When welcome to the Bitcoin show episode one. I'm Bruce Wagner. I'm Plato. And I'm Ed. And welcome to the show. We're broadcasting live from New York City and live to tape. So this is our absolute first episode of the Bitcoin show. And today's episode is brought to you by our sponsors CarpeVM Video Marketing. Seize your market, say it with video. CarpeVM.com. And Mezzy Grill, where authentic Mediterranean food meets modern flavor. MezzyGrill.com, 8th Avenue at 55th Street here in New York City, just a couple blocks south of Columbus Circle. And US Gold Coins, our trusted advisor for excellent investments in rare gold and silver coins. USGoldCoins.com. The real Plato with us visiting New York. He's on, well tell us about what you're doing, what you're up to. Thank you, Bruce. I am on the first-ever Bitcoin road trip. My objective is to get across the entire country spending no US dollars at all, only bitcoins. And I moved out of my house in Hartford this past Saturday, so I've been traveling for one week now. And where are you going? You can see on this map behind me that, yeah, pull it up. I started out in Hartford. I took a quick stop in Boston and went across to Schenectady, New York. And next I'm heading down the coast and across towards Los Angeles. How long do you think it's going to take you? Well, it's taken me a week to get from Hartford to New York City. So more than another week, definitely. I'm thinking probably a month and a half, two months to get across the country. Right. Cool. And so you're basically depending on the donations and do you have some bitcoins that you're starting off with or how are you doing it? Yeah, I started off, I have basically my life savings, which is not, it's fairly modest. A few hundred bitcoins, which will give me a good portion of the way. And I've already received several donations from community members. So I'd like to thank everybody who's donated, including Bruce and Ed. Yes, no problem. As well as everybody who's put me up for a night and given me any other kind of support, because I can't do without you guys. But the main idea is that you're traveling across, you're the first human who's traveled across the United States spending no dollars, only Bitcoin. That's correct. So how did you line up? I mean, how are you going to line up what you need, like in the way of food and gas and lodging, only using Bitcoin? Well, there's the rub, right? So far, I've found people who are willing to trade me gasoline and food for bitcoins. And I'm going to have to do that the entire way. When I was in Boston, I stopped at MIT and I met community member Llama. So Llama sold me a tank of gas. I paid him some bitcoins. Transaction cleared. I went on my way. And was it set at gas station or they had jugs of gas or something? No, no, we went to a gas station. He used his credit card and filled me up. Okay, okay. I just figured along the way people would have like big containers of gas or something. Master current visa is always in the loop somehow. Unfortunately, yeah, until until we can manage to get a, you know, shell gas to take bitcoins and then working on that, working on that, it's going to happen much faster than people think. I think it's going to certainly hope so. Yeah. So so the idea is that we want to promote people using bitcoins and make people aware that they're out there and that you can actually live your life. Right. You can use them for stuff. That's I mean, that's that's the key. I tell people about bitcoins and their first question is, well, what's why are they? Why are they good? What's important? What can I do with them? And I mean, that's the important question. Once you can do everything with them, there's, you know, no really good reason to use anything else. But at the moment, it's it's tricky. I'm expecting I'll have more than a couple of ventures on my travels. Yeah, I see over here, this there's a big gap in here in the West Coast that there's no one. Yep, after after Mississippi or so, I have, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, about five or six pins. And that's that's more than a thousand miles in BC. It make it tricky by then. But I'm hoping that people will start following my adventures. So as I as I travel, I'm writing down my stories, I'm taking some videos. I'd like to make some podcasts. And I'm certainly hoping to put some more content on the Bitcoin show. Right. And let me ask you about how did you select this route that we're looking at? Is was there some strategy involved in in determining your route? It's not the most direct route, is it? That's true. It's certainly not most direct route. I had I had a couple, couple things that made me choose this. First of all, I've lived in the Northeast for most of my life, and it's always been cold. And I I really would like to see some warm states. So I wanted to pursue a southerly route and try and get across. And I like to I like to see a lot of the US as well. My, my primary motivation here is really I want a good adventure. I want a good story. And these Yeah, I was gonna ask you the colors like the green or what? So the it looks like the red are people who have offered gasoline, gasoline or lodging or something like that. And the what are the blue ones? Blue pins are people who have offered me lodging. And usually you get usually gas as well. Oh, I see red is gas and red gas, lodging and food and other things. And then what green is sites that you wanted to see green is interesting things along the way along the way. I got you. Okay, that's not recording. This map is actually publicly viewable and publicly editable. editable. So if any, if any of our viewers are are interested in helping me out on this trip, you can you can go to the real play.com. And I have a well a I have my stories. I also have a link to this map. You can open it up in Google and just drop a pin on it. And that that could be your house if you're willing to let me sleep for a night or maybe a gas station nearby if you want to buy me some gas in exchange for bitcoins. Or if you just know something cool in your state, I'd certainly be glad to have that pin on the map. So I have a possible destination. And what do you perceive to be your biggest challenge throughout throughout all this? My biggest challenge is almost definitely going to be gasoline. So far, it hasn't been too too problematic. I've I've met up with a number of people who I've already met who I've known personally and it's it's easy to convince them to sell me gas for bitcoins. Right. It's going to be a little bit trickier once I'm in the middle of Kansas and I have to convince people that, you know, this Bitcoin has value and you should sell me gasoline for it. Well, hopefully there we have viewers that are going to see this. And if you find yourself, well, if you go to the real Play-Doh dot com or Twitter at the real Play-Doh, right? Then then they can Yeah, let's see. So one of these Yeah, there we are. So Twitter dot com slash the real Play-Doh or, you know, as you know, on Bitcoin on Twitter, it's at the real Play-Doh, or the real Play-Doh dot com that is your blog. And at the bottom, there's an item where you can click on the map and you can actually see the live interactive map. So if they find themselves that that they live somewhere on this route, they can contact you just by emailing your Twitter right? Sure. And also, you said you're going to have a laptop on the in the actual car on the road, right? Of course. Yeah, I have my laptop with me and I have my T mobile G one that's actually the very first Android phone and it's been rock solid and reliable. I tried to play Angry Birds on it today and it was maybe two frames per second. So it's not really cool for that. But I can certainly plug it into my laptop and use it as a tethered wireless connection. So I will have internet access along the way. I will be continuing to write and post videos and stories for this entire route. Unless I hit sell dead spots, then I might have a couple days of trouble. Hopefully not a couple days if you're taking mostly interstates. And the I recognized some people like Eric, see Eric in Denver, he's already on your map. Some people we know. So from the Bitcoin forum, there's a community obviously of people. But and you know, you don't have to explain Bitcoin to them. In fact, like they're actually it would be the equivalent of them buying Bitcoin for dollars. Because if they're going to put, you know, whatever $50 worth of gas in your car for 50 Bitcoin, then it's it's sort of like them buying Bitcoin from you along the way. In effect, sure. Yeah. So which is cool. That's all good. Yeah, that's great. And now Bitcoin is like about a dollar now. It went back up to a dollar. I'm hoping it stays there. Yeah, it makes the ones that have more valuable. Yeah, that's what we were saying that if you if you, you know, what would be really fascinating is if you get some donations along the way, and if the value of Bitcoin was to keep on going up to a dollar 50 or $2 during your trip. And then the trip actually ended up costing nothing. That would be so cool. That would be pretty impressive. I'm not going to bank on it. Actually, let me go back for one minute. Let me, Bruce mentioned that if you if if you do live along this route by all means drop some pins on there and help me out. However, even if you don't, please still consider putting a pin on the map or two because this route is tentative. If it turns out that maybe Spencer in Fayetteville, Arkansas has some engagement or some reason why I can't stop by, I might I might instead go through Texas or Oklahoma. So the more options I have, the better I can plan and the more likely it'll be that I can succeed. So any help is appreciated. Yeah, well, we're on board with you. Is there is there any chance that your route might change along the way? Yeah, that's what you just said. Oh, it might. Yeah, I'm considering going through Texas, New Mexico, New Mexico and Arizona because I could probably shave off 6700 miles if I don't go up through Denver and down through Las Vegas. The other problem with going through Las Vegas is that myself impose rule on this trip is I'm not allowed to spend any dollars. And I've never been to Las Vegas. And I kind of don't want to waste my first trip to Las Vegas without being able to spend a few dollars. You're going to need to find a slot machine that takes Bitcoin. That would be oh my gosh. So this is this is really revolutionary. I mean, this obviously this is our this is only one TV's first episode of our first show. So this is a real first for us. And obviously it's a first for the whole world Bitcoin itself. I always tell my friends that you know, we're not in the ground floor of something big here. We're in the basement just like one or two steps up. This is really, really big. And we're before the very beginning of it. It's so I completely agree. Yeah. It's just so exciting. Isn't it to be like a pioneer in something that's just you just know the more you know about it, the more you realize that this is going to change the whole world like the internet did. You know, I think there's an Oregon trail joke here somewhere. What is that? I'm not sure that's I failed. But you know, across the country on Bitcoins, right? It's somewhere. Exactly. Like the Wild West totally totally. And so what is I mean, besides the altruism of it? Like what is motivating you to do this? Well, I want to venture and the only other real component is the altruism. I want to help Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin is a really impressive system. And I think it has potential to make some incredible changes. But in order for that to happen, it's going to have to hit some critical mass and become much more widely adopted. I don't think it's going to be that hard to do it. It's it's obviously, well, a pretty impressive currency already. And like you said, we're not even at the beginning yet. So I'm just hoping to accelerate the process a little bit. Good. So let me let me ask you this when I mean, we've kind of been talking, assuming that we're talking to a Bitcoin community audience.  