A Year In Review

I started this June with renewed energy, knowing it would be a month for me to really show up and do my best for the LGBTQIA+ community.

I came into Pride month after a successful 2022, a year of celebration and many firsts. My first Pride Parades in a “Metaverse,” where I helped curate a float for BFF, spoke on many panel discussions, and hosted a 13-hour Twitter Space called Pride Fest for BFF as their Community Coordinator, showcasing queer excellence in web3 with over 30 speakers. All in the same month, we threw a huge party in Decentraland, and I built out sub-communities at BFF.

There’s no denying this year felt different. Sentiment in the space has gone down significantly yet innovation continues while artists and non-technical folks struggle to make sales or find meaningful work from companies reassessing runway or slowing hiring after reality settles in.

There have been sadness and successes both in web3 and in the gay community since last year, but this year I wanted to do something that would directly contribute to the joys and ethos of taking action, jumping in, and doing the work. With over 500 anti-trans laws introduced in the US alone in 2023 so far, the community needed to find a way to come together this year and be heard.

I was privileged to speak with multiple communities, from World of Women to AletheaAI, Boss Beauties, and HUG - all communities that have proven their dedication to inclusive and diverse spaces throughout the last year. Take a listen to those Spaces for loads of fresh insights.

So I decided we needed to do another day-long Twitter Space, this year co-hosted by Paff Evara, co-founder of Take Up Space, but turn it into a telethon event with contributions in the form of NFT sales distributed to the speakers generously giving their insights all day. If you’d like, after reading this, you’re welcome to donate. We hosted games, music, laughter, educational panels, and discussions on fundraising and infrastructure, legacy, and culture.

What’s A Telethon? Why A Telethon?

You might ask, “Why a Telethon? Why not just call it an NFT fundraiser?” those are all fair enough questions.

I’ll be honest; it was a big risk, especially at a time when sentiment is low enough as it is on a platform that couldn’t care less about queer insights. I searched to see if anyone had done something like this before and didn’t find many results. Sure, people have done fundraisers on Twitter before, but typically through a particular artist, involving charities, and often lacking entertainment elements. So we sat out to do a flavor of mutual aid through NFT sales and entertainment.

I partnered with Paff Evara for the Telethon because they are an exceptional voice for queer folks in web3 and a professional public speaker - not to mention a wonderful friend. Paff had recently hosted Creatorthon, a 2-day event through Take Up Space on all things important to creators at the edges of the web. We got together because we are each constantly looking for innovative imaginings when it comes to building inclusive communities online and onchain.

More than that, what we wanted to do with our Pride Telethon was to give the queer community a moment of much-needed surprise and delight. Not all too often do we get to strategize, curate, and plan all-day events for queer folks, by queer folks, without a corporation stepping in to slap a rainbow on it and call it a day.

During the Pride Telthon, we even had a full hour packed with drag and web3 trivia sandwiched by incredible onchain musicians because we believe in honoring creators and entertainers, letting them thrive in their own ways.

Listen to the whole Telethon at the link below, skip to certain times, or view the best moments.

“You Make It Look Easy…”

This wasn’t easy by any stretch of the meaning. You may also ask how we were able to pull all this off in only a couple of weeks and with no budget. I’m not so sure those are the best questions to ask here, but they are great starting points.

First, having a network of talented, insightful people really does help when planning an event like this. You know exactly who to ask for help, who you want to speak to, and who you’re planning the event for. No matter the size of your network, knowing how to tap into it to find the right people is one of the many keys to successfully hosting an event. This is why community builders are often such exceptional party planners and hosts.

We started out by planning just to recreate what I did last year. Something familiar would be simple with a proven formula. That isn’t our style, though, so I set out to do some research on how we could make this year more engaging, inspiring, and educational.

I was really into this idea of improv games or something like Um, Actually. Since we already knew a few web3 musicians, we wanted to curate a lineup of artists reflecting our mood while highlighting the diversity of the web3 space. And we needed speakers from all walks of life and all over the globe who we knew would add value to the conversations. Based on previous experience, I knew we had to be prepared for last-minute schedule changes and unexpected glitches, so setting expectations with the group of speakers and keeping the energy up was important.

Since we had no budget for designers or marketing, I took to Canva for promo graphics and Midjourney for NFT artwork that would signal our theme of Existing Out Loud. It didn’t have to be perfect or anything, only good enough to commemorate the occasion and something people would feel proud to share with friends.

Even still, how we pulled this off is a statement on its own. The better questions might be, “What’s next? How are we going to improve?”

