Devcon East coming in 2022 (with something new 🤫), but before our next event updates, we invite you to check out a completely updated Devcon archive.
Discover the new Devcon archive
Devcon’s impact goes beyond just the physical event, and with that in mind, we’ve completely revamped the Devcon archives. Changes include improved UX, better content discoverability, reduced reliance on YouTube, more decentralized content through IPFS, and community involvement in curation.
Through it all, we hope Devcon can continue to be an unparalleled educational resource for learning about the past, present, and future of the ecosystem. Read on to learn more about what’s new (and to try to win a POAP), or check out the site for yourself now.
A curated content hub
Based on preliminary user research with the original When implementing the archive, users found it difficult to navigate through the hundreds of Devcon videos from each edition. Content visibility and guidance were lacking, and discussions were provided with little to no context or metadata.
A common thread we heard during the feedback sessions was that specific lectures contributed to the understanding of critical concepts. People regularly returned to these conferences through the archives, but only because they had been initially exposed to the session scheduled in the event calendar, or had actually attended it.
And while live sessions are central to the Devcon experience, the influx of side content makes it very difficult for attendees to participate in all the sessions they want to attend. For this reason, other people rely on video plays to keep up with content after the event.
Additionally, curated content was repeatedly mentioned as a way to expose users to new ideas and perspectives that would have otherwise been largely overlooked. One of the most consistent positive comments we continually receive about the in-person Devcon experience is the incidental learning and insights attendees experience when interacting with content they had not previously planned to attend . We wanted to capitalize on this opportunity and allow the community to help create this fun time through suggested playlists on niche areas of content expertise. If you would like to help, please visit the Quest On the Road to Devcon Coming soon for community-curated playlists.
Make content more visible
From a user perspective, our goal was to make the Devcon archive as easy as possible to navigate, filter, and access content based on your specific interest and skill level.
The new archive has been rebuilt from the ground up with a mobile-first implementation, allowing you to access your favorite Ethereum developer content on any device. With the comprehensive amount of metadata now available in the archive, you can search and filter videos with a variety of entries. Easily search for content based on speaker, conference descriptions, Devcon tracks, keywords, expertise level, or Devcon event editions. You can also access a wide range of curated and suggested playlists to help you discover interesting and engaging content.
Note: If you are a speaker featured in the Devcon archive and would like to help improve the content description (or would like to edit your speaker bio), please create a PR directly on the archive. github pageor contact us via e-mail.
Decentralize everything!
One of the main goals of the Devcon team this year is to help dogfood and integrate core Web3 technologies that provide clear benefits to attendees and online attendees.
Internally, our reliance on centralized platforms was a concern, due to the risk of deplatforming and increasingly widespread censorship of services and websites. We wanted to ensure that all Devcon content was censorship-resistant, globally accessible, and persistent at all times. interested people to interact with.
For this reason, we decided to fully integrate IPFS as part of the Devcon archiving experience. IPFS is a distributed system for storing and accessing files, websites, applications and data. Learn more about IPFS here. You can now find all past Devcon content hosted on IPFS and easily accessible through the archives via the IPFS video player tab. We also hope to see users pin their favorite content on IPFS to make it more accessible and signal their preference for the type of content they enjoy most and want to share with others.
Special thanks to Andrew and Carson of Textile team, and to Dietrich, Adin and Molly from Protocol Laboratories for their continued advice regarding IPFS and Filecoin. We also owe our gratitude to the EF Devops team for taking on the heavy load of managing and uploading the large amount of videos to IPFS. 🙏
Quests On the Road to Devcon
To mark the continued journey to Devcon and encourage community involvement, we will be adding two additional quests related to the Devcon Archives and the great content that exists in the Road to Devcon quests.
Pin archives
To help make content accessibility more censorship-resistant and decentralized, we hope to see a lot more Devcon content pinned by users using the archive. To ensure that content persists on IPFS and is not deleted during garbage collection (a process for removing obsolete content), data can be pinned to one or more IPFS nodes. Pinning allows you to control disk space and data retention. Users can use this control to pin any content they want to keep on IPFS indefinitely. If you are one of the first 100 people to pin your favorite sessions on IPFS and contact us on our Road to Devcon Discord, we will send you a one-time, limited POAP. Learn more about pinningand approximately participate in the Road to Devcon quest here.
Community participants should have an equal opportunity to contribute to the preservation of Devcon Archive content. We encourage all interested parties to submit curated reading lists that provide an overview of a primary area or that craft a historical narrative that can be easily discerned by newcomers or people looking to delve deeper into a specific topic.
Here are some examples of curated playlists: The emergence of smart contract languages, Execution layer. Please create your playlists and submit a PR on the Devcon archive github. If your playlist is chosen, you will receive a unique POAP as part of the Road to Devcon quests. Learn more about participating in the quest here and or go to github here.
What awaits us?
We continue to see opportunities to improve the archive, but we want your feedback on what would add the most value. As Devcon approaches, we’ll continue to integrate user accounts to help you create your own personalized playlists, favorite chats, and more. We also plan to tightly integrate the Devcon livestream process with the archive to ensure that content is easily accessible immediately after the next Devcon, along with relevant additional information.
If you have additional ideas for improving the Devcon experience or archives, please visit the Devcon Improvement Proposal Process to find out how you can be an integral part of planning for Devcon this year.
Congratulations to the Devcon and Web teams for moving the project forward 🚢.