When somebody asks you has no idea what you're talking about? First of all, what is a Bitcoin? Where can I get it? What can I do with it? Why would I use it? What are your answers to those basic questions? Alright, so if somebody has never heard of this, my my elevator pitch would be the following. So let's say you want to transact some business with someone in another country, and you're probably going to send dollars to them, you're probably going to use the internet, maybe use Visa, maybe you will use PayPal, maybe a bank transfer. All these are intermediaries. And some of them are better than others, but they all have their own fees. They all have their own restrictions. And none of them are really perfect. Bitcoin is a way to remove these intermediaries. So I can directly send money to you. It's it's the people's currency. And I think I think that in itself is really one of the most important things that you can grasp about Bitcoin. Well, people have the question, so but who controls Bitcoin? Who issues it all that? Sure. What do you say? So there isn't any sensual entity. There's no bank or company or government in the middle of the spider web. It's the network of people and they all agree on a set of rules. And those rules govern things like how do we make new coins? How do I get coins from Alice to Bob? How do we prevent people from cheating? And these rules were designed carefully enough that they so far appear to work perfectly. Yeah. The analogy I use sometimes is that it's like it's more like email that you can't stop it.   So I heard a quote recently, what was about actually was about internet censorship, that the internet views censorship as as a malfunction, and it routes around it. And I love that idea, because it's true when you're, you know, any anybody who tries to censor anything on the internet, it just doesn't matter that it's detected and it just all the information goes around it. Not only that stop it, but you end up making a Streisand effect where attempting to restrict that information points you out, you get called out like you're the censoring entity and more people start hearing about it and it backfires. Yeah, bad PR, to say the least. Yeah. So, so Bitcoin is decentralized. There's no central issuing authority. It's absolutely like peer to peer technology. It can't be shut down by anybody without literally without shutting down the internet. Sure. It can't be hacked because it's the state of the art in in in cryptography and cryptographic cryptographic technology as it is today until we reach quantum computing or something in the future. But you know, that that's going to be like a never escalating thing technology, of course. But basically, it's it's at least as secure as all the world's banking, if not more. So it's really, really exciting in that people are actually buying and selling products and services, as well as currency dollars, euros, yen, ripples all over the world. That's true. You shouldn't forget, though, that it's still fledgling.  If you if you spend, you know, several hundred million dollars to buy GPUs or hashing power, it's conceivable that you could attack the network in some fashion. It's it's fairly robust. And you couldn't like steal people's bitcoins, right? But you you might be able to at least cause some mischief. So I'm hoping that I can get that possibility out of the way by making it more popular. Yeah, the more popular that it becomes the more computers are on this big web of a network and the more powerful, the more robust and secure it will be, right? Right. The more people use it, the stronger it gets. Right. And do you want to tell us some of the ways that you buy Bitcoin or traded them or sold them? Sure, I actually sold some silver quarters to Ed for some bitcoins today. Yeah, who's Ed? Oh, yeah. And yeah, get pulled up. I actually sold my television for bitcoins. For 150 bitcoins, I posted on Bitcoin forums and on the Bitcoin OTC channel saying I'd like to sell my television for 150 bitcoins. I was contacted by an interested party. We set up a clear coin transaction. So thank you Gavin. And we ended up successfully completing it. So he got the TV, I got the bitcoins, and that's good for what three tanks of gas. That's right. And that's what you're using as part of your initial. Yes, it is. Yeah, just for the audience who doesn't maybe didn't didn't catch all that the the reference to clear coin is clearcoin.com is a new venture that Gavin Andreessen, is it? Yeah, Google, I think it's clearcoin.appspot.com. But if you Google, if you Google the word clearcoin, you'll you'll definitely find it. Okay, so it's this new project that is basically, it's an escrow service for Bitcoin, because Bitcoin acts like cash, it's an irreversible transaction when you send Bitcoin, it's just like handing some stranger or whoever cash. And so therefore, if you're buying and selling a merchandise with some unknown person like eBay, somebody you don't know, you can actually request or they can request that the money be sent to this third party escrow. And then when the goods are received in good condition, they can click a button and release them on money. In fact, the human has a way that if you don't trust that the person is going to play right and actually release it, you can ask them to set up, like if you really don't trust them, you can ask them to set up a charity escrow where I read this on his site, that they put the money into this escrow. And if and if they don't release it to you, then the money will go to charity and not be refunded to them. So there's different options. The benefit of that is so that they really don't have any, they don't gain anything if they rip you off. They can't get their coins back. Exactly. Exactly. So it's a pretty cool. I think it's a needed thing. It's kind of like what eBay advertises to be, but really isn't always, you know, the idea that you can really safely transact business with strangers because of the reputation of it. And if you don't get what you're supposed to get, then you'll get your money back. And in this way, it's it's it's better because it's cash. And when you receive your goods and you know they're in good condition, you can click a button and release the money. After that, you can't get it back though. You know, with PayPal and even Mastercard Visa, they've been under reverse transactions, you know, even six months after the fact, which is just wrong. It's not to mention all the exorbitant fees and so forth. Well, it's attractive to some people. It's attractive to the shareholders of of eBay, I guess, in PayPal. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But I think, yeah, this Bitcoin definitely is the like you said, it's the people's money. And it also works for, you know, not only like massive quantities, millions of dollars it could work for. It could also work for micro payments. Yeah, totally. So I always think of this that that this could be the thing that really works finally to monetize the web because right now, people have a YouTube video that gets 80 million views or something. And and the joke is what they're going to get paid in bit in YouTube dollars or something. And you know, it's like they're YouTube stars, you know, but they don't have anything to show for it.  And and you know, people have said, you know, if like this one acquaintance of mine who created a film on YouTube called Money as that, he said, if I had a nickel for every person who's seen my videos, I'd be a multimillionaire. Yeah, he's got millions of viewers. And I said, now you actually can. So this could be a way to monetize web content, whether you're a musician or an artist, a filmmaker or a blogger or whatever, software developer or whatever, you ask for donations and people I think are happier to tip and the tip jar on their way out, rather than hitting a paywall. It's that you can't read that article until you better, you know, enter your credit card and pay up front. Sure. That's another inherent advantage. I agree with you that bitcoins are a great way for micro micro transactions and micro payments. Because one of the biggest things is that you don't need an account, you just need to have some bitcoins and then you can send some bitcoins very, very easily once you have the system set up. Like an email address, even, you know, if you think about it, really, it's true. Even homeless people have email addresses. I mean, they don't have a cell phone or anything. They could, theoretically. I mean, I don't know if they all do, but they do. A lot of them do. And it's not, it's just so easy because you can go to the public library, you can get on the internet, you can create an email address, and you can create a Bitcoin account just as easily. So literally, you know, a homeless person and none of that, but a child who's too young to open a bank account, you know, you could be 13 from your paper out and have bitcoins. I mean, it's, it's just freedom and micro amounts.  Or to my Bitcoin road trip. Or to your Bitcoin road trip or anything you want to donate to, you can send a nickel and it costs exactly a nickel. Right. It's just as easy as sending 200,000 Bitcoins. Right. Exactly. Yeah, so. Which is really revolutionary. Yeah. You can't do that through Visa and PayPal because the fees will eat you out. Exactly. Exactly. They always want a piece of the pie. Yeah. So what is your, what are your people in your stratosphere think about you doing this? Do they even understand or do you have to do a lot of explanation? I've had to do a good amount of explanation in the past couple of weeks. So I'm, I'd like to think I'm getting fairly good at it. In general, they think it's a really cool idea. And many are skeptical that it'll work. I'm skeptical myself. It's, it's fairly ambitious. But I'm, I'm fairly confident it'll work. I have some reservations, but how do you define work? Work? I define work as if I can end up in Los Angeles without spending any dollars. Okay. Did you have to make it back though? No. That's a one way trip. So far it's a one way trip. I know. Okay. Got it. Yeah. I, I'm intending on keeping an eye on Craigslist postings, career builder postings and looking for a job along the way. By trade and electrical, I'm an electrical engineer. I lost my job in January, unfortunately. And I figure now that I have nothing to lose. Why not, why don't travel across the country on bitcoins? Perfect. Are you willing to work for dollars instead of Bitcoin or we'll only work for employers that will pay you in Bitcoin? No, that'll, that'll make it a lot easier. So I'm really narrow it down if you want to. Right, right, right. I'm willing, I'm willing to exchange whatever services I have along the way. You know, maybe help you set up Bitcoin on your computer and take a couple of bucks. Yeah, I mean along the road trip. You're very technical. So you should get some business. You mean people that are along the route of your road trip that need some, you know what, their computer scan for viruses or Bitcoin setup or any kind of computer work or technical work, you're willing to do those services. So I'm willing to accept dollars, but I'm not willing to spend the dollars on anything except bitcoins. I'm making the exception for bitcoins. And actually, tolls are kind of an exception as well. I have an easy pass. And I'm, I'm a, my parents are actually covering the easy pass costs on paying them with bitcoins. So I'm attempting to not cheat. And if you want, you can send any cash that comes your way. And we'll replace them with bitcoins for you. Kind of the same idea, I guess. Yeah, that's that's true. There's there's several entities throughout the country who are willing to take cash in exchange for bitcoins. One of which is you guys. Yeah, perfect. And you can also use Google Maps to wrap to, there's a setting to avoid toll roads. I don't know if that's 100% going to work because, you know, you might, you might find that's the really the only way you want to go on your route. But and you were, are you thinking about going down Florida down to all the way down to Miami and I've been considering I've been considering going all the way down to the end of Florida and back up because I have a couple of people who have committed to selling me some gas along the way, maybe, maybe a bed, but floors pretty big. And my my car is 130 139 thousand miles on it now. And I'm a little skeptical as if it'll manage to get across the country. So if it ends up breaking down somehow, that'll that'll certainly be one one one for the blog. Yeah, for sure. So you're going to you're going to blog about it on your blog.  