Oddbean

Why do people think booths at conferences are a good way to “grow nostr”? I don’t think they are. It takes a certain type of person to show up to a conference, and it won’t be the kind that will stroll by the booth and decide.. you know.. out of ALL this stuff that’s here to be marketed to me, I’m going to go ahead and check this one out and stick around long term. Besides, the number of people exposed to the protocol that way is insignifcant. Is the goal simply to attrack other builders and people who have the means of pulling in audiences? Is that it? I look at the costs of these things, the effort required (marketing materials etc…) to put on one of these booths and it just doesn’t seem like it makes any economical sense. To send a person to another country alone is not an insignifcant amount of money which could be spent much more efficiently on guierilla marketing campaigns. City to city within the same country.. eh, maybe makes more sense, but still, how many people are you really reaching? Conferences seem tailored towards relaitonship building and sales where just getting to know one individual is extremely beneficial. I understand conferences for the sake of getting like-minded builders together to explore new things, but for promotion of USE of protocol makes no sense.

I think you just answered your own question. I am that one person. I didn’t take Nostr seriously until I saw a booth at a conference and was like wow this is a legitimate thing that I should not fall behind on. https://image.nostr.build/01870d322ee0ed0c7e4955b7e3f6e2f86b037c1791fa0df3924dc0384c997676.jpg

You know what I mean. One by one… ;) If we want things to get adopted, we need to take advantage of all possible avenues. And it’s great to have a decentralized community with different skills, talents and means to make that happen. We don’t need to agree or participate in all of them, but we can support each others efforts.

I think his point is that we may be able to go ten by ten instead of one by one if marketing efforts are optimized. Sure, we could change the world in twenty years, but I'd rather do it in 5 or 10 if possible. My time on earth is limited. One by one is almost never the optimal solution.

The conference scene seems a very American phenomena, I occasionally tech conferences in the UK and I can’t picture this scenario. I mean it would brighten it up if someone was saying “Check out Nostr” in amongst the cheap coffee and biscuits. People here attend conferences for work reasons. It’s funny, I see folks jetting from conference to conference, really enjoying themselves watching PowerPoint presentations. Not hating, just a very different world.

Having it mentioned in podcasts not exclusively dedicated to Nostr is probably more impactful. "That Elon Musk isn't really defending free speech all that well. Have you heard of Nostr?" At least that's how I tend to learn about stuff like this. I've never been to a conference.

Conference are for people who actually build. But they get bored of the circlejerk that a conference is and want “users” and think charging them for 500$ a ticket will do the job and make it attractive. Instead local meetups in the city that you live in have a greater impact on adoption. And online too, like we are chatting here.

Actually, I think I first learned of Nostr by using a search engine to look for decentralized alternatives to Twitter. I came across a blog post that had Damus (I don't think they realized the difference between the protocol and client), Mastodon, and Bluesky. Mastodon was fucking awful. Nostr was so cool that I didn't even try Bluesky. Although, it did take about a year for Nostr clients to get to a level I could cope with full time. My guess is that far more people will take this sort of path than the conference one. I'd assume that MOST people who will care at conferences have already bought in. Basically, a Nostr conference. I see value in that, but not some random Nostr booth at a general conference.