We watched A Man Called Otto tonight and everyone thought it was an incredible story and engaging acting. Didn’t want the movie to end when it was over. Recommended! 🍿
Hosting Minnebar 17: Creating Digital Community with POAPs
I’m going to host a session at Minnebar 17 on Creating Digital Community with POAPs! It is my first time back to hosting sessions at Minnebar in several years, and I can’t wait to share all the fun you can have with POAPs in your projects and communities. If this is interesting, sign up on the Sessionizer and indicate that you might attend this!
Now that you’ve claimed your Minnebar 17 POAPs, let’s talk about how you can use POAP to build digital community for on your own!
On June 7, 2021 I claimed my very first POAP and was intrigued. I quickly developed a love of these digital tokens that allow me to collect and remember fun events. I’ve created over 40 different POAP events for hobbies, personal use, family events, and professional.
We will cover:
- What is a POAP?
- Examples of POAPs and how they can be used.
- Review the Minnebar 17 POAP distribution.
- Discuss additional capabilities and applications built around POAP.
- We will even create a POAP in the event so you see how it is done.
POAPs are an incredible asset to create digital communities, and there is a vibrant ecosystem built around them to enhance and add utility.
Hosting Minnebar 17: How to Newsletter
Update: Sorry to say that this session had to be cancelled. We had some travel plans come up and we will only be able to attend Minnebar 17 for half the day. We are still going to do the POAP session though.
I’m going to host a session at Minnebar 17 on How to Newsletter: Lessons from 250 Issues of The Weekly Thing. This is my first time presenting at Minnebar in several years. I’m excited to do it again!
If this is interesting to you, register on the Sessionizer and indicate that you might attend this session.
I have been publishing The Weekly Thing since May of 2017. With 250 issues of the newsletter complete I’m hosting this session to share the common questions that I get about:
- How do you find the things you put in the Weekly Thing?
- How do you create each issue?
- How do you maintain consistency?
Additionally I will be covering:
- My task template that I use for each week
- The automation that I have created to build each issue
- The overall toolchain that I use to create it
- Specific tactics to maintain sustainability of a long-term project like this
This session will be focused on the creator and building. We will not be covering marketing, social media, or anything related to newsletter monetization or subscriptions.
Minnebar 17 POAPs
I am excited to share that all attendees to Minnebar 17 will be getting a POAP token! In addition to the traditional t-shirt, there will be a unique claim code given to everyone so that they can claim a permanent collectible from the event. 🎉
What is a POAP? Technically it is an NFT that is issued as a collectible for an event or occasion. It is like a digital version of a sticker or shirt. I’ve collected over 80 of them, see my collection for some examples.
POAP is pronounced “poh-ap”.
Update: Also see the Minnebar 17 StayNftyMpls 612 Series Giveaway!
The POAPs
There will actually be three POAP tokens given at Minnebar 17. 🤩
Attendee: All attendees will be given a claim code when they check in on arrival. Everyone that attends will get one of these.
Presenter: All presenters that sign up via the Sessionizer will have a claim code sent to them.
Organizer: All organizers who help put the event on will have a claim code sent to them.
Any holder of these POAPs will also be eligible to enter into a raffle at no cost to win something special. Stay tuned for more information on that!
I also plan to have my personal You’ve met thingelstad.eth tokens ready for distribution. Ask me for one at the event. 😊
How to get ready?
If you want to get ready ahead of time so that you can claim these easily you can do two things.
First, you need an Ethereum wallet and address. If you don’t have one, I highly recommend using Rainbow on iOS or Android. It is a very well done wallet and is simple to setup and get started with. It is totally free.
Once you have an address you are ready to go, but if you want to make it even easier you can install the POAP App too. This is also available on iOS and Android. If you configure this with your wallet address you can automatically claim a POAP just by scanning a QR code or tapping an NFC device.
Questions
What is a POAP?
POAP stands for Proof of Attendance Protocol. The POAP website has a good explainer. Functionally they are ERC-721 tokens issued on the Gnosis blockchain. The smart contracts for POAPs have a number of additional applications built around them to add additional utility.
How much does this cost?
Nothing. No funds or crypto are required to collect as many POAPs as you want. All gas fees for minting the POAPs are covered by POAP.
What is the environmental impact?
POAPs are issued on the Gnosis blockchain which uses a proof-of-stake validator mechanism similar to modern Ethereum. As such, it uses minimal power.
Can I sell the POAP?
POAPs are meant to collect and curate memories, not make money. It is strongly discouraged to sell a POAP, but technically you can. As an ERC-721 NFT you can send POAPs from one wallet to another on Gnosis chain. You can also migrate the POAP to Ethereum mainnet, however there is a 0.1 ETH fee for doing that which is largely intended to keep people from attempting to sell them.