You'll be online pretty much the whole way. Sure. And you're going to also I hear you've got a flip camera. So you're going to do video updates for us and you're going to send them to us so we can in our weekly show we'll be able to do a little segment of your status updates along the way each week. That's right. Community member J Crow. He he was kind enough to lend me a flip camcorder. And I've I've been testing it out. It works perfectly. So thank you, J Crow. Thank you. I will certainly be using that extensively along the way and documenting the entire trip. So don't don't flip phone and flip camera and tweet and try and drive all at the same time.  Yeah, you got to stay legal or else you're not going to be able to pay your tickets. That's true. That's true. I don't know if there's any cities that accept Bitcoin for tickets yet. So OK, well, this is a good time. I want to I want to take just a quick moment and thank our sponsors. Carpe Vm video marketing. Seize your market. 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That's also 1-800-468-2646 or 1-800-HOTCOIN. Check them out and thanks so much. Be sure when you contact our sponsors, be sure and thank them for sponsoring this program on OnlyOneTV.com. Thanks so much. Thank you. We want to we want to bring up some guests that is something that's happening right here in New York. It's kind of evolved from a meetup. We started a meetup dot com group for Bitcoin. The first one ever, to my knowledge, but it's meetup dot com slash Bitcoin, which is the New York City Bitcoin users meetup, right? So as a result of that, we actually discovered a whole bunch of amazing developers who actually met through this meetup and which is happening every month. So we keep meeting more people and more developers. Well, the developers have kind of spawned their own little group off from the meetup and they're calling themselves Bitcoin Labs and they're they're just doing some amazing work. They've been having a weekly hackathon, which is basically a let's get together and program, sit down and program, you know, make make good software together every Saturday for weeks now. So we want to check in with them. They're right here in in New York, but we've got them remote here on Skype. And they're doing a hackathon at this moment. Yeah, yeah, they're actually doing actually got a few things to share with us today. It's exciting. So we've got a hackathon in progress. And so let's bring them up and on the screen here. And they have a new website called Bitcoin Labs dot com. If you want to check it out and their Twitter handle is on on the screen now. So yeah, so for those of you listening to audio on Twitter, they're twitter.com Bitcoin Labs and their website where you can check out for more information is Bitcoin Labs dot com and their email, you can also reach them by email contact at Bitcoin Labs dot com. So we've got Andrew, Mark, Gabriel and Sheldon over there. Let me switch. Say hi guys. Can you hear us? Hello. Let me turn up the audio so we can hear you a little bit better. So hey guys. Oh my god. There it is. Oh, there. Oh, screen saver kicked it. Okay, cool, cool, cool. So so we got on the we've got Andrew on the left. And who's that behind you? Is that Gabriel? Yeah, that's Gabriel. Hey, Gabe. And and who have we got over on the right? Sheldon and Mark, Mark's on the right. Sheldon's on the left, right? Cool. So you're hacking it out at Mark's. Is that is that Mark's lab, right? Yes, you're taking a picture of us while we're watching you. Cool, cool. Oh, technology. What kind of what were you guys at? Like where you at? So this is this is Prometheus Fusion Labs. And this is a nuclear fusion research laboratory. We're doing open source nuclear fusion here. And that's a whole other story, but I'm also into Bitcoin. And one of the projects that we're doing here recently is a Bitcoin ATM machine. We'll show you that now. Cool. This is the ATM. I think Bruce has got a picture on the he's going to get a picture on the screen, too. Wow machine that we bought on eBay. Okay, and we're in the process of hacking this into a Bitcoin ATM machine. I think the world's first. Awesome. So you bought this. You found an ATM on eBay. Let me get this straight. You found an ATM on eBay because like, of course, where else would you buy an ATM? And by the way, were there a lot of ATMs for sale on eBay? Oh, yeah. So you picked the best one. All right, cool. It's 100 bucks. And did you already know how to how to program for an ATM? Or did you have to learn? Well, we haven't really done it yet. I mean, I'm taking it apart now and kind of learning as I go. But no, I have no experience. No experience. Okay. Do you know what do you know what operating system it runs? I think we're it's going to run Linux. We're going to basically take all the electronics out of it and interface directly with orders that spit the cash out in the screen. Okay, you got the this is the cash dispenser itself. Oh, this is dispenser mechanism. And this is the cash box here. So this cash box can hold $50,000 US. I was right. I won the prize. He was making his guess earlier how much an ATM holds. And I said, you know, I didn't want to guess too high because I know they run out over the weekends. They used to run out a lot over the weekends that say out of cash at a holiday or something. So $50,000. That's about right. So so you're not worried about what operating system they run or anything. You're just gutting it, taking the components and you're going to write your own code.  A blood computer, of course. Oh my gosh. So you could actually make this ATM like the size of an air freshener if it wasn't for the cash dispensing part of it. Right. But the ATMs are big and heavy is so that people don't walk off with them. You can't just put your arms around it and take it. That's true. Otherwise it could be the size of a cell phone. Wow. So all right. And then where are we going to position this? We're going to find a sponsoring merchant in Times Square, like TGI Friday or something and put it in the lobby of the Times Square restaurant so people can go in and use it. I was thinking the first place you put it is Hacker Conferences. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, wherever the Bitcoin is. As long as it's not too heavy. If you're going to carry that thing from conference to conference. But that's what freight is for. Can you make two? Are you have any back orders? Well, first of all, wait a minute, I want to ask you this for the audience because what is this ATM going to do? What is different about this ATM than any other ATM? Well, this ATM, what you'll do is you'll send it Bitcoin and when it gets it, it'll dispense the equivalent amount of cash. I'll send it Bitcoin. How would I send it Bitcoin? Well, we're still kind of figuring that out. But the way it looks now is that the screen will display a QR code and from your mobile phone, you will use that, you'll send Bitcoin to the address on the screen. And then it'll get it and then it'll be like great, got your Bitcoin and here's the cash. So with my smartphone app, I just scan the QR code from the front of the ATM and I hit send a hundred dollars of bit worth of Bitcoin or 100 Bitcoin and then the US dollar currency or whatever assuming it's US dollars is just going to pop right out of it. Basically, if we can make it work, I don't have to press any buttons or any enter any pin code or have any card or anything. Wow. That's what it'll do is whatever it can't dispense in US dollars, the change it will just send back to the address that it got it from. But it can't change. Oh, if you sense much or, you know, when it goes to their nearest $20 bill, there's going to be some change left. Right. It's going to be obviously based on that moment's exchange rate, right? Right. Have you figured out how you're going to determine that? I'm guessing, right? Make a little, you know, profit for your. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, that's the American way. Absolutely. Just remember that services like my Bitcoin, if you send the change back to the address it came from, that's not necessarily going to go back to the person who you. That's true. That's something I've become aware of in the last week or so. I haven't really thought about that yet. But yes, future work, future work. That's excellent work you're doing there. What else are you guys doing? Yeah, so give us an update also on the the app development that you guys are working on there. We're flying all over the place. Yeah, there you are. So we're working on getting a really basic Android app up and then we're going to make it increasingly awesome over time. So all sorts of Paranoia features like tour by default. Tour by default and completely offline use. For example, you would show the ATM QR code with your private key and the ATM would take it from there. So you don't have to use network access at all from your device. So yeah, fun Paranoia features coming later. Nice integration with cash registers. I mean point of sale machines first for pizza and coffee. But yeah, at first, just incredibly basic, hold some cash on the phone and send it or say you. OK, so this app is going to actually be a real Bitcoin client that will have its own wallet in the phone. Yeah, the keys are stored only on the phone. OK, probably not a good idea to store hundreds of thousands of dollars there for a couple hundred or a few twenties. Yeah, absolutely. Unless you're Bill Gates and that's pocket change. But OK, so you can send. Will it be able to? Well, I'd be able to put in like twenty five dollars in US dollars and it'll automatically do. Oh, there it is. Look at that. Wow. Send, receive. Oh, my gosh. Send, receive. That's that looks too complicated for me. I'm not sure if I can figure it out. But for you, so you hit receive and then it's going to display the QR code and the other ones hit send and it scans the QR code. Wow, look at that. Put that back, the QR code. Yeah. Yeah. So here's the phone is going to receive and put it on the phone. Right. In the QR code format. And then this phone is going to scan the camera, right? So it's the scan button right here, the scan. Right. And I just put it over like this and go beep there. You got it. There you have it. Perfect. It says all of it. It says the address. Wow. And then I hit confirm. We'll say. Oh, my gosh. Still works. Still works. Now that's awesome. What if I'm not what if we're