Community Newsletter 001

Welcome to 1729's weekly community newsletter for the week of March 27, 2022.

Recent Meeting Recap

At our most recent gathering, jonstokes#1729 presented a lightning talk entitled: "Digital Sovereignty: It's Harder Than It Looks." There was no recording, but the slides are available here. He'll probably write it up for the newsletter, soon.

Announcements

Lightning Talks ⚡️

We'd like to begin hosting lightning talks at the gatherings. These are talks on a topic the presenter knows really well and that's network-state-aligned. Example subject areas would be nuclear fusion, transhumanism, scientific publishing, blockchain as a source of cryptographically verifiable truth, and digital identity and pseudonymity.

Members who want to sign up to give a lightning talk (5-10 mins) can do so, here:

You can view the current schedule of lightning talks, here:

To give a lightning talk, you'll go through the following process:

  1. Apply at the link above.
  2. Once it's approved, I'll tag you in the #lectures -> Lightning Talks thread in and let you know.
  3. You'll make an account at loom.com and use that to record a 5-10 minute talk.
  4. You'll then ping me in the #lectures -> Lightning Talks thread with a link to your file so I can view it and approve it.
  5. At the meeting where you're scheduled to present, we'll play your talk on the big screen and you'll be available for questions afterwards. (This pre-recorded approach means we can screen ahead of time and also make sure the talks are compact and free of hiccups).

Calls to Action 📣

If you've not read the essay on The Network Union – a description of what is essentially an on-chain social network that's a precursor to a network state – please do so in order to get a sense for where we're trying to take 1729 in its next phase.

The Network Union
The network union is the antecedent of the network state: a social network with a blockchain, a leader, and a purpose.
1729

If you'd like to contribute to the upcoming newsletters or gatherings, please fill out the form below describing your proposed contribution.

Examples of things to submit as CTAs:

Examples of things not to submit as CTAs:

You can view the current CTAs in the board below:

When you submit a request via the form, it'll show up in "Uncategorized." I'll either move it to "Approved" or delete it if it's not relevant.

When a request is "Active," that means we should all be doing it. I'll also list the currently active requests below, and go through them at the meeting, so we can hit them.

Newsletter Submissions 🗞

Right now, there are two 1729 newsletters in varying stages of execution:

  1. A public-facing newsletter that replaces the earlier 1729.com newsletter and goes out to all the subscribers on the 1729 mailing list. This will consist of a digest of the top posts from the 1729 Writer's Group.
  2. An internal-only newsletter, i.e. the newsletter you're reading right now. This is for internal announcements and community business, and will not go out to the larger mailing list.

We're asking the community for submissions to the public-facing newsletter, so if you either want to write something or have a piece that you think is 1729-related and a good candidate, here's the current recommended process for getting that promoted via the 1729.com main newsletter:

  1. Ping MattHarder#4114 or jonstokes#1729 about getting added to the #writers channel.
  2. We'll get you set up with paper.li so that you can get your work into the community publication that the writers use to see each others' work, and where it can also be voted on by the community.
  3. If we think it's a good fit for the newsletter, we'll add it!

Note that the above process is a work-in-progress and will definitely change. At the very least, we're working on developing an internal 1729 NFT-based content economy, just to try it out. This will involve the writer minting an NFT for each piece, so that the NFT is listed in the main newsletter alongside the link to the piece, can can be bought from the author. But much more on that in a later update.

Meetups

Member Spotlight

In this section of the newsletter, we'll be recognizing community members who have either made significant contributions to 1729 or who are achieving goals they've set for themselves. These members will get NFTs when those are ready, but for now it's just recognition in this section.

Calls to Action

This section contains calls to action, or small tasks that we're asking 1729ers to complete.

jonstokes#1729 (ed. That's me!) will kick off the community asks and actions with an ask for the group:

I'm giving a talk in June on the subject of Doomer Techno-Optimism, which is a mash-up of doomer optimism and techno optimism. The basic idea is that everywhere you look – at least in the declining world – things seem to be going sideways. The question is not so much how to stop things from collapsing, but how to get through the collapse in such a way that you're prepared to build a new world on the other side of it.

Part of the doomer techno-optimism picture will involve digital sovereignty – tools that let you run your own banking, cloud, and communications infrastructure. My ask is for links to articles and overviews of these kinds of sovereign tech stacks. I know there are lists out there – this one from 1729er odyslam is a great start – so I'm trying to aggregate them for reference. You can send links by posting them in #lectures and tagging jonstokes#1729.

Priyesh#1069 is asking for boosts and feedback in this 1729-related Twitter thread:

philm#1537 asks, "Help me raise awareness for NFT Art Berlin by boosting this app or sharing the Eventbrite link with a friend:"

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