by that time), made you extremely wealthy.

Picking a Location

Venue Selection

This depends on the type of meeting you wish to have, and the anticipated size of your group. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can host in your own home, which is great if the meetup will include a lot of people you already know, like friends and work colleagues.