not in the physical proximity? Can we do this like over, you know, over the phone? You know what I mean? Like if you're in LA and I'm in New York, can I still send you bitcoins through my app and your app without the QR code? That's a very interesting idea. We might be able to work something out. Yeah, there's lots of ways you could transmit that invoice from one person to the other. The address they want to be paid that you can just email me your Bitcoin address and I can copy and paste it, right? Yeah, or you just click that link and it'll open up anywhere on the Android system. If you have a link that's a Bitcoin invoice like Bitcoin called Bitcoin address. Yeah, and you click that, it'll open up this app. OK. So yeah, just other channels like email. Yeah, lots of ways you can transmit that address. OK, that's so sweet. So I know we've talked before about so many features. I mean, it's just like unlimited the possibilities in the initial version that you're going to have available to beta test once it's ready. What what do you what will the most basic features that it will include be? Yeah, it'll store money, it'll store keys on the phone and you can send and you can receive. That's it. That's it. We should have that working within a week and then we will make it increasingly awesome in a lot of ways. I'm really glad to hear that. People have been clamoring on the forums for many months for an accurate client. Yeah. Oh, and also there are other people around the world that are obviously they're interested in not only interested in this, but actually other developers who are doing similar projects. And so, you know, collaboration is always really beneficial for everybody. So if they want to contact you, they can go to bitcoinlabs.com and that's going to give them all the details of how to reach you and your GitHub accounts and email. And also Twitter, right? At Bitcoinlabs. OK, perfect. So they can give them all of you. Right now, I redirects to the GitHub group, Bitcoinlabs. OK. It's just an informal group we made on GitHub. Yeah, if anyone wants to join, Bell means we'll add you. Cool. Yeah, just developers hacking on Bitcoin stuff. Yeah, perfect. So here in New York, we meet up once once a week and. This is so exciting right now. First, the Android client, then later on what we want to make a high frequency trading exchange like a really high speed matching engine for the bids and the asks and all the wrappers around that. That would be an exchange site like like Mt. Gauks or Bitcoin Central. So anybody could just say, yes, I want to run a high frequency trading site. And it's all that baggage. It'll be free open source because everything you guys do is free open source, right? Yeah, absolutely. Very non restrictive license. Right. OK, permissive. Permissive. OK, cool. And then now, like, would is there a benefit for many people to run a high high frequency trading site? Or is it better if it's just one or two? Because we need to ask an economist. But it's nice for people to be able to run. It's nice for the code to be a bond give up so that anybody can make it better or find security fly before what bad intentions do. Yeah. Yeah, we were hacking Bitcoin free software. OK, cool. And if you want to if you want to just to create a trading site in Uzbekistan and, you know, trade Bitcoin for the Uzbek Psalm, you can do that in your own currency just to proliferate the ease of translation from Bitcoin to whatever currency, right? And just like the Bitcoin network is a decentralized distributed network that by having decent like if you had just one exchange, you know, that's a weakness point. But if you have lots of people running exchanges, that gives alternative and it definitely feeds into that distributed power and strength. Right. And also just in case anything were to happen to that one, that would be a real weak link. Yeah. So let's see. What? Also, you guys have told me about another project. I don't know what you call it. We call it the warp speed Bitcoin network warp speed project. But I don't know what you guys call it. Tell us about that. You know what I'm talking about? All right. Yeah. Within a month, there will probably be a high quality Bitcoin peer to peer implementation. I started working on one a while back, then somebody else said step on this did a lot more work and it's a we should throw up a link to that. Isn't the network already peer to peer? Yeah. Sorry. What the networks already peer to peer. So what are you doing differently? Reimplementing it in in JavaScript, in with Node.js, which has some technical advantages. Yes, the fund did most of the work for what's up there now. So the point of this is to optimize it and make it super fast. Right. So first make a Bitcoin, a general Bitcoin node that's easily readable, understandable, modifiable and then experiment with ways to bring the speed up. Like propagating the inventory messages before you get the actual block. It is experimenting with things to possibly make it faster and then add preferred peers so that an organization, say Mt. Gox or a mining pool or a Bitcoin foundation of some sort could set up servers on Amazon's data centers in the U.S. East, U.S. West, Europe, Japan, and have them all talk to each other. And each of these nodes, since it's Node.js, it's massively scalable. Thousands of people can be connected to each of these. And so they, as soon as as soon as somebody publishes a transaction, it'll hit one of these and then it will hit all of them and then it will hit everybody that's connected to them. So within a couple hops, you will have reached the entire Bitcoin network. And these nodes can be doing extensive monitoring of the network to see how fast things propagate. For the non-technical or less technical people, isn't that what the network already does? Tell us what's the main difference between this and the way it works now? It's exactly the same. It's just doing it faster and having some nodes, having a few nodes which can support a massive number of connections. OK, so because of that, it's going to it's going to make it the transactions sort of guarantee that they clear in more nodes much faster like a lightning speed which adds to the security and the safety and the speed of the clearing of the transactions. Is that right? Yeah, right. The main concern is double spending. And if when you publish a transaction, it propagates the entire network within milliseconds as opposed to seconds. And you, by which I mean a point of sale machine at some pizza shop can check the network, say, 0.7 seconds later and see, OK, 700 milliseconds out, there's still no double spend attempt. So we're in the clear as opposed to having to wait much longer. So this is actually this would benefit the entire Bitcoin network and every user in the world because it's all the same network, right? OK, yeah, it's it's exactly the same network just trying to make it faster. OK, so when you like so right now when you send, I mean, let's say that that's implemented, right? Then when you send a Bitcoin payment and it says, you know, it shows up unverified right away. And then you get a verification, like one more verification every 10 minutes. You're still going to get one more verification every 10 minutes. It really won't change anything functionally from appearances, but it will just like behind the scenes. It'll increase, I guess, the guarantee or the probability exponentially that there won't be any double spends. So in other words, it'll make it safer for the coffee shop to give you your cafe latte, even though it's unconfirmed. Is that right? Right. OK. Therefore, it'll be cheaper for them to purchase insurance against there being a double spent insurance. That's a whole other project. Insurance. Wow, this is so amazing. So have you guys been? Have you guys made a lot of progress today? We will by tonight. OK, I wish we were there. Maybe we'll head out there. You know, you guys are in Brooklyn or? Yeah, Brooklyn. So our buddy Plato here, he's he's going to be heading out on the road. He's got to he's got to go to LA.  But well, thanks for joining us and thanks for the update. Thanks. You know, we'll definitely keep in touch. We're going to do this this show weekly now. So we'll be we'll be looking to you for updates and really, really exciting. Thanks for all the the info. Thanks, guys. The audience can find and all developers and anybody interested can go to bitcoinlabs.com and Bitcoin Labs on Twitter. So all right. Thanks a lot, guys. Thanks. Keep up the good work. We'll be hacking. Exactly. So that is so amazing, right? Yeah, that's awesome. The ATM. Let me let me show you the picture of the ATM that I had. That is so cool. Yeah. So and what they're working on is just amazing. I know they've gotten this. I mean, so fast. Android apps and well, three major things that they were talking about. Android apps, which is like just that's just so, so fundamental because when everybody has a smartphone app, then Bing Bing, I can send you 50 and you can send him 25 and so forth. We can just do it even in person or remotely. You can email me your Bitcoin address. I can literally go copy pastes and right from the phone without any other, without even using an online service, having it right there in your wallet. That's really slick and global. Absolutely global. That's that's going to empower every human being. Yeah. Well, even if you're it doesn't matter, like I said, if you're in Tanzania, you know, you could literally use your you've got online banking in your hand. It would make your travels faster for sure. Yeah, no delays. And then the the hyperspeed project, I call it warp speed, whatever that I don't know if they have a name for it, but what they're doing to turbo charge the entire Bitcoin network by making these super high speed nodes is so fascinating because and it's just so beautiful because that's like the beauty of open source software developers like these guys, they're they're basically volunteers working for the benefit of all mankind, which is just true. And their efforts are going to strengthen the big strength in the community a lot. Like when that application comes out, I certainly would like to buy a few Bitcoins the day before because I expect the price will go through the roof. Yeah. So I recommend that any of our listeners who would like to support these guys, send them a Bitcoin or two as tips because those those help enormously, especially just to show your support. That's that's the that's the key. It's not even funny. Yeah, you hear that, Andrew, Mark, Gabriel, and make sure that you put your Bitcoin address for tipping on your Bitcoin labs.com. Check that out. But yeah, definitely send them a tip or two because these guys work so hard every single Saturday. They're there for hours and hours working together in this little cauldron of developer geekdom. But it's what they're going to come out with what they are coming out with is going to absolutely change the world just like Bitcoin itself is going to. So, you know, this is just like exponentially leapfrogging everything. And then the ATM is just the fun icing on the cake. The idea that they'll actually he wants to take it to geek conventions, you know, initially hackfest and stuff where they'll be able to demonstrate that, you know, and you know what's going to happen that that's probably why they want to do that is they take it to these hacker conventions and they demonstrate this ATM that you just go up and scan an image and boom, money pops out and the hackers are going to go, oh my God, that is so cool. They're all going to, you know, develop like amazing even more interest in Bitcoin and developing for Bitcoin. So exponential again, it's going to explode. It's