NFT-NYC 2023 - My Experience

These were the notes I presented inside the Vagobond Magazine discord. They aren’t complete by any means, I simply wanted to share what NFT-NYC has been like for those who are curious and not here. To be fair, I think a conference like this is different for every attendee. In a way it’s like minting a 10k pfp collection as no two holders get the same asset or experience. I think the experience of the majority of my friends and colleagues was a very different experience from my own.

April 10th: Doing a red eye from Honolulu to NYC tonight. The time change is a real asshole kicker and it’s a long flight to begin with. Late afternoon departure and early morning arrival. Flight is around 10 hours but my native anxiety always gets me to the airport three hours early. Still, I like the timing of this one. Woke up, did some writing and work, cleaned my apartment, went to the beach, got s burger for lunch at Diamond Head Grill, ate while looking out at the surf, did a little reading and then to the airport where i have plenty of time to not stress about security etc and can drink a relaxed beer and write this. Feels pretty good.

April 12th: The first day of NFT-NYC was just for registration and the VIP/speaker dinner. Pretty cool. Not actually a dinner but drinks with pupu (tasty snacks). The highlight was connecting with Rionna Morgan, Vagobond Magazine’s senior editor. This was the first time we’ve met IRL and once again it was nice to be reminded that IRL friendships easily translate from virtual frenships. Same was true with meeting Carsten from Creatokia, Greg Younger (the write3 guy), and also nice to see my friend (cohost of the Web3 Writer’s Hour) Edward Carpenter again. We all hui’d up and ended up going to Times Square to see our faces on the big screens there! Wild! Mine was there somewhere but I didn’t have the patience to stand and watch for long enough… Today is when the actual conference begins. The really odd part of it all was being in a huge room with 1000+ people and knowing that we are probably mostly 1 degree of seperation from each other and most likely know each other – but not recognizing faces because of avatars…they should have put avatars on the badges, I think.

April 13th: Today was a good day. The hard part for me is the time change. I woke up at 8 am after having forced myself to stay awake until midnight the night before, but my body wasn’t convinced it wasn’t 2 am (the time it was in Honolulu). My mind was in the bizarre state that we can often find ourselves in when we wake up at 2am for some reason and don’t go back to sleep – but everyone else seemed pretty well adjusted to the time – which made it a bit wierd. I felt like the guy on mushrooms at the straight lace party. I had decided it would make more sense to take the ferry to mid-town instead of an Uber, but then I missed the ferry I had intended and had to wait thirty minutes for the next – so I ended up missing the first two sessions I’d intended to see. Not to worry though, there were still far too many sessions that I wanted to see that overlapped with other sessions I wanted to see – and the networking and interacting – it’s all just too much to pack into a few days. Here is how I wish it was all structured – Day 1- speed dating networking events so that as many participants could meet as many participants as possible. Day 2-7 the sessions with one day devoted to each stage/category Days 8-10 More networking events. Additionally, there are too many off site events to be able to effectively schedule – the FOMO at NFT-NYC is real. I mean, seriously – at one point I had to go find a quiet corner and sit breathing for 10 minutes just to balance myself. As for our panel, it was well attended and met with so much enthusiasm by the attendees that it defied belief. I felt so honored to be a part of it. Even before all the sessions were through, there were off site events happening and our friends Edward Carpenter and Katie Dozier had set up a NFT poetry reading in the attic of an off-broadway theater – I’d already RSVP’d for several other events – but this was ohana and there was no way I couldn’t go. Not far away from there was the LIT afterparty and that made the most sense. I didn’t eat breakfast, rushed half a small salad (and a banana) for lunch, and was exhausted from carrying my backpack around all day – so, well before the pumpkin turning hour, I uber’d back to the financial district with Rionna and called it a night after grabbing a beer and a sandwich with her and her husband. I met so many amzingly cool people today – artists, writers, poets, rock stars, developers – the list goes on and on. I hope I can remember it all to keep track properly – but for now – I’m about to turn into a pumpkin if I don’t get some sleep. (edited)

