One of the biggest ways to empower young minds is by helping them to explore and meet passionate folks. On August 12th, Dream DAO builders and Champion headed to India's one of the first web3 conferences to meet and learn from like-minded regen web3 folks in Goa and soak up all the good vibes!

DAY 1

• The conference started with high spirits and great talks by web3 Builders.
  There were amazing sessions ranging from UI/UX to property and real-world asset ownership in Bali leveraging NFTs. A panel was hosted by @superwomen DAO on how to onboard more women into web3.

• At the end of the day, Builders headed to an after-party to meet and relax with attendees of the conference. There we had some great conversations about what brought others to these places and made them stay there.

DAY 2

• The second day was super packed with amazing talks from friends of the DAO. One of the best sessions was hosted by @Shreyas (NEAR Guilds Lead) where he shared how communities emerge and grow around different projects. Shreyas shared his enormous experience in community building and management + how NEAR Guilds are being run in a completely decentralized manner by the will of the community and what they have achieved so far. Here is a recording of the talk

• here was a talk by @Aviral on how hackathons play a huge role in helping new builders and projects get off the ground. Aviral shared how to front-run hackathons and how he found his new teammates while collaborating on web3 builds!

• Workshops and sessions are good but the magic happens during breaks when like-minded folks actually talk to each other and share ideas. Dream DAO members met with Celo builders and Devrel sharing their learnings and knowledge about the refi space. We also exchanged stickers and pasted some at the conference property 👀

One of our founding Builders Madhav hosted a dinner for the not fellows community members sponsored by Build space.

Later everyone joined the Developer DAO X Celo party and had an amazing time showing off their dance moves to people who were there for conf from all over the place.

DAY 3

• The last day is always the most nostalgic for saying goodbyes and getting each other's Twitter handle for future follow-ups. But with Dream DAO folks in Goa, they were just getting started!

• The day Was kicked off by a meetup hosted by the Swaraj project bringing all the creators and creative minds together in Goa for some amazing conversations by the riverside. The first session was by frens Yashwant, Mizan, and Elio on Stablecoins where they showed how to make new stablecoins from scratch.

• One of the most amazing ideas was shared by Deepak, a Friend of the DAO and a self-taught programmer who has founded of AccelChain. His idea, AccelChain, is an app that allows anyone to bring their web3 ideas to life with the best no-code tool to build and deploy smart contracts. We are super excited to see how amazing folks use this tool to build their ideas!

• As most of the folks were leaving the same day so it was filled with hugs and hope for collaboration in the future which is one of the most important things irl events provide!

Learnings and Reflections

Madhav:

Meeting people you have been chatting with for the past year in real life is one of the most amazing experiences I have found. These interactions truly define why we are here. These meetups are not important because they happen in shiny ballrooms or have thousands of dollars worth of bounties but because like-minded people get together and share their ideas and thoughts, which is the most invaluable part of a movement.

An event is nothing without some deep conversations which we had plenty of in Goa but one of the best questions you never get tired of asking is “what brings you here”, every time I have got a different answer which has made me rethink a lot of things myself.

• It also was a reality check of the current scenario where everyone is freaking out because of the bear market but as the saying goes “Builders are gonna Build”

One of the biggest takeaways for me was to be deliberate about going to these kinda conferences and events because if you don't have a specific reason to be there, then it's more of a distraction than an opportunity. Never been more grateful for such an amazing adventure and experience.

Aditya:

It is always good to have some personal agency. We wouldn't have had so many amazing conversations if we had just chosen one venue and only attended the talks. We were constantly going from one conference venue to the other. Sometimes we were rushing from one session to the next, and sometimes we were not going to any and instead just conversing with other attendees. This fluid yet kind-of-unplanned itinerary allowed us to be spontaneous and gave us many moments of serendipity.

web3 is an amazingly diverse space. I met people from so many backgrounds at the conference! There were web3 native developers, and there were developers who worked full time at large web2 companies but also contributed to web3 projects in their free time. There were college students studying design/UI, and there were also people who had years of experience in community management. Not a lot of spaces can boast of such diversity!

Adarsh:

This was the first of its kind of event attended by me. This trip allowed me to spend time with the folks from Dream DAO who were connected virtually with me for almost a year. The time spent with them was best as it was great to know many of them personally and learn a lot from all of them about things related to web 3 and life in general. I gathered a lot of knowledge and behavior from them.

We did a lot of things there other than attending talks as we went to other side events. Going from one venue to another, saying hi to a bunch of people at a time, having discussions while eating, walking to the beach initiating the conversation about talks we attended. This was pretty much the highlight of the event. As it was in Goa everyone at the conference was in a kinda mood of the party. So sometimes the focus on the Web3 part of the conference seemed to be lost.

I went with a lot of expectations and the highest of excitement. The conference could only meet the part of my excitement. it was not similar to what a conference could be. It seemed like a gathering of Web3 enthusiasts who were there to expand their network. There were many interesting talks that we attended. These talks and discussions with different people at the conference helped me understand the current state of web3 in India. Multiple projects were launched during the event. This experience showed me how diverse the web3 community is.

The events, discussions, and interactions with people at the web3 conference added a lot to my knowledge and a lot of ideas were transmitted to me while interacting with the people attending and presenting at the conference. I could also figure out the importance of having a purpose and agenda to be added to the learning plan for such events.
The learnings from this event are very useful for me to get further clarity on my role as a builder in the world of web3 and my future in this domain.

Shaan:

Having the opportunity to connect with fellow Dream DAO builders in Goa is a priceless experience. It teaches us more about how meaningful the deep senses of belonging actually are and how web3 is creating them. When being able to cross the gap from being a URL community to a IRL one our sense of belonging became deeper. At the conference, I was bit awakened by how small our ReFi community is even though the space was incredibly diverse. This didn’t matter though because we connected deeply with the few people we knew of that were part of Celo and other ReFi initiatives, furthermore, we were able to voice of conviction enough to others to create more new meaningful relationships. I didn’t think of this trip as a way to evangelize ReFi, but more of a way to connect meaningfully with the people creating local impact. This guided our trip to not only teach us but about the current state of web3, but also about the spiritual and cultural side of the people within it. Goa itself is the smallest state in India, but also one of the richest. Being as it may this has led to a deteriorating culture in Goa as it optimizes itself for tourist. This to me was kinda on par as a microcosm similar to the conference and web3 as a whole. This space is extremely small and relatively wealthy, but the majority of it is maximalist optimizing for one thing mainly DeFi adoption which definitely has contributed to the deterioration of diverse web3 culture. This made me think about conferences as less of an event and more of an opportunity to connect with people and places on a deeper level. This specific one was less about the conference itself for us and more about the builders who were there to build meaningful relationships and more! I am deeply grateful for this experience and the meaningful relationship that Dream DAO and Celo have created!!