totally going to explode. That's great. So we have a few minutes. You want to give us a little laundry list of some of your needs that you want to tell everyone that you need to put it out there? Gas food. Sure. As I mentioned, gas food lodging basically gas food and lodging are the three priorities. I can I can kind of scratch lodging off the list. I have a tent. I have a sleeping bag. If anyone wants to sell me a pillow for Bitcoins, I could I could probably take that because I managed to forget that. But yeah, gas and food are the predominant predominant problems. So if you're anywhere in the bottom half of the U.S. and you'd like to help me out, head to therealplato.com, pull up my map, drop a pin on the map and get in touch with me so I know how to get in touch with you. What about like I don't know if you can can you safely carry like a gas tank, like a 25 gallon tank or something in the bag? I don't know if that's safe. That would be giant. My my my car's gas tank is 14 gallons, which gives me a range of somewhere between 250, 300 miles, which actually is there. I'm a little concerned because I don't have any gas stops, known gas stops between Jersey and North Carolina. So if you are in the Washington D.C. or the Virginia area, you could really help me out a lot. Oh, yeah, we've got there's a bit 20 meetup in D.C. So there are there are several Bitcoin users in D.C. That so when you watch this, make sure you go to the real play dot com and get a hold of him. He'll be online the whole time and get a hold of him and let him know that you'll meet him at a gas station and sell him some gas and for bitcoins. I'll appreciate it. Where else do you have like weak links in your in your route there? Yeah. Are there any other spots where? Yeah, pull it up. Let's let's let's take a look. So right now I got my car in New York City and this was actually the first time I've driven in New York City and it was a little bit harrowing. So I'm hoping it won't be quite as bad for the rest of the trip. So we got Trenton, New Jersey all the way down to North Carolina down here. That's that's the that's going to be the first tricky part. And these green pens are interesting things to see along the way. So there's a George Washington Masonic Museum, the D.E.A. Museum sounded kind of cool. Miles the monster. This is some giant concrete sculpture at a racetrack. These are all free, I imagine, right? Maybe. Some of them aren't going to be. But what I'm going to what I'm going to be invited to some of these, right? I figure I figure I'll I'll go to the the proprietor and say, hey, I'd like to check out this museum. I see you have a nominal admission fee. Can I pay you in bitcoins? And of course, the last border bitcoins and I'll launch into my spiel and explain. Hey, look, I'm blogging about this. I can give you some publicity.  They'll say, what is that? The casino tokens or whatever you're talking about. So Jacksonville, Florida to Harrisburg, Mississippi. That might be another rough stretch. Harrisburg, Mississippi to Arkansas. Basically, everything after Florida is looking a little bit trickier right now. Especially will help you get the word out, especially to Denver. Is that Tulsa Denver? That looks like a really long stretch. Yeah, that's the entirety of Kansas guys on one tank of gas. Not sure. Not sure how well it's going to work. But this is all in the corners. Yeah, exactly. This is going to be a change after the show, too. So I certainly hope so. Yeah. Oh my gosh. So we know that there are bitcoins in Kansas that are going to they're going to ring you up so they can email you and tweet you and go to your website and find all that. And yeah, so you'll be able to answer their tweets and their emails and all that stuff along the route. I'll definitely make arrangements and let them know what's the time frame that they should expect you'll be passing through. I'm not sure yet. I'm taking it one leg at a time. So last weekend, last Saturday, I decided I'll get to New York in one week. So I gave myself a week and took exactly that. Now I'm here. I probably will head south on Monday. And I I think I'd like to get to North or South Carolina by next weekend, maybe further if possible, but I I'm going to start small, see how it goes along the way. And you can always go to the map and we'll see where your car is. So that's true. You have an idea. We're out of time, but it's been great. It's been great. So thank you for joining us. And I'm glad you made a pit stop in New York City. I'm glad I did too. I greatly appreciate it. And we want updates and we want to keep track of you. So yeah, I'll certainly be in touch and I'm really glad I could be on the very first episode. I know. So exciting. Yes. All right. See you all next week. Bye bye. Take care. Thank you, everyone. Bye bye.


All right guys, what is going on? In this video we're going to talk about as myself as a fourth year medical student, would I do medical school again? Is it actually worth it? All right guys, what is going on? I'm Alex here with MD Journey, and if you're one of my subscribers, stay with me helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress. Did you say it? So in this video we're going to talk about the question, is medical school actually worth it? And I feel like I'm in the perfect part of my medical journey to answer this question. You may not trust the first or second year med student to answer this because they're just kind of going through the grind, but at this point where life is pretty nice, things are pretty chill, would I do it again? Would I go through all the stress and adversity that I went through the first three years and tell you about it? And I'm going to give you my three things that I loved about med school and three things that I didn't know or disliked about med school and then you can make the decision on whether or not I think it's worth it. So let's get to number one, which is you become the expert. So all of us have a little bit of ego inside of us and maybe a lot. And we enjoy it when somebody comes up to us and be like, hey, can you help me with this? Can you show me or teach me more about this? And we love that because as physicians, you're going to have to educate your patients day in and day out. You learn really quickly that in one month, maybe even a week, you learn more about the human body than most people will in their entire life.  Your patients, as a third year med student, even when you're just starting, are going to rely on you to explain things like diabetes, heart failure, COPD, cancer, things that they don't understand. They're going to rely on you. And a lot of you guys are probably in your late teens to early 20s. And as a 20-year-old, you're having somebody in their 40s, 50s, and 60s turn to you for advice about their medical needs and what they should be taking, you know, how they should be taking care of themselves. That's freaking powerful. I can't think of many careers where as a 20-year-old, someone's trusting me with their life. And so you becoming the expert is one of the coolest things about medical school. And it really goes understated. So number two, and I can't stress this one enough, you meet the most amazing people. Yesterday, as a fourth year med student, I was giving tours of my medical school to potential applicants. And they were asking me, what were my favorite things about med school? And I looked to one of my fellow tour guys, who is my tank mate, and I realized that, you know, he, including every other individual that I've kept a close bond with in med school, are some of my favorite things about med school. They're my favorite people. And the people I've met in med school really have made my experience. I remember back to when I was applying to med school, the interviewer asked me, like, what's something you're looking for in a med school? And I told him that I wanted four years that could remember back in a positive sense. I didn't want med school to be just a stepping stone to residency. I wanted to remember those four years. And the people you meet guys are going to allow you to do that.  And one thing I learned is that the definition of hard work is going to dramatically change in your life by the people that you surround yourself with.  And at a pure inspiration, you are going to as well. It's not only just a motivating factor. Med school requires a lot of your time and you're going to be around these people for a majority of it. So it's nice having people around you that kind of know what you're going through. That's you're able to socialize with them. You're able to study with them, cry with them, laugh with them, whatever it may be, you get through the grind together. And it's truly a community if you build it and you find the people around you that you want. So you're definitely going to look back at the people and your friends as one of your favorite aspects about medical school. So number three, and honestly I have to admit this is probably my favorite, you become a much better version of yourself. I kind of mentioned how your definition of hard work changes or your definition of a lot of things change. Your definition of compassion, caring for people, working, hard, studying, building relationships, those all truly transform. I don't really remember what kind of person I was like four years ago, but I know for damn sure that I'm a much better individual and version of that person. I can look back at my four years in medical school and realize that I've made some major strides. I'm about to become a physician in a few short months which is crazy in itself. I'm about to, I'm currently engaged and I'm about to be married to a wonderful individual. I have a side business coaching med students and pre-meds which I never imagined I would ever be doing. I'm a self-published author. I'm the healthiest I've ever been in my entire life and there's so many more things I can look back and understand that the reason I'm the person I am today is through the challenges that I face in med school. Each university makes a different and a more improved version of yourself. So med school is going to challenge you but the version that you become through each challenge and through each success is going to be totally worth it. So hopefully you're feeling a little bit inspirational knowing med school is awesome but we got to talk about the cons because anything worth it definitely has setbacks and drawbacks so we're gonna get to three things about med school that aren't so fun and may make you reconsider whether or not it's actually for you. So number one, you have to be okay with being good enough. Med school will tell you that you are not the smartest person. You are about to be humbled real quick and there is basically the saying that 50% of a med school class is going to be in the bottom 50% duh but it can hit home that 50% can be you because you will meet extraordinary individuals that are smarter than you, that work harder than you and things may just go their way.  