April 14th: I have to admit, taking yesterday ‘off’ from the conference was a hard decision but it was one my body simply demanded. It was also rewarding in terms of reducing my ‘overhwelm’ anxiety and enjoying some time with new friends I’ve known for years now. In the am, I had a nice long walk along the Hudson, caught up on email and online work (a little) in my room, and then joined the Pixel Vault/Inhabitant crew for a Chinatown tasting tour. Then, time for a shower and met up with the On Chain Monkey fam on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for a party that was definitely my speed. Cocktails, tasty food, and the chance to engage in a lot of great conversations and begin some new friendships that feel like they are going to be important in my life moving forward – which was really cool. Leaving there I went to the Adidas party at their flagship store. Met some great people there as well – but to be honest it was a much louder and less convivial vibe which at this stage of my life – doesn’t suit me as well. In the midst of one conversation (speaking of stage of life) someone asked me “What’s it like being in this as part of the older generation? Do you think we are all crazy?” Lol. I was the tinest bit shocked not because of the question but because as anyone who is older than thirty knows – self image doesn’t seem to include an aging factor. The question forced me to put myself in a ‘them’ category which was seperate fromt the querant’s ‘us’ . My answer was “I’m from a generation no one talks about, GenX. We were the first generation in modern times that didn’t get a chance to ‘do as good or better’ than our parents and our reaction to it was to say ‘fuck you. We’re not going to be your wage slaves.’ Our option was to be slackers or to create digital nomad and gig cultures. When I saw web3 my reaction was ‘this is what we’ve been waiting for all along’ so no, I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you are doing exactly what we wanted to do.”

On another note – there is a huge crossover between Web3 and burning man that has been obvious to me for a long time (Burning Man also a GenX innovation) – last night confirmed that. I’ve met a lot of fellow burners here at NFT-NYC.

Oh…one more thing and this is a little strange to me. I wore a Bald Jesus shirt yesterday and not a single person asked me about BJ. This is in contrast to wearing the same shirt at SXSW last year and having at least a dozen people laugh, ask, or start a conversation about it.

April 15th: Yesterday was the last day of the NFT-NYC conference and it didn’t disappoint. I went early and caught several really good sessions – probably the best, just for the sheer optimism of it was Crypto Novo telling the story of how he bought a punk, made it his identity, and then had it stolen from his wallet – along with everything else. $5.7 million in gains that he never realized. Then, having lost everything including the punk he had built his identity around – he was completely fucked. The community came together and rallied around him and they got his punk back. The talk was called participation required and the entire vibe of it was really what NFTs and crypto have been about all along – building community and friendships, going lockstep to make the world a better place, and truly being a part of the change we want to see. It was a pretty amazing way to end and appropriate. I definitely made some new friends here. I definitely solidified some existing friendships. I put the human to some animal avatars. I left around 2pm and joined the Pixel Vault crew for what I thought was going to be another food tour, but actually was an afternoon pub crawl. l’m glad to get the chance to know Gfunk, Josh, VGF, Potamus and the rest of the team there – they’re all good guys and again – putting the human to the avatars/name makes a big difference. It changes things, it changes the way I view the project and what they’ve done and are doing. From there, I joined SAFA and the Jenkins crew for dinner and more drinks – probably too many drinks judging by the state of my head this morning. Seriously good times and I’m looking forward to what Azurbala and Jenkins bring to the future as well. The wisdom of age let me know I should leave before I fell asleep on the table so I caught an uber back to my hotel near the World Trade Center. The weather was perfect – I wanted to stay outside – and I wasn’t tired. A small bar around the corner from my hotel had great music coming out of it – I dropped in for one last nightcap. People were having a really good time and while I didn’t join them on the dancefloor or anything like that, I found a quiet seat and sipped a beer while chatting with the guy at the next table. Cool, chill vibes. As I was getting up to leave, we shook hands and he said “It’s got to feel a little wierd being the only white person in here…” and honeslty, I hadn’t even noticed – but at that point, having it pointed out, yeah- it felt wierd then. I’m glad he didn’t tell me until I was leaving. We’ll see what today holds – but yesterday was pretty enjoyable.