Why do some POAP owners have names?
POAPs are held by wallets, and if you buy and configure an Ethereum Name Service name the wallet address can be displayed as a name. If you would like to do this, go to the ENS app and buy your preferred name, remember to set the reverse address lookup, and your name will be shown instead of an address.
If you have other questions, check out the POAP Help Center.
Transferring NFTs in Bulk
After I created additional Ethereum addresses for specific applications, I wanted to move existing assets to align with that.
Ethereum Name Service
Moving ENS names is a special case. The ENS address is itself an NFT, but you cannot just send these to another address. You can move them, but you have to do it in the ENS application. For each of the 21 ENS names I have I did an on-chain transaction to move them to ens.thingelstad.eth. It was easy to do, and even though there was no bulk operation it wasn’t hard to do. Each move incurred some gas fees.
POAPs and NiftyInks
With over 70 POAPs to move I really didn’t want to do these by hand. And with over 730 Nifty Inks it was out of the question to do it by hand. I looked at how to move POAPs and the FAQ recommended uNFT Wallet. I connected my wallet via Gnosis Chain and uNFT Wallet already had the contract address for POAP and Nifty Ink. I was able to move most of my POAPs with one transaction and a second after doing a test. They are now in POAP.thingelstad.eth.
I had never transferred POAPs between accounts and it is interesting that these now show on POAP as have 2 transactions. Some POAP apps like Salsa no longer show the same connections after doing this. I think that is fine, but it is worth noting.
It was less simple with Nifty Ink since I was moving over 730 NFTs. uNFT Wallet refused to even try and move all of them in one go, and there wasn’t a way to select 100 NFTs at a time. So I had to click groups of 60-90 of them and do a transaction each. After doing several of these, there were a handful of stragglers left that I actually used Nifty Ink to send to the other wallet. They are now all in niftyink.thingelstad.eth! 🎨
Thanks uNFT Wallet
There is no way I could have done this without a bulk tool like uNFT Wallet. It was an easy choice to buy one of their Limited Edition supporter NFTs to help support the project.
Isolating Crypto Assets and Access
For the last couple of years I’ve done all of my Ethereum activities using my thingelstad.eth address with the associated identity. I’ve used this for storing value, holding NFTs, collecting POAPs, and everything else. I decided that it was time to create some isolation of access and identity.
I’m still using thingelstad.eth as my primary address and means of authenticating with various services. It also holds a number of my NFTs and crypto assets. But I’ve also now created two activity-specific addresses.
mint.thingelstad.eth is the address that I’m using specifically just to mint NFTs. When you mint NFTs you have to authenticate with a new smart contract and usually provide some form of limited access to your assets. By using a dedicated address just for minting I can limit the risk of a malicious smart contract.
vault.thingelstad.eth is the reverse of the minting address. This address is specifically to hold NFTs or other assets that I have no intent of selling or transferring. This address will never be used to authenticate to any website. All activities here will be done using wallet transfers.
Additionally, I decided to create some specific addresses for applications that I use a lot. This was inspired in part from Vitalik’s conclusion:
That said, it is my view that wallets should start moving toward a more natively multi-address model (eg. creating a new address for each application you interact with could be one option) for other privacy-related reasons as well.
I love the idea of wallets automatically associating a unique address with each application. I do this today by using a masked email addresses with Fastmail and passwords managed by 1Password.
ens.thingelstad.eth is the address I’m using to hold my Ethereum Name Service registrations. ENS has built in capability for one address to register a name, and the control of that name to be delegated. So all of my 21 registered ENS names are now owned by this address, and control of them is delegated to thingelstad.eth. The only app that will ever connect to this address is ENS itself, which protects my name registrations from malicious actors.
POAP.thingelstad.eth is an address I’ve made just for collecting POAP tokens. I currently hold 90 different POAP tokens in this address. This allows me to have a specific identity and address just for POAP usage. Most activity for this address is on Gnosis Chain since that is what POAP uses natively.
niftyink.thingelstad.eth is an address just for using Nifty Ink. I’ve collected 736 “inks” on this site and now I have them isolated into an address that I only use for that purpose. 🤩 This is again a way to limit access from a malicious smart contract.
Technically I also have reddit.thingelstad.eth but was created by necessity since Reddit Vaults are managed differently. However, it serves the same pattern as the other application specific addresses.
We went on a tour of St. Olaf today as Mazie works through her decisions on where she wants to go to college. It is a really pretty campus.
Nordic Village at Riva Terrace
Tammy and I enjoyed a delicious 7-course Nordic Village experience. The food was great and the individual cabins were really cool with downtown in the background. It was a lot of food though!