You know, things always won't work in your favor. So you have to be okay and this is one of the most challenging things for us as pre-meds and med students who've scored really well on their exams to this point on if you're considering the seal to be okay with not being the best. You may have been your valedictorian you may have scored really well on your SAT and MCAT but you get to med school and other people have done just about the same if not more of what you've done. So you have to be okay and this is kind of the idea of the imposter syndrome I'll link a video down below on how you overcome this in med school but it's one of the biggest challenges and it really makes people self doubt whether or not they were made to be a physician. So check out that video down below if you guys want more tips on how to overcome what we call imposter syndrome in med school. So getting to number two, med school is freaking expensive. I know you guys are aware of this but I wanna tell you a quick story. I was going on a rotation and one of the fellows on my neurology rotation told me that he knew that I was spending based off of my tuition roughly anywhere from two to $500 a day to be with him. So he valued the time that I was spending with him so he wanted to teach me and that was a great perspective but I didn't realize first of all that I was spending that much every single day. So there are days where someone may have canceled a rotation and they said don't come in or there are days where I wasn't focused or I wasn't learning or paying attention in class. I paid $200 to $500 regardless of what the end result were but you have to remember that regardless or not if you have a productive day in a class or a rotation or you learned something you're still paying for it regardless. So that's kind of a stressful feeling to have knowing that you really won't make a decent salary until maybe three to seven years after med school when you finish your residency and you're actually in a technique. So the fact that the loan payments that you'll have are going to occur and you're going to have a huge loan burden if you're paying for med school with loans and scholarships you're still going to have a huge financial burden. So that's a stressful part and it really makes people can reconsider whether or not they actually want to put themselves through that. If you want more tips on managing money there'll be another video linked below on that and you guys can check out the blog post on it down below too but med school is expensive so you have to ask yourself am I willing to put myself through the financial burden hardship for a good seven to 10 years before I even start making a decent income. And the final con about medical school that really bugs a lot of students including myself is delayed gratification sucks. You want to become a physician when you go in your interviews you say I really want to help people I want to do procedures I want to do surgeries whatever it may be but even as a med student your first year, first two years may be spent in the classroom and you may not have that much clinical exposure. You want it to be on the bedside helping the patient or being in the OR or being in the ER but you have to realize that the first two years you're not going to get that much patient exposure as you'd expect it so there's a delayed gratification there. In addition to just talking about getting clinical exposure we already kind of touched on the money aspect. Many people may choose to become a doctor for many different reasons but one of the side benefits is that you make a decent income to support yourself as well as your family but you don't make that until three to seven years at least after medical school. So it's the question of one are you okay with waiting until your 30s to start living your life while a lot of your peers may be getting their first jobs in their mid 20s early 20s there is a big gap that you have to be okay with working long hours, studying long hours, studying for expensive board exams and the end result is still several years down the line and so I'm going to echo the point that delayed gratification sucks but it's part of the process. So you have to understand if you're not willing to put in the time now to get something much further down the line then you may want to reconsider your field because what I find in my classmates guys is that people even into four years of medical school are starting to reconsider their decision because they know they still have a lot more time with residency and fellowships before they even get to kind of what they consider to be the finish line because they didn't expect to put as much work as they did through three years and not really have much reward at this point. At this point we're still applying to residency we're going through more stress to get our first jobs and so they didn't expect to put so much work in for very little reward realizing that they have to put even more work in for what they want to have is their final destination which is becoming an attending physician. So delayed gratification sucks but it is part of the process. It doesn't know that it is one of the biggest drawbacks of medicine but the people that get through are okay with it. So to end the video I'm going to answer the question what I go through medical school again is the fourth year knowing what I know now and the answer every single time is absolutely yes. I feel like I can't be the person I am today who which I enjoy by the way without going through this experience and I know that I'm meant to become a physician. I'm meant to take care of people I love communicating and I love saving and changing lives as a healthcare provider and this is the career for me. What I want to study for anatomy again what I want to study for biochem again absolutely not but I know it's part of the process and the pros for me at least outweigh the cons. So for me medical school is worth it but if any of the cons I mentioned really do scare you definitely comment below send me a private message and I'll be happy to kind of help you through your decision making. It is a very important decision to make but I find that the people who make it with a lot of thought definitely enjoy the final decision that they made. But hopefully this video was helpful if it was make sure you give your boy a like for the video subscribe to the channel if you want more content like this and as always comment down below for two different reasons one so I can understand your questions and your concerns are on your medical journey I can make videos and answer questions particular to you and two if you comment down below with any question you're automatically entered for my monthly draws for my books as well as my video course for free. So comment down below join the community like the video subscribe to the channel and stop babbling I will see you guys in the next video take care guys.


Hey, everybody. So my talk is on a special anniversary I recently had, which is the 10th anniversary of Seabug, the Seattle Blender user group. And hopefully I have some valuable wisdom that I've gathered over 10 years on how to make a user group that stands to the test of time. At the end of this talk, I'll be at 24 hours without sleep. So I think endurance is the theme here. So I am a little better about me. I'm a professor at a school called the Lake Washington Institute of Technology. We have a gaming program. We have a design program. We're getting an illustration bachelor's. We have a lot of cool stuff going on. And I work there. It's like my day job. It's really fun. I'm on the internet at Ogbog. So you can tag me on Instagram, Twitter, and I just hang out. And you can also get the slides for this talk if you care about them. So what you will hopefully learn in this talk is what is a user group and why do we care? So some of you might want to start a user group. Some of you might have a user group in your town. I think one of the easiest ways to find out is just Google your city plus blender user group. And you might discover that it already exists. And you can jump on that bandwagon. And if you're already running a user group, this is something that takes a lot of work and a lot of love. And hopefully there's some stuff here where you can learn how to keep it going in the long run. A lot of them have come up and gone down. And then if you already have one, also, what can you bring to the table that's new and maybe make your user group a little better? So I don't want this to be, this is like the softest of soft skills talks here. So I wanted to have a little bit of crunch.  So start using animation nodes. It's the future. It's pretty cool. So first up, you don't really need a lot of experience to run a user group. This came up on my time hop for when the 10-year anniversary happened when I first ran it. And I had no experience doing any sort of event planning or emailing people, all the soft skills stuff that goes with this. I was also only a year and a half into learning Blender. So I was also a bad Blender user. And what's cool is a user group is a great way to sustain your constant use of Blender. And you can go from bad to OK. So yeah, you should do that. I started Cbug, the Seattle Blender user group, because I was working at a small indie game studio. When they hired me, they said, throw your education away and learn Blender. And like many people, I got angry at the left click. And then I drank the Blender Kool-Aid. And I used Blender in the pipeline. And the problem was that it was an indie game studio, where oftentimes you're the only artist on the team. And it gets lonely, and you have no one to talk shop with. And it's such a fun subject. And you want that camaraderie. And I just thought, there's got to be other people out there. So let's find them. So I found them. We started off at the Art Institute of Seattle, which is now dead. And we slowly, eventually an old professor of mine asked me to come start doing it at Lake Washington. And he really got it, Robbie Gilbert. And he was trying to build up the culture for the gaming and animation program there. And he knew that it takes people in the seats, and it takes a thing that's not on the internet to have that happen. So I moved to Lake Washington. And this ended up leading to my later teaching job. This user group has sustained a lot of stuff. I had kids over the course of that 10 years. And there is nothing like having kids to have that hobby time that you spend one month, or one weekend a month, doing Blender. And suddenly that time goes away. And so it took a lot of effort. And it took a lot of community help and the people who come to Seabug to make sure that it's sustained. And it's really cool to me that my daughter is almost at the age where she can start using Blender. She likes the sculpting tools.  