From my learnings:

• Having even just a little funding or a match would have helped immensely with marketing and audience gathering.

• Planning further ahead would have allowed me to create a more solid case study for the impact of sponsorship, but this presented its own risks.

• Though giving speakers autonomy to craft their own topics is the right thing for exposing content we want to listen to, it is better to manage and plan for a fine balance between structured content and more loose conversation to keep the audience engaged.

• Getting into a few newsletters and speaking about the event in audiences outside of ours ahead of going live was a solid play. Next time I’d go harder on the newsletter exposure.

• Last year I planned through a flurry of Google Docs. This year we went with full Notion planning. Between the two, Google Docs still wins on the friction scale.

What’s next is anyone’s guess. I’m keeping my options open and available for new events. In fact, I’d love to work with you on either producing an event for your business or maybe you’d like me to host a workshop for your team on building inclusive events with onchain elements. Click here to chat!

My goal is to always be of service to the community space, be a visible member of the trans community, and be a guide for those who are lost in search of connection.

And The Results Are In…

Events are often measured in metrics and testimonials, but those moments shared together can’t be quantified, and you’ll remember them forever. The time spent laughing and learning with friends, connecting with people you might not typically hear from. These are what we take with us from events like the Telethon, these things aren’t measurable.

This year for the 2023 Pride Telethon, we had:

• 280 people tuned in

• 220 active listeners

• 60 recorded replays

• 34 speakers

• for a total of 12h 1m

We also raised nearly $800, which was distributed to the hosts and speakers, resulting in direct mutual aid back into the community through onchain love. Thank you to the @juiceboxETH team for supporting the Telethon and providing a super easy product that brings many opportunities to creators.

I cannot say enough about the importance of having an experienced and friendly co-host for these adventures. Paff kept the ship steady with enthusiasm, making our work much more enjoyable. Thank you, Paff! 🙏🏻

I would like to thank the speakers who made this day possible:

@cult_leader_en, @jacklennonaus, @kvollstaedt, @jessesoleil, @SatSucculentNFT, @sykadelicvibes, @banklesschick, @a_lesbianNFT, @grlkrash, @AbstractBLVCK, @iLoveSpectra, @raven50mm @justina_sade, @flynnkristina, @gabrielasvision, @shiralazar, @rachelwilkinsb, @KseniaStarkAms, @TheRealSJR, @QueensMeta, @AAleksashev, @lounginwithtony, @ChoiceLgbt

The State Of Web3 and The Gay Community

Looking forward to July and beyond.

This year’s Pride Telethon was increasingly intersectional, trans, and non-binary, showcasing a truly diverse range of talents, voices, stories, and mediums that give a true measure of strength to what’s currently at the edges of the Internet after a rocky year.

In typical fashion, we craft cultures that influence how we speak, protest, dance, curate, write, dress, and find love online and onchain. LGBTQIA+ folks in web3 have their fingers on the pulse across development, arts, community building, operations, and everything in between. We often face discrimination, but nothing will keep us from living our authentic lives or stop us from letting our imaginations loose wherever we are.

I believe that web3 and blockchain are just the beginning of what other solutions can connect to. We don't know yet if AI will be the next piece of this puzzle or if there's something else we haven't found. It's amazing how technology affects financial and cultural systems and will continue to do so in the future.

The one call to action I would offer from this recap is to recognize the artistry in front of you, waiting to be discovered. Look into the mirror and know your worth. Look out at the crowd and know they belong where you belong.

The market may be down in Summer 2023. However, I remain cautiously optimistic as ever that the intentional advancements in this space and beyond, including decentralized social, gaming, AR, VR, XR, AI, and machine learning, will converge in increasingly interesting ways. Just this week, Meta continues to dominate the social landscape, launching Threads. Threads plan to move to the Fediverse through ActivityPub (technical details here), an interconnected (federated) social layer of servers that talk to each other and where users can publish content and build a sense of identity between those networks. While Fediverse could “rewire the fabric of the social internet” and is decentralized, it's more like how email or telephone networks are decentralized. There are no blockchains or crypto involved in the Fediverse. I still believe that onchain media is the future of human-connected activities.

So, while there are experiments with things like Threads, Mastadon, Bluesky, Lenster, and so forth, one of the things I see come up very often when new platforms are launched is a need for diversity, inclusion, ethics, and algorithms not to favor one viewpoint over another. For marginalized folks to be treated with the respect they deserve. While Threads is another half-step on the way to showing users what decentralization can do for them, it's welcomed but with caution.