Today was awesome. Met up with @ezincrypto.eth and once again confirmed friends in the space = friends IRL. They brought me along to a a grafitti street crew get together where pfps were being put on brick walls. To be honest, it’s a hundred times cooler to see pfp owners working with grafitti artists to put their NFTs on the walls than it was to see big NFTs in Times Square. If I come back to NFT-NYC, I will definitely skip most of the offical program and just focus on the shadow events. The highlights of coming here were meeting with friends IRL for the first time and also meeting new friends in the projects I love. Twenty five minute and ten minute offical sessions are no way to do anything but learn as a beginner in crypto or NFTs. The sessions were fairly useless in terms of expanding the space, largely because this year it seemed to me that every attendee at NFT-NYC was either a presenter or a project founder. As such, most of us need far longer to learn new things in this space than 10-25 minutes – and most of the sessions by necessity are presented in a way to appeal to someone who is brand new to the space.

Notes for the Future: If I should come back next year I’ll likely attend a few sessions but for the most part, the action is all in the meetups, parties, and off site experiences. The conference itself is too rushed, too much, too much, too much. Also the frustration of too many events at too many locations and – making it more frustrating were two other factors. My hotel was a 30-40 minute or $40 uber ride away from the conference and most of the events. Next time, I’ll stay closer to the action. The other factor is my own anxiety – I’ve gotten pretty good about going to events on Oahu where I feel like I know the majority of the people in the blockchain space. This was a whole new level. It was cool that I was able to hang out with a few people I’ve met IRL and a lot of people I’ve interacted with in Discords or on Twitter, but beyond that – there were a shit ton of new people to meet and it was amazing how open and receptive everyone is. The truth is, for me as an introvert INFJ who projects as an extrovert – it was exhausting because by nature, it all has to be performative. That performative aspect is totally exhausting, I worry as well that it comes off as insincere because in fact, it is me acting like I have a lot more confidence than I actually do. The truth is, I would have been just fine sitting outside at a table by myself for the entire three days. In fact, that would be a bit of a dream. To sit quietly and interact with people a little at a time – sort of like we do with Blockchain in Paradise. The alcohol in this sense is helpful, but it’s also dangerous because as I learned by wasting so much of my younger life, the dulling of the anxiety with alcohol can easily lead to over doing it with the booze. That can lead to much worse problems.

As well, on the note of problems. There have been times when I allowed my generalized anxiety to become intently focused on problems with projects or founders or moderators. There were multiple people I’ve beefed with on Discord or Twitter at NFT-NYC – in fact today I met one founder who kicked me out of his Discord when I dared ask about why benefits were going to later minters but not OG holders…he seemed like a nice guy, does a lot in the space, and I get it. Sometimes when you are dealing with dicks, it is easy to get really sensitive to any kind of negative vibes – even if they aren’t put forth with ill will. Anyway, I also ended up hanging out with a moderator I was really rude to one time and a founder who I felt did me wrong another time. The point is – there are people behind the pfps and it does not make sense to forget that. Or in the words of Bald Jesus: Don’t be a dick. Seriously, it’s not just a suggestion, it’s a commandment because I promise you, the world is much smaller than we expect.

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CD Damitio

CD Damitio writes at indignified.substack.com — essays on utopias, dystopias, and the spaces between. Free to read. No algorithm, no sponsored content. His books can be found on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/CD-Damitio/author/B001JP7NWA

CD Damitio writes INDIGNIFIED — utopias and dystopias explored. Free to read.

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NFT-NYC 2023 – My Experience

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