The General Forum on Ethereum Localism (GFEL) is a gathering space for builders, organizers, artists, and researchers exploring how Ethereum and peer to peer technologies can support thriving local communities. It’s an opportunity to convene in your city your greater cosmo-local network, hear from visionaries, neighbors, and aligned peers working at the intersection of tech and community, share grounded experimentation, and co-create new, peaceful pathways for place-based, Ethereum-powered coordination. 🕊️
By hosting a GFEL, you can directly help grow the movement of Ethereum Localism from your bioregion, while contributing back to a global commons of ideas, tools, and practices.
Steps to Hosting a GFEL
- Check out Past GFEL Documentation: Ethereum Localism Library > GFEL.
- Read the GFEL Planning Guide to understand the event’s unique format, community values, and organizer roles and commitments.
- Share your interest in hosting by reaching out via the Ethereum Localism Telegram chat — it’s the best place to connect with fellow GFEL organizers before you begin planning.
- Plan, Execute, & Document your GFEL! (with dedicated support from existing organizers)
Account: A General Forum on Ethereum Localism, October 2023 - Portland, OR
From The Inverted City
In October 2023 PDX DAO put on the General Forum on Ethereum Localism (GFEL) in Portland, OR as a convening of 50+ web3 natives (and a handful of non-natives) thinking about and experimenting with onchain localism, i.e. the possibility of using DAOs to develop novel decentralized community/city/bioregional systems and infrastructure (maker space cooperatives, community currencies, small business coalitions, credit clearing circles, etc.); building mechanisms to bring p2p and ownership economies to local scale (neighbourhoods).
PDX DAO’s relationships with a variety of local people, projects and places that embody the spirit of decentralization and community autonomy allowed for a meaningful offering of pre-conference tours and micro-events — at urban farms, an intentional permaculture community, makerspaces and art collectives. Incorporating events that connected people with our city and its decentralized protocols was a critical design element, in aiming to materialize the cosmo-local frame of reference. The Forum was preceded by two days of these tours.
The Forum itself was a three-day event, a structured unconference, hosted at a community warehouse in Portland’s Inner Eastside. The warehouse space could be set up to accommodate whole-group speaking and panel sessions or several breakout groups. We had a solid A/V setup (we even enjoyed live music one evening), a chill zone with couches, morning yoga and catered lunch each day as an incentive for participants to stay convened throughout the course of the day. It worked!
Many attendees stuck around post-forum, and, over the next few days re-convened for a variety of activities — coffee meetups, mushroom foraging, co-working, dinner, drinks. Existing networks had been strengthened and expanded, and an abundance of new networks had been activated (an output of one of which you read from now).
The convening was a success because we, a hyperlocal group of dedicated co-conspirators, had been working on the same problem and asking the same questions as a global consortium of both localized and distributed peers. Critically, we were fortunate to benefit from a reliable network of aligned and supportive individuals, both locally and globally, who offered invaluable resources — including and especially Bridge Space Commons, our main event venue — and skillshares (key to this network was a year’s work of passionate network weaving). To cover event costs, we received direct donations and matching funds from two Gitcoin grant rounds, applied for and received a grant from MetaCartel’s ETHos, and received support from Breadchain Co-operative (and beer from Raid Brood).
Resources:
– wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Ethereum_Localism
– pdxdao.xyz/localism
– mirror.xyz/ethpdx.eth
