Cryptocurrency conferences provide a chance to absorb seminars, panel discussions, and keynote speeches from leading industry figures, and to conduct business face-to-face. At least that’s their official purpose. Unofficially, they’re an experiential extravaganza that puts some of the world’s most famous music festivals to shame.
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Crypto Conferences in 2018: Less Studying, More Partying
There were moments at the Futurama Blockchain Innovators Summit, held in Dubai on May 3-6, when you could have sworn you were at Burning Man. It wasn’t so much the appearance of Brock Pierce as star panelist, a man so enamored with Burning Man he actually got married there. Rather, it was the daily itinerary in which blockchain talks were squeezed in around networking events instead of vice-versa.
“The most likely way to get me to attend your conference is to throw really good parties,” chuckles Brock Pierce midway through an Altcoin Buzz video of the event. The organizers of Futurama, which included Coinsbank, duly obliged, throwing a lavish series of parties and meetups that included a harpist playing in the middle of the desert; fireworks; dune-riding in 4x4s; and a lavish final party hosted on one of the largest yachts in Dubai. Instead of adhering to a rigid schedule, the conference would start once everyone had assembled each morning, which meant that everything ran fashionably late. No one seemed to mind.
The setting for the Futurama after-party in Dubai
Face-to-Face > Inbox-to-Inbox
Catering aboard the yacht at the Futurama Blockchain Conference
One of the reasons why conferences such as Futurama and Consensus have come to be defined by their hospitality rather than their itinerary owes less to one upmanship and