Starters
Cheese and Charcuterie Board |selection of salumi and cheese, honeycomb, mustard, cornichons, marinated olives, pepper agrodolce, crackers and crostini
Pull-Apart Bread Skillet | torched raclette cheese and prosciutto chips
First Course
Onion Soup | sourdough bread, Comté cheese, cognac
Crisp Rösti Potatoes & Smoked Salmon | horseradish crème fraîche, fried capers, dill
Main Course
Cheese Fondue | blend of gruyere, comté, swiss, and emmental cheese served with sourdough croutons, apples, cornichons, pickled pearl onions and sausage bites
Clams & Cannellini Beans | andouille sausage, little neck clams, fennel, grilled bread
We let them know we didn’t want clams so they prepared a chicken dish instead.
Chicken Cooked Three Ways | chicken breast baked, seared, and deep fried in beets, chickpea ragu
Dessert
House-Made S’mores | graham crackers, milk chocolate bar, vanilla bean marshmallows
I gave the “Always On Display” feature of the iPhone 14 Pro several weeks to get used to, but have finally turned it off. When the display is on it catches my attention every time I see it. It leaves me wondering if there is something I need to check. No good.
Mason Jennings at The Dakota
I don’t remember exactly when I heard Mason Jennings first album but it wasn’t long after it was out and I played it a lot. It was a real treat that he played a number of those songs at the Dakota this evening, and I was surprised to realize that I still knew the words to nearly all of them after so many years. This show was a real treat. 🎶
Scene from Potluck MN Food Hall.
I minted Cat #2230 of the Ukraine Cats Division. This NFT project is raising funds to help Ukraine defend itself. I think I’ll mint a few more and get a Ukraine Cat Platoon going. 😸🇺🇦
The Bad Guys
We finished our “snowpocalypse” movie series tonight with The Bad Guys. We watched three movies in three nights! That is a very rare thing for the Thingelstad family. This was a fun movie with multiple callbacks to other heist movies like Oceans 11. I may have nodded off a couple of times. 🥱
Family game of Five Crowns tonight. Tyler won with just 66 points! Tammy had 86, Jamie with 108, and Mazie with 178.
From The Economist, World in Brief, February 24 2023.
Sam Bankman-Fried, a former billionaire and founder of FTX, a collapsed crypto exchange, was charged with four new criminal offenses, including conspiracy to commit bank fraud and securities fraud. Prosecutors allege that Mr Bankman-Fried developed a “series of systems and schemes” through which he could “access and steal” billions of dollars of customer deposits. Mr Bankman-Fried has pled not guilty to all of the eight original charges against him.
Bankman-Fried was a criminal mastermind more than any crypto mastermind.
Who Invited Charlie?
We continued our “snowpocalypse” movie series tonight. This evening a bit more justified with over a foot of fresh snow on the ground. We watched Who Invited Charlie?. The movie revisits the COVID-19 lockdowns following a wealthy family as they escape New York City to the Hamptons, and their visitor Charlie joins them.
MnTech Leadership Forum: Generative AI
Today I hosted the MnTech Q1 2023 Tech Leadership Forum. The organization is changing the format of this event to have technology leaders run these quarterly forums. I thought it would be fun to focus on the topic that is making so much press lately — Generative AI: Harnessing Disruption into Innovation.
I was lucky enough to get three others to join in the dialog:
- Todd Van Nurden, Principal Developer Cloud Architect and Mad Scientist, Microsoft Technology Center’s
- Sam Pierson, Chief Technology Officer, Talend
- Tammylynne Jonas, Global CIOGlobal CIO, Donaldson
Some of the topics discussed:
- Why now? AI has been in the works for a long time. Has there been a technological breakthrough recently?
- How does Generative AI affect how we build software.
- How does Generative AI benefit from these early releases.
- Opportunities technologists see to use this capability in their organizations.
- What are some of the risks to keep an eye on?
- AI as a coach or mentor?
Since it was an invite only event for members there isn’t a video to share. 😕
Of course there is a POAP for the event! And even more exciting, the POAP is also held by POAP.MnTech.eth which is the first POAP that MnTech is officially producing.
Dog Gone
With the “snowpocalypse” bearing down on us we decided to make it a movie night. We all love movies about dogs, especially Tyler. Tammy had Dog Gone on her “to watch” list for a while. Then I saw the Walker family had watched it and suggested we would like it.
Good movie about growing up and the, the relationship between parents and their kids, and of course about a great dog.
We had fun watching Amazing Race S34 E11 as they raced through Iceland and visited so many places that we were at this summer! 🇮🇸