And again, eventually, I owe Seabug a lot because I think a lot of my current employment is based on the fact that I ran a user group. I spent five years doing this user group before I got hired at Lake Washington. I say that they hired me because other teachers didn't want to come in on a Saturday to open the door. And so they hired me so they could give me a key. But I felt like I got trained in how to teach, which is a totally different discipline than how to do 3D stuff, long before I ever started teaching. And so now I teach in all the fun classes. I teach drawing, painting, design, 3D stuff, photography. I torture these photography students with photogrammetry. And this is my class. They're all blocked out for FERPA reasons. But we're at the Fry Art Museum where you get to do fun college stuff. It's great. So should you run a Blender user group? And I think it does require thinking about what kind of person can do this. This is something where first off, you have to think of a user group as a loss leader, to some extent. It's something that you do for free. You do as gratis. And then other things come to you. And it's different than when you have the old schtick of don't work for free if you're doing creative work. Because your name is in the marquee. And when people walk in the door, you're the first person they see. So it is something where you build a lot of connections doing it. So I like to think of my Blender user group as a loss leader. I've gotten clients through it. I've met connections. I've met some of my best friends. They're all here in the audience. And yeah! I mean, Blender users are the best. You also should be an extrovert, I think. You're going to be doing approximately, like if you were doing my model, three hours of bureaucratic email a month, followed by three hours of public speaking a month. For some people who don't like public speaking, that is torment. So don't do it if you're going to hate it. But you might be able to find the guy in your community who does like it. And you can connect. So the people who are introverts at Seabuck are like a symbiotic bond with me, where I do the talking and they shout out what I got wrong. And we love it. You also do need to have time. So this was something where I experienced a dramatic shift in time when I had kids. And I was a stay-at-home dad for a while. And I think that's something where if you already have a full-time job, you might not be able to do this. If you have that plus kids, plus you're doing karate on the weekends. So you should have a Saturday a month that you can budget for this. Or at least a Saturday a quarter. But also, do you want to hang with your favorite people? Like the people who can talk shop with Blender, I can't talk to my kids about this. I can't talk to my wife about this. My students are expecting me to talk at them about it. And it's so fun to be in a room with people who can like really talk shop about this stuff. So why do we need Blender user groups? Number one, it's networking. It's good for you and it's good for the people who attend. I have gotten jobs off of doing this and client work, but I've also seen people who come to Seattle Blender User Group do this too. Deli Valento has come and talked about the gaming book with Mike Pan. Yeah, Ian Hubert has shown Dynamo and Blender Open Movie Projects. At one point, like the Pixar guy who writes the Render Man code plugin for Blender came, his name is Brian and he works in Seattle. And like he was talking all this stuff that was super intimidating and it was so cool. I think Blender user groups are incredibly important for noobs. How many of you had a terrible experience with your first experience of Blender? I did and it's so nice if you walk up to somebody who has no idea what they're doing in Blender and you just show them right click or what is now left click.  And we can advocate for each other. So for instance, Delver is made by Joshua Skelton and some other people. And he comes to Cbug and every time he comes there he's like, look at this cool thing I'm working on for Delver. So all of you guys go on Steam and buy it, it's great. And it's cool to see all of us supporting him and him helping us out. And all the people who come to Cbug help out and it's less work for me and it's just a really good ecosystem. And I think comparing and contrasting your software options is also a thing. When you talk to Maya users, they're not talking to Blender users. They're in a Maya bubble just like we're in a Blender bubble and we can all hate the things that we hate without ever blending those bubbles. If you have a friendly place where you can actually show this stuff and it's just like, you know, it's eye catching and it instantly reads, right? I do this at a college where we have a Maya based curriculum and Maya based teachers. And the best experience they have with Blender is when I just show them, look at this cool thing you can do. And they're like, how did I, how do you do that in Maya? You figure it out. And that's when they first realized that this software has value because they don't exist in a place where they see that otherwise. So I think it's very important to do this in a place where other people can see this outside of the Blender sphere. So get off the internet, please. I also think that we need bugs because it's something that keeps you fresh. One of the things that I do is like, if I don't know what I'm doing this month, I just get on Blender Nation the night before and I find tutorials, I check the release notes and there's always something cool that I can learn in 10 minutes before Seabug and show off and it takes up 30 minutes of time. And I also think this is sort of a holistic thing that Lake Washington Institute of Technology focuses on a lot, which is the four connections. And it's just something that has to do with student retention and it's more about pedagogy than it is about 3D or art. But what we've found that's had a dramatic change is the thing that makes students successful, the thing that makes students feel like they belong in a community and prevents them from dropping out, from being disengaged, is actually having a human connection. You can't get that on the internet. The number one thing that prevents students from dropping out is learning their name. So do it. And you can't do that over the internet in the same way that you can in a user group. So if you're ready to start making a user group, here's some of the stuff I would suggest for getting the word out there. I think meetup.com is my first choice. Meetup.com is a big, robust system where if there is a city that has no blender user group, but other people have tried entering that text box, they're on a big list and the instant somebody shells out to create a blender user group for Cincinnati, they all get an email and I've had meetings where I blast Facebook and Twitter and meetup.com and we're on Blender Nation and the forums and I reach out to other groups and then there's a big crowd and I ask them where they learned about us. Meetup.com is usually the number one source. Facebook is also good. There are problems with Facebook. What I like about Meetup is that you can set things so that they recur over and over. So I have very little gardening I have to do with Meetup. I only have to actually get on here if somebody comments or if I have to cancel and that's it and that's really nice.  But Facebook also has value in that a lot of those face-to-face connections you make aren't gonna go on the giant blender Facebook group and ask a question. They like to go to the little place and ask it here where they actually know somebody and you can actually come to the next meeting to work on that problem together. It's also somewhere where they might feel more comfortable sharing their art. So this is by Matthew Herbner who's an artist who comes to Seabrook and he makes all these really cool psychedelic stuff and it's our banner. And I love seeing what people are doing because it lets me know I don't have to work as hard next week. Blender Artist is also important. I think everyone should have at least one forum post about your user group and then subscribe to it. So maybe you only did it once back in 2016 but if somebody comments and asks is this still existing? You'll get a little email saying you need to check on that and then you can go respond. I also, there's some other things I would say Blender Nation is really good and I don't know just face-to-face stuff. Twitter's good but meetup.com is really where it's at. And then I also keep a giant email list. So sponsorship is something that I was surprised to learn a lot of other user groups don't have and I oftentimes don't and it waxes and wanes. You don't need it to run a Blender user group but it really is nice and it doesn't hurt to ask. So if you look up your city there's probably many technological industries in there. Puget Systems is a company in Seattle or not Seattle but greater Seattle area who makes custom computers built for specific workflows. So they've tested every hardware combination for doing, you know, Agisoft photo scan or now it's MetaShape. Agisoft MetaShape photo scanning and they built the exact computer rig to give you the most power so that you don't have to build it yourself and you don't have to learn that a second graphics card didn't do anything for you. So they gave me 500 bucks for the year and that's really cool and go to the link. It makes me look like I'm their friend. The venue is also a place where you get a certain level of sponsorship. So finding a venue is something where you're gonna have to email a lot of places and it takes a while but try and pitch it as they're doing some sort of worldly stewardship where if they offer you that classroom for a week or just, you know, one weekend a month then you'll say look at this great college that you should go visit or look at this great business that is selling cool things or is, you know, a space that you can rent office space from. So what do we spend our sponsorship on? I think the number one thing that I like to spend it on is users but you have to start with your web cost. I don't like running a separate website but I do have to pay meetup.com and back in the day they had a giant worldwide page. We don't have that anymore. But I think it's like a hundred bucks a month. After that, I think you spend it on the users.  One thing I love doing is buying add-ons on Blender Market and then offering them up to anyone who's willing to just talk for a half hour and suddenly people are like, yeah, I want to make Nebulas. Yeah, I want the Gaffer. And suddenly they'll totally just help fill up space and it's less work for you. You can't have one person talking the entire Blender conference. And lastly, keep it simple. 500 bucks buys you about two and a half hours with a lawyer asking how to set up a nonprofit. I think if you get sued for money laundering that $500, you can just pay it out of pocket. It's not something that matters and when I surveyed user groups, every single user group agreed that don't make it an official charter thing, don't collect members. You're out there doing the work and people will usually just say the person who's gonna do all the work, yeah, they can do whatever they want with this user group. And that's the easiest way to do it. So keep it simple. Don't worry about legal stuff. So some general advice for running your user group. I have some embarrassing stories here. The number one thing I want you to do if you're running a user group is check the calendar for the institution you're at. When I was at the Art Institute, things were going great, seabug after seabug. And then on the fourth seabug or fifth seabug ever, I got there and I was so excited. I had bought some name badges at Bartels and I get to the campus and all the doors are locked and there was one security guard in there who explained that it was the day of the year where they wiped the entire campus computers for the entire school and everything was gonna be shut down.  I had to try and get on my phone and cancel it over there. The same thing happened at Lake Washington later on and it was my fault because I just didn't check my work email. In box zero, man.  So I showed up, it didn't work. That time we ended up having a better solution which is we just went to a coffee shop. This brings me to my next piece of advice which is you should cross pollinate your user group. What I mean by cross pollinating is that you don't need to stick with one venue and one time slot forever. You can mix it up. So when I had experienced that first summer with Lake Washington being shut down, I knew that it was coming the next summer and I emailed all the other campuses in the greater Seattle area. They were all cutting costs by doing the same thing during summer quarter. So none of them were open on Saturdays. I tried businesses and I was really starting to think that we would have to cancel CBug for summers from now. Then I found Academy of Interactive Entertainment which is in Seattle Center. They have a gaming program as well and they also run the Seattle Indies user group. So they said, yeah, sure, we'll just open a lab. There's a guy already there monitoring the school for Seattle Indies and it was great. It was fun to see them. And I've cross pollinated other places. So at times we've skipped CBug at the college because we just set up a table at the Seattle GNU Linux Fest and running Blender in front of people who are only in code is really fun because they have no idea what a good artist is or a mediocre artist. So you blow them away. Same thing with Linux Fest Northwest which is a little north of us in Bellingham.  