Devcon will arrive in 2022 (along with something fresh 🤫), but prior to our upcoming event updates, we encourage you to explore a thoroughly updated Devcon archive.
Discover the revamped Devcon Archive
Devcon’s influence extends beyond just the physical event; with that in consideration, we’ve entirely reimagined the Devcon archive. Enhancements comprise a better user experience, improved content discoverability, decreased dependence on YouTube, more decentralized content through IPFS, and participation from the community in curation.
Through all of these improvements, we aspire for Devcon to remain an unrivaled educational platform for gaining insights into the ecosystem’s past, present, and future. Continue reading to find out more about the new features (and to attempt to earn a POAP), or visit the site for yourself now.
A Curated Content Hubs
Based on initial user feedback with the original archive setup, users discovered it challenging to navigate the multitude of Devcon videos from each edition. Content discoverability and direction were insufficient, and talks were presented with minimal context or metadata.
One recurring theme that emerged from the feedback sessions was that particular talks played a crucial role in grasping essential concepts. Individuals often revisited those talks through the archive, but only because they had been previously exposed to the session on the event schedule, or had actually participated in the session.
Moreover, while the live sessions are central to the Devcon experience, the surge of concurrent content makes it quite challenging for attendees to join all the sessions they wish to experience. Consequently, many individuals depend on video replays to catch up on the material after the event concludes.
Additionally, curated content was frequently highlighted as a means to introduce users to new concepts and innovative viewpoints that otherwise might have been overlooked. One of the most consistently uplifting pieces of feedback we receive concerning the Devcon in-person experience is the unexpected learning and insights that attendees garner when engaging with content they had not originally planned to attend. We aimed to seize this opportunity and enable the community to help shape this moment of joy by suggesting playlists in specialized content areas. If you’re interested in participating, please take a look at the Road to Devcon Quest ahead for community-curated playlists.
Enhancing Content Discoverability
From a user-centric perspective, our aim was to ensure that navigating, filtering, and accessing content in the Devcon archive is as straightforward as possible, tailored to your specific interests and expertise level.
The updated archive has been completely rebuilt with a mobile-first approach, enabling you to access your preferred Ethereum developer materials across any device. Thanks to an extensive range of metadata now available in the archive, you can search and filter videos using various parameters. Effortlessly locate content based on the speaker, talk descriptions, Devcon tracks, keywords, expertise level, or specific Devcon event editions. You can also explore a diverse selection of curated and suggested playlists to aid in discovering intriguing and captivating content.
Note: If you are a speaker included in the Devcon archive and wish to assist in enhancing the content description (or prefer to edit your speaker biography), please submit a PR directly on the archive GitHub page, or reach out to us via email.
Decentralize Everything!
A fundamental goal of the Devcon team this year is to utilize and integrate core Web3 technologies that yield clear advantages for attendees and virtual participants.
Internally, our dependency on centralized platforms raised concerns due to the increasing threats of deplatforming and censorship of services and websites. We aimed to guarantee that all Devcon content is censorship-resistant, available globally, and consistently accessible for interested individuals to engage with.
Thus, we chose to fully incorporate IPFS as a component of the Devcon archive experience. IPFS is a distributed system for storing and accessing files, websites, applications, and data. Learn more about IPFS here. Now, you can access all previous Devcon content hosted on IPFS, easily reachable through the archive via the IPFS video player tab. We also hope to encourage users to pin their favorite content on IPFS to enhance accessibility and indicate their preferences regarding the content types they enjoy most and want to share with others.
Special appreciation to Andrew and Carson from the Textile team, as well as Dietrich, Adin, and Molly from Protocol Labs for their ongoing support regarding IPFS and Filecoin. We also extend our thanks to the EF DevOps team for handling the significant task of managing and uploading the extensive number of videos to IPFS. 🙏
Road to Devcon Quests
To commemorate the ongoing journey towards Devcon, and to inspire community engagement, we will be introducing two additional quests connected to the Devcon archive and the fantastic content available through the Road to Devcon quests.
Pin the Archive
In order to make access to the material more resistant to censorship and decentralized, we aspire to see a substantial amount of the Devcon material pinned by users leveraging the archive. To guarantee that content remains on IPFS, and is not removed during garbage collection (a procedure for eliminating obsolete content), data can be pinned to one or multiple IPFS nodes. Pinning enables you to manage disk usage and data preservation. Users can use this capability to pin any content they wish to keep on IPFS indefinitely. If you are among the first 100 individuals to pin your preferred sessions to IPFS and contact us on our Road to Devcon Discord, we will provide you with a unique, limited edition POAP. Discover more about pinning, and about joining the Road to Devcon Quest here.
Participants within the community should have an equal chance to assist in curating the material on the Devcon archive. We encourage all interested individuals to contribute curated playlists that offer insight into a fundamental subject area or formulate a historical account that can be easily understood by newcomers or those wishing to explore a specific topic more thoroughly.
Here are some instances of curated playlists: The Rise of Smart Contract Languages, Execution Layer. Kindly compile your playlists and submit a PR on the Devcon archive GitHub. If your playlist is selected, you will receive a unique POAP as part of the Road to Devcon Quests. Discover more about joining the Quest here and/or access the GitHub here.
What’s Next?
We continually observe opportunities to enhance the archive but would like to obtain your input on what would provide the greatest benefit. As Devcon nears, we will persist in integrating user accounts to assist you in creating your personalized playlists, favorite discussions, and much more. We also aim to closely link the Devcon live-streaming process with the archive to ensure that the material is readily available right after the forthcoming Devcon, along with the pertinent supplemental information.
Should you have any additional suggestions to enhance the Devcon experience or the archive, please explore the Devcon Improvement Proposal Process to understand how you can become an essential part of this year’s Devcon planning.
Congratulations to the Devcon and Web teams for advancing the project forward 🚢.
