The first blockchain pop up city was Zuzalu in Montenegro. There was one single green pdf spreaded across the industry and whispers here and there on the secrecy of the event because Vitalik was organising it.

The culture of pop up cities was bootstrapped instantly with dozens of events happening every year. However, none of them were already organized by Vitalik even though he participated in quite a few.

So what is the reason to come to a pop up city today and isn’t it a waste of time?

My perspective is that the most valuable and unique proposition is building and improving relations between companies and people. Something that won’t happen on a conference or on twitter because it requires time and attention. And in the industry like ours we have neither of them.

Remember the stories how people accidentally meet at the airport and share the flight and it changes their life? The work on Plonk was bootstrapped when Zac and Ariel accidentally met at the airport heading to the conference.

On the plane we have time and attention but hoping to meet someone on the flight is relying on lucky accident. Pop up city is the same shared flight but way less luck needed.

On the conferences and on twitter, every company and every representative of the company communicates their official messages and needs:

• We are scaling Ethereum

• We are solving fragmentation

• We are onboarding the next billion

What the hell it means? 3 min Q&A session is not enough to have a dialogue to figure it out. As a result we have several dozens of parties claiming their position in the game with small to zero attention to other parties. Could work for another more mature industry. Is not the case for web3 today.

A pop up city, even a short one, like 1-2 weeks, is enough to have a dialogue because when you co-live you organically have time during the breakfast or the lunch, on the walk, between calls at the coworking, after the day while chilling on the bench, ...

Understanding what’s on the mind of other companies we understand what are the points for really good collaborations and partnerships. Not nominal ones aimed at twitter comarketing. But those where two companies together can create more shared value than any of them would create on its own and it fits the general strategy. And this is what our industry deadly needs.

Of course there are other value points in pop up cities:

• New friends

• New employers and employees

• Potential cofounders

• Ideation and ideas bouncing

• Learning new areas and skills

• Fun with sweet people

…

I just described the one that from my perspective is the most unique one. And… see you soon at the pop up city?