Interledger Summit 2019 Format

I think it will depend a lot on the learnings of the first day to see what people want to build the next day. We also might get heaps of discussion proposals that may add to day 2. TBD

@vanessadice have I overlooked a date for this event, or that is still TBD?

April 5-6 in San Francisco

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Here are some of my thoughts on structure:

Workshops: I have really enjoyed some workshops, but it is quite hard to get right. I think guiding developers along the way is a great way to introduce new developers to an ecosystem, but it might not be the best format if most people in attendance are not new to the ecosystem. That being said, I always love a good demo.

Presentations: I would love to see presentations on the history of Interledger, possibly leading into the current strengths and weaknesses of the existing implementations, and briefly touch on future directions. This would also serve as a good placeholder replacement for the existing whitepaper.

I would also like to see presentations on scalability efforts from Strata Labs and some of the challenges they have faced. I have been messing around with Rafiki, and although it is well documented, it would be nice to see a presentation from the team behind it. Some other interesting areas include: security, liquidity exhaustion, wallet design, and possibly regulation.

Perhaps it wouldn’t make sense for an invite-only event, but if it is recorded, it would be nice to see some tangentially related projects present, such as Handshake, Summa One, Cosmos, and how other projects are thinking about value transfer and interoperability.

I know @danrobinson has been an active proponent of ILP, and spoke about it at Stanford Blockchain Conference, so I would love to hear more about some of the work he and others like him have been doing. For example, Starlight channels seem to be a great fit for ILP. How are blockchain companies thinking about ILP? How are existing payment solutions thinking about ILP? Are there any merchants interested in ILP? How do we make it easier to on-board existing developer ecosystems like Bitcoin and Ethereum?

Panel Discussions: Typically, I am not a big fan of panel discussions because they are largely unorganized and lead to only a few talking points and consensus or stalemate. I could see it being interesting in some cases, but for the most part, I do not think it is a good use of time.

Hackathon: I like hackathons, but I am not exactly sure about the format. When I have helped with hackathons in the past, I think it is really easy for people to get overwhelmed. Prizes for bounties and certain criteria are great for incentivizing people, but I am just not sure on how it would be best organized. Interledger is still maturing, but there are still a lot of services and plug-ins that need to be built out. A lot of submissions might prove to be starting points to critical infrastructure, but lack “creativity” because it is “just” a [much needed] wallet integration or what have you.

Side note: If anybody else is like me, I don’t like asking questions in front of a bunch of other people in some auditorium, and certainly not when there is a camera recording it. It’d be nice to have some kind of “ping” system (maybe just a sticky note with included interests like @emschwartz suggested, or just a lobby area with suggested times) to get some one-on-one discussion time with presenters.

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@vanessadice
When would you let us know whether the scholarship is accepted or not?

I would like to know that to determine my schedule of April.

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Hi All,

Kava Labs would like to have two of our Interledger engineers give a presentation on the development of production grade open-source Interledger tools. The presentation includes a walk through the abstraction models for Interledger plugin creation, the switch-api wrapper and API interface which packages these plugins, the Switch app showcasing a client-side application’s consumption of the api, and areas we view as ripe for future work.

If there is interest, we would also be happy to run a workshop to get developers acquainted with these tools, offer guidance on integration of new plugins (into the api) and encourage modifications of the Switch app, or any of these components, enabling developers to easily compose projects of their own (example below):

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Soon. Thanks for reaching out.

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How about something along these lines for an agenda?

Each session would be 45 minutes with a 30 minute break after. Sessions could be for talks (20 minute presentation, 25 minute discussion or Q&A), protocol design sessions, or workshops. Long breaks would give people plenty of time to mingle, work on projects, or continue discussions from the sessions.

The location has a couple spaces so we can have some different events and mini-events going concurrently. There is 1 larger room that can be used for talks or bigger workshops and 2 (or maybe 3) smaller spaces for ~5-10 people.

Proposed Agenda

10:00-10:30 Welcome & State of the Interledger
10:30-11:50 Introductions (Name, company, where you’re from, “You can talk to me about X”, “This weekend I’d like to learn about / discuss / work on Y”)
11:00-11:45 Session 1
11:45-12:15 Break
12:15-1:00 Session 2
1:00-2:00 Lunch
2:00-2:45 Session 3
2:45-3:15 Break
3:15-4:00 Session 4
4:00-4:30 Break
4:30-5:15 Session 5
5:15-5:45 Break
5:45-6:30 Session 6
6:30-8:00 Drinks and Dinner

Repeat starting at 10 without the intros on Saturday

Possible Talks

We should generate a list of potential talks and then allocate spaces based on how many people are interested in each.

Some ideas and things we’ve heard already:

  • (Workshop) Kava Intro + Switch workshop
  • (Talk) Scaling ILP infrastructure in production (@d1no007?)
  • (Workshop) Coil + Web Monetization workshop
  • (Talk) Cosmos + ILP
  • (Workshop) Running a connector (?)
  • (Workshop) Hyperledger Quilt (Java implementation of Interledger)
  • (Workshop) Interledger.rs (Rust implementation)
  • (Discussion) Routing
  • (Discussion) Privacy
  • (Discussion or Workshop) Pull Payments and/or Push Payments & Invoices (@sabinebertram)
  • (Workshop) Integrating blockchains (@kincaid?)
  • Other ideas?
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Personally I was hoping to spend at least 50% of the time working on code with people

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Will it be broadcasted or recorded?

Hi @elmurci, I’m not sure if it’ll be recorded. I think we’re aiming to have more informal discussions and work sessions than proper talks that lend themselves to being recorded. We’ll see what we can do though.

Totally fair. Would the type of work you want to do lend itself to having a bunch of people working on something together (such that it could be one of the workshop sessions) or more along the lines of you and a couple others just needing some space off to the side? If its the first one, want to propose another workshop session? If you just need space to work on something specific, we could dedicate one of the smaller rooms for coding throughout most or all of the event.

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Hi all! My name’s Sunny and I’m a researcher/core dev at Cosmos and also an advisor to Kava Labs. This workshop sounds super exciting, and I’m looking forward to getting a better overall view of the large ILP ecosystem.

I’d love to give a talk / start a discussion about the relationship between Cosmos’s Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) and Interledger (ILP). I think the two protocols compliment each other really well and you can create some very interesting user experiences by overlaying them.

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Hey @emschwartz @adrianhopebailie - also very interested in dedicating a significant chunk of time to coding (in addition to discussions). Would be glad to participate in a ‘workshop’ of technical dev time.

Also, if anyone is interested in a discussion on multiparty computation, verification, and compute streaming for value as it relates to Interledger I think that would be a fun one to join also. Especially eager to dive deeper into Codius!

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Can day one be dedicated to discussions and workshops and day two be dedicated to coding in a format that interests attendees?

What is the format of the venue?

If there is space for breakouts then I’d imagine we can keep it pretty flexible

Yes. The events team is visiting the space today. The break out spaces look like they are for 4-8 people. If you want to propose a discussion for less than 10 people then you can indicate that on a talk you are proposing.

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Floorplan for ILP Summit venue. Plenty of spaces for smaller conversations.

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@vanessadice I think a small slot on ILP in the current financial regulatory system could be productive. With more commercial entities entering the space that have run into issues, it would be enlightening for them to share with the community some feedback and we could discuss further.

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Will consider and add it to the list. I would need a volunteer to lead it.

redacted - sorry, intended to be DM