Closing Ceremony

We're back. Hey, friends. I don't have the clicker either. You'd think we'd be organized for a technical conference, but apparently not. All right, so we'll make this quick because we're a bit over time and we know everybody wants to go home, us especially.

But yeah, okay, so in this session, we're just going to go over a few things. We're going to talk about the ethos of Protocol Berg, what led us to organize a sponsorless non-profit donation-backed event that's free to attend. You're also going to hear a bit about the finances, how much it costs, et cetera, and our closing thoughts. So let's give you some Protocol Berg B2 facts. We started working in this event approximately 245 days ago.

Our first meeting was in October 10th, 2024, last year. We counted 52 volunteers, 881 attendees, 107 talks, a total of 542 questions in all of the talks. This is a median of two questions per user, so well done, and a total of 903 upvotes counted, so that's great. We got 3,790 euros, jamón and donuts, in donations from 89 amazing attendees. Thank you to those who have donated.

Big thank you. Just for you to know, we split the orders, so donations were not visible to us when we reviewed the applications to attend. This is really important for us. Regarding the application decision-making process, we had, from October last year, from the moment, also from this year, we got the talks and the attendees' applications, DOD weekly calls to go through all of the applicants and all of the speakers to make sure we had the best curated agenda for you. Now you may ask, why are they doing a donation-backed, sponsorless, non-profit event that is free to attend?

That is a really, really good question. We want to stay credibly neutral. This is very important for us, for the Department of Decentralization. We believe that conferences and educational events are a common good that everyone should have access to. We focus on the tech only, as you can see in these past two days and last year in East Berlin and the year before in our first edition of Protocol Berg.

We try to include everyone, all people from all backgrounds. We do not restrict access based on financials, so very important again, and I know you've seen the signs all over, but please donate if you have the means to support us. This is really, really important for us. It keeps us going. It's also a content-first curation.

What we like as core organizers, what we find interesting, regardless of what projects or companies are coming, is what motivates us to keep going and do this event. Our passion is to bring people together, to discuss ideas with the right mindset, the right intentions together, and to create also a breeding ground for new ideas like we did also last year in East Berlin. In short, we're trying to organize a conference that doesn't suck. You can see from some of the responses that we had for the applications that everybody loves Protocol Berg. You may also wonder how much an event like this costs.

We're here to give you a bit of the financials as well, to be as transparent as possible. Protocol Berg version 2 this year costed €155,000, a bit more than that, actually. This includes all of the free food, all of the free drinks that you've enjoyed in these two days, the stage equipment, the furniture, the lighting, the decoration, the staff, security, the bar personnel, the cleaning personnel, all of the tech and stage managers, all of the roll-ups and the branding items that you see, our great photographer, Anton, who's been with us already since the very beginning. All of the swag that you got at the event. If you didn't get some swag, please make sure to get some before you leave.

Very, very nice one. All of the volunteer swag as well, all of the T-shirts that you see, accounting and taxes for a non-profit organization here in Berlin, and of course, a safety buffer for any extra expenses. So who exactly supported us for this event specifically? Well, first of all, a big thank you to the Just Open Source Foundation who donated €100,000. As mentioned before, we also received almost 4K in community donations.

Thank you so much, because without these donations, we wouldn't be able to make this happen. However, if you do the math, and I know some of you are very good at math in here, you will notice that there's over €50,000 of a gap, and we filled this with the reserve that we had from the Optimism Retrofunding Round and East Berlin Fall. So thanks to them too. But you see where we're getting at. This is not sustainable.

We can't keep organizing these events without any kind of donations. So as Raul mentioned, if you can support us, we would really appreciate a small or large donation. Yes. Before you leave, a bit of housekeeping. Okay?

Just for you to know, if you have a Protocol Bird ticket and you want to attend DAPCON this year, you can also get a discount with ZUPAS, which is TK-proof, so that's super great. Keep an eye on our channels to get more information about this. We want to give also a big, big shout-out to Toby for developing the Schedule app on Android. Thank you so much. And if you lost an item during these two days at the conference, you might find it in Lost and Found right at the wardrobe.

So if you lost something and you don't know where it is, it could be there. So make sure you keep looking until you're gone. But if you lost your mind, we can't help you there. Anyway, I want to say the biggest thank you to our core team. Please join us on stage, because without their time, this wouldn't be happening.

And again, we don't get paid for this. This is complete volunteering. Is everyone here? Yeah, I see Ligi. Yes, cool.

I'm standing here just awkwardly. Ligi! Let's move on from there, I guess. Big congratulations to the ones here and also the ones who are not here that also helped us do this. There's a couple in the top corner that you might recognize.

Big shout out to our collaborators as well, ZK AV Club, Meerkat and Streamith. I don't know if any of you are here, but please join us too. And of course, you know, we're all volunteers here for this event and for all of the things we do at DoD. And we could never, ever do this without the help of our amazing volunteers. So we're asking all of them to also come on stage with us so we can take a quick photo.

Come on, all of you, all of you. Thank you for all your hard work these last two days, honestly. Thank you. And with that, we want to officially close Protocol Berg V2. Thanks for coming!

And with that, we're done. Thanks, everyone.