Last week I participated in the 5th edition of the Latin American Bitcoin Conference. I have attended all five of them, in Buenos Aires (2013 and 2016), Rio de Janeiro (2014), Mexico City (2015) and now Bogotá, Colombia.
Rodolfo Andragnes
In my humble opinion LaBitConf is the world's best Bitcoin conference, and everybody who was there and can compare it to other conferences agrees with me on that.
First of all, I really like the idea of a travelling conference: every year the conference takes place in another Latin American city. As it was started and is still mainly organised by Argentinians, Buenos Aires already hosted it twice, but that will stay an exception.
https://vimeo.com/103006499
A clip we made for LaBitConf 2014 in Rio
This concept connects and strengthens the various Latin American Bitcoin communities. And for us gringos it provides a good excuse to visit a new interesting country every year.
Nick Szabo, Trace Mayer, Diego Gutiérrez, Shawn O'Connor, Rodolfo Andragnes
The LaBitConf team around Rodolfo Andragnes has a fine taste for selecting the right speakers and panelists, not only from Latin America, but also from the USA, China and Europe. There is no conference with such a high percentage of top notch speakers.
Brock Pierce
But what makes LaBitConf special is the experience beyond the conference: all those wine and coffee tastings, parties, receptions and excursions. They always try to connect their guests with specialities of the local culture. So of course we went to a Lucha Libre in Mexico, played Futebol (pronounced: Foo - tchee - bow) at the beach in Rio and saw a great tango performance in Buenos Aires.
Colombian Show in Gaira
This year we went to an amazing Colombian music show in the Gaira club. There was also some excellent Colombian food, but we were too busy dancing between the tables.
The show was followed by a Karaoke session, where Bitcoiners could express their vocal talent, accompanied by a live band - a tradition that has been started in Buenos Aires last year and continued in Bogotá.
Video by Gonzalo Blousson
My performance at last year's Karaoke gained me the honour to be one of LaBitConf's MCs. I announced many of the speakers and panelists and had to entertain the audience while the video and sound system did not work because of a power cut.
Photo by Arley Lozano
The biggest challenge for me was an interview with Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, the retired engineer who was identified as Bitcoin's inventor by Newsweek in 2014.
More posts:
LaBitConf's first evening
LaBitConf's second day
Excursion to the Salt Cathedral