And we come back and we share those stories. So I think next like two weekend, like next weekend, CBug is happening. The weekend after that, SIGGRAPH is happening and I'm talking about Krita and all the Blender users are going to be there. I would also use a simple formula for how you fill up three hours. I think three hours is the right amount. Hour one, if you have no idea what you're going to do you can always rely on this as a way to make sure you have three hours of content. Number one, just look at the release notes. Blender is amazing at having fast new stuff. And every time there's something new just look up and read the release notes the night before.  You've learned the basics of grease pencil and you can show other people how it works. This is really nice in that like you're never behind on development if you stop using Blender for a while because you always have the release notes that you read. I don't think I do that for other software. I only do it for Blender. Hour two, try and show some projects. Show your project. Try and get other users on deck to show projects. And the more you do this what's nice is you get a deep bench of people who can help out. And hour three, I would do Q&A.  And so they need you to explain it. And they have like really really simple questions like what is a normal? Or what is a vertex? And you can help them out with that. And I think helping out in noobs is really, really important. What you can do if you don't want all the pro users to be bored during that is run a one hour speed challenge. Like give a theme and say everyone make a Santa robot. And it's really fun to see the results from that too. And then, yeah. Again, another thing you can do to just spread out as a general advice is instead of Cbug you can do Seattle free open source graphic software user group. So you don't have to just stick to Blender. It's really fun to branch out. Krita is something that we've demoed a lot. I talked to, or I was one of the volunteers at the Krita booth at SIGGRAPH a few years ago. We've done Alice Vision, which is mesh room, and done free open source software for photo scanning. Basic Python skills. It's a huge hint for panoramas. There's lots more to the free open source software graphics world than Blender. And then lastly, persist. You will have a user group if you do it every month where only one, two, or three people show up. I have two people carpal with me, so it's nice because I always have at least two people. And you know what? The first Saturday of the month is sometimes 4th of July in the United States and nobody wants to go to a classroom on a nice sunny day where there's fireworks and dogs are running at the beach. So don't feel bad. If you have one bad meeting, don't decide that you're done with this extra effort every month that you have to do. So I did a survey of other user groups. We had a lot of help. This was largely through the World Blender Meetup Day group, which has lots and lots of user groups. We have one day a year where we make 24 hours worth of tutorial content, which is really fun. And first off, how old is your user group? We have a couple that's seven and eight. Apparently I'm at 10, but I think if you Google, if you looked it up on Blender Nation, there's older ones. But it's cool to hit this 10 year anniversary and I look forward to hitting 20. How often do you meet? I was surprised to find that monthly is definitely not the winner. Quarterly is, and that suddenly seemed like kind of luxury. I think when I had my kids and when I was really at their babies who can't survive on their own stage, I was effectively doing quarterly meetings. And the other thing that was nice about having a deep bench is there were days where because we had students who were on the campus and in the programs, they were able to run the entire user group without me being there. And that was really, really nice. Where does your group usually meet? Apparently, co-working spaces are really popular. Again, a lot of times Google or something in Seattle will just sweep in through the Python user group and be like, everyone gets a hat. And good job. I really think campuses are the ideal. Libraries are popular. I think because we need to advocate for beginner users on an equity level, it should be a room where there's computers available that you can install Blender on so that people don't have to bring their own laptops. Laptop parties are fun, but not everyone has a laptop. And Blender is often times for people who can't spend money on software. And on that note, I just wanted to say that I really love Lake Washington.  And this is why I think you should reach out to universities if you're thinking about running a Blender user group. A lot of the technical and two-year and community colleges in America right now are trying to advocate for student equity. And a lot of the equity gaps are based on finances. So they're pushing OER or open education resources. If you can use texts that are freely available to everyone, that means that the student doesn't drop the class because they can't afford a $100 Spanish textbook. Open pedagogy is this other thing that we started where how often have you had a class and at the end of the quarter you put your research paper in the garbage and you never read it again. Open pedagogy is a system where you make students design their own assignments, release them into the creative commons and then do that assignment. And it's so cool because they have assignments that last into the future. They might not be able to build an amazing Blender robot but they can write an assignment and that assignment is valuable creative commons also.  Again, I think like I was immediately on board with four connections because the user group is essentially that.  Left click now. And then lastly, what day of the week? Definitely Saturdays. I think Saturdays are the best. How long does your user group meet? Three hours is generally what I would suggest. That aligned with what I experienced in college and what I teach now, which is the class that you can sink your teeth into is three hours long. And do you have sponsorship? Again, I'm surprised that a lot of them don't. But again, you, if you are running a user group are in some ways a sponsor. So somebody actually summed it up. Me paying the meetup subscription and sometimes beer. So if you show up and like, I love seeing this in user, in the other people, a lot of times other people will bring a box of donuts or coffee and then it's like, cool, I didn't do that. But it's spread beyond me and that makes me feel good. Do you have a legally official organization? 100% no. Again, just do it under the table. Like there's not a lot of money on, like if you're getting a hundred bucks in sponsorship, that buys a bunch of stickers and you know, it's not really worth tracking. How do you promote your user group? Again, meetup.com, definitely something that resonates with all of the user groups is something that gets results. Facebook is also popular. Blender Nation is very important. I try and like just have a list and I go through it. And then a lot of times if I forgot and it's like Thursday and I need to do it, all I end up doing is sending the email and the Facebook group and I feel bad. But in an ideal world, you just go through all of this. And definitely keep a mailing list. So one thing that I try and do every time there's a Blender user group is sometime around the midpoint, when we take a little break, I ask people if they wanna join the mailing list and get them on the mailing list there because they're not gonna respond after the fact. And I don't know, how many additional months, hours per month do you spend on this? The usual response is around three hours. And that's been my experience. It's about an hour of prep beforehand. It's about an hour or two of sending out the emails and about an hour of preparing content if I didn't have anything. If I'm working on Blender projects for work or for school, I can oftentimes just show that and so it's not extra work. It's work I already did. But if I haven't been doing that, let's say I'm teaching like photography and drawing and I can't think of any Blender stuff to do in my classes, sometimes I have to force it and I get around Blender and do something. And then lastly, how would you rate your return on investment for running a user group? Usually people said it's really good. Kind of middling, but pretty good over there. I personally, I feel like I owe almost my entire career to this. It's not just that I networked at Lake Washington and got a teaching job that I really enjoy. It's also that I was trained for that teaching job beforehand. If you do public speaking enough, like the reputation just beats out the fear and then that's all teaching is, standing in front of people and talking a bunch. And then lastly, does your bug have a deep bench? Does it run and have content even if the main organizer is out? Kind of a mid-split between yes and no. And if you said no, this is something I would ask you to work on.  And if you are in the right institution, if they're involved in that institution, you can even get to the point where they can open the door and lock the door and you don't even have to be there. Or you could do it at like a coffee shop. And then lastly, do you have a dedicated website or just use third-party stuff? Resounding no for the most part is the main thing. I voted no because I'm not a web developer. I have a terrible website for Seabug where I was learning HTML for some reason and it was just experiment. So it was like, oh, look, if you hover over the text, it gets big. I expedite that to meet up and Facebook and stuff. Let other websites figure out how to make this stuff. Question? Oh, we got a website. I am an HTML God as the first one. Nobody voted that. We have a website from one of those user-proof spots like Weebly or WordPress was also pretty popular. And meaningless option one has 28%. And then lastly, do you cross-pollinate? So far, the majority of people said no. And this is one of the number one things I would say you should try to do. You're not in a solitary bubble of blender stuff. Look around you and you'll find adjacent stuff or other arts, but it's normally expected to be Maya-specific or Photoshop-specific. You can just go there and show your content. Try and find people who are connected to the open source community. So I've talked at Eusniak's Liza. I talked at Oskan. And it's just open source people are your people and they like seeing this tangential world. And also just go volunteer somewhere. And this was just survey results of is there anything else you would like? So it's always fun to organize. People should know about World Blender Meetup Day. So if you start a Blender Meetup, please join the World Blender Meetup Day and make a little bit of tutorial stuff. And it's really fun. What else is on here? It's rewarding and provides an amazing opportunity to learn more about Blender and be social with people in your local city who also love Blender. Again, there's a certain energy when you're around other Blender users and you're like, oh, we have this love, this deep love for the same thing. And we only get to see each other like twice a year. And you can have that energy once a month. Anyways, that's my talk, I don't know. Any questions? All right, cool, I'm done.