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Yesterday, Nostr<\/a> users from around the US came together at New York City\u2019s premiere Bitcoin bar PubKey<\/a> for Nostr Village, a mini-conference focused on the open protocol that enables global, censorship-resistant social media and more.<\/p>\n Who\u2019s coming to #NostrVillage<\/a> tomorrow?<\/p>\n It\u2019s a day of censorship resistant value for value creative expression and zaps, and it\u2019s all happening at PubKey starting at 2 PM.<\/p>\n Meet your favorite nostriches, and ask anything!<\/p>\n Can\u2019t make it for the whole event? Come by at 6 PM for\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/SkCecbzJdR<\/a><\/p>\n — PUBKEY (@PubKey_NYC) May 30, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The name of the conference included a nod to the neighborhood in which PubKey is located, New York\u2019s historic Greenwich Village. It was also a play on Nostrville, the name of a 2023 Nostr conference that took place in Nashville, TN, which Daniel Modell, Head of Marketing at PubKey and organizer for Nostr Village, attended.<\/p>\n \u201cNostr is something that I was involved with prior to being part of PubKey, and I wanted to bring it to more people,\u201d Modell told Bitcoin Magazine at the event.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re still very early in the Nostr adoption curve and so we have to be the ones to spread the word, just like with Bitcoin in the earlier days,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The vibe at Nostr Village felt very much like what I\u2019d imagine the vibe at a smaller Bitcoin conference was like in Bitcoin\u2019s fourth year of existence (Nostr went live November 2020) \u2014 exciting and illuminating yet a bit awkward, as Nostr is still a very nascent technology and no one yet knows quite what it will become.<\/p>\n However, with so many active Nostr users in attendance at the event, there was no shortage of people sharing what they do understand about Nostr in efforts to educate the other attendees.<\/p>\n On panels such as \u201cDesign and Code: User Experience Is Everything\u201d and \u201cValue For Value and Community: Nostr Is For Creators\u201d, everyone from developers to creatives contributed to expanding the knowledge base of those in attendance.<\/p>\n Avi Burra, author of the Bitcoin fiction book 24<\/a> and host of the Plebchain Radio<\/a> podcast, took part in two of the panels \u2014 \u201cCan\u2019t Cancel This: Censorship Resistance On Nostr\u201d and \u201cNostr for Noobs\u201d \u2014 and stressed that Nostr is much more than just decentralized social media.<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest misperception of Nostr is that it\u2019s just a social media app,\u201d Burra told Bitcoin Magazine at the event. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m hopeful that Nostr\u2019s design at the protocol level can enable a truly censorship resistant communications platform but also that other stuff that can be built on it \u2014 YouTube replacements, Spotify replacements,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n [Editor\u2019s note: Sam Means, co-founder of Wavlake<\/a>, a music streaming platform built on Nostr that let\u2019s fans stream sats<\/a> to their favorite musicians \u2014 an alternative to Spotify\u2019s model \u2014 was in attendance at the event.]<\/em><\/p>\n Burra also noted how much of a success the event was simply because it gave \u201cNostriches\u201d \u2014 a slang term for avid Nostr users \u2014 an opportunity to connect in real life.<\/p>\n But not everyone at the event was a Nostr pro. Some attendees were there to learn more about what exactly Nostr is and how to use Nostr clients like Primal<\/a>, Flockstr<\/a> and Coracle<\/a>.<\/p>\n Parker Worthington, director of My Trust In You Is Broken<\/a>, a documentary on BTC Pay Server<\/a>, also attended the event and commented on how important events like this are to those who are new to the Nostr space.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of my favorite things about smaller Bitcoin or Nostr meetups is that there\u2019s always [some] people that have either never heard of Bitcoin or never heard of Nostr in the room,\u201d Worthington told Bitcoin Magazine at the event.<\/p>\n \u201cIt rubs off on them so quickly that they now have this group to go to,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n While the event wasn\u2019t technically a meetup, it did have the feeling of a bigger version of one, and this was part of Modell\u2019s intention.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we do at PubKey is different than traditional Bitcoin conferences, because we think of ourselves as almost an anti-conference space,\u201d explained Modell.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do these smaller events, [but] people who weren\u2019t even here who were watching on the livestream \u2014 on zap.stream<\/a> \u2014 posted things like \u2018This is a real conference,\u2019\u201d he added.<\/p>\n A real conference it was, and, according to Modell, it will likely be the first of many to come.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d love to be able to do a Nostr Village every year and see how year over year we grow and what technologies develop on Nostr,\u201d concluded Modell. \u201cWe\u2019ve only been doing this (referring to teaching one another about Nostr) for a short time, and so there\u2019s a lot more to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n