Book time with me at devcon this week

My hypothesis on how to get the most out of conferences

Good morning from Osaka, Japan.

I’m here for the Ethereum developer conference. I tend to avoid conferences. They are expensive, time consuming, and you rarely learn anything new—if there’s an interesting talk, you can usually read the talk or watch a recording later. But devcon is the single biggest gathering of crypto-interested people on the planet so flying halfway across the world is almost definitely worth it.

In my experience, the most valuable way to spend your time at conferences is to have or schedule one-on-ones with people.

• To have: schedule in advance or in person and sit down for 15-30 minutes with an idea of what you want to accomplish beforehand

• To schedule: serendipitously bump into people and upon finding a mutual interest schedule a follow-up after the conference

This may seem like common sense but until recently, I’ve spent more time than is useful watching talks and attending meet-ups and parties.

So this year at Devcon, I’m going to try and spend the majority of my days in 1-on-1s. If you’re attending and want to meet up, please put some time on my calendar. I’ll be prioritizing entrepreneurs raising money and investors in the space. But I will do my best to meet everybody.

Looking forward to making some new friends and reconnecting with old ones. And I’ll share a post-mortem of my strategy after the event