Outer Edge 2023 is fast approaching and things are becoming even more exciting. In this quick YouTube interview, Josh and Zach sit down with the guys at Altcoin Daily and discuss what this innovation festival is going to be about. This year’s NFT event is going to be fueled by a combination of technology and community. This is going to be an unprecedented gathering where dreamers, disruptors and creators of all kinds coalesce in a whirlpool of cross-fertilization and co-creation. This event is going to showcase what the most innovative people in the space have going about in the outer edges where all the cool things are. Find out what you can expect from Outer Edge 2023!
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Outer Edge L.A. YouTube Interview: Altcoin Daily Chats About Outer Edge 2023 And A Combination Of Technology And Community Is Fueling This Year's Event
What we want to be is for the community. We're part of the community as well. This isn't some giant Death Star corporation. We are a startup in the Web3 space. We make media, tech, and events for this amazing movement. We want to do it with everyone here, especially those people who are either based here or often participate in Los Angeles, but this is also for everyone around the world. That is the point of the Outer Edge.
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We sit down with Josh and Zach, two of the founders of Outer Edge LA, an awesome crypto event in Los Angeles that’s coming up. We talk about why you need to attend this event if you're in Los Angeles. My brother and I are speaking and moderating a panel. If you see us, come and say hi. Let's hang out. William Shatner, a huge NFT proponent, is their keynote and many other great speakers. Use code ALTCOINDAILYVIP for 10% off your ticket. Our audience will remember that we spoke at NFT LA in 2022. You have rebranded. What is Outer Edge LA? What can people expect? The dates are from March 20th through 23rd, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'll be there.
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We're looking forward to having you back. It's going to be a lot of fun. The Outer Edge of the industry has evolved, and we have evolved with it. We didn't want to get too stuck in our ways. Even though we have only done this once so far, I feel like the industry has moved ahead light years since 2022. We wanted to be more encompassing of all the fun parts of Web3. They make it what it is with the convergence of AI, AR, and traditional fungible tokens. It's all part of the mix of DAOs and DeFi. You name it.
We're going to have a more diverse array of talks on those topics. We're also going to mix it up and feature community-based activations at the outer edge of the event. You can imagine a large room with a bunch of different stages and experiences where people can congregate around what they love the most. There's also going to be an opportunity for emerging projects to say what's up and showcase what they're doing as well at the Outer Edge of pushing the boundaries of this amazing technology.
We love NFT LA. It is awesome. It's not going away. Anything that you loved about it is still here and more. We love both parts of the highly descriptive name of NFT LA. The NFT movement over these last couple of years has coalesced the creative economy and ecosystem around a specific part of this technology. At least in our view, LA is the epicenter of creativity on Earth. Those are two things that we will continue to celebrate while keeping up with the rapid expansion of our universe here and staying on the Outer Edge where all the cool stuff happens.
Zach, in general, what makes a good crypto conference?
I almost shy away from the word conference. It seems to come with some limitations and connotations that we think we expand beyond. I prefer terms like innovation festival. There is a lot of culture and technology. As often as we're learning and directly doing business networking, we're also having a great time and being surprised by what people are doing and what people are able to demonstrate for us. I want people to come in. I don't need to see that many business suits. I want to see the crazy costumes that you would wear at a Comic-Con.
Another big distinction around our event is how we're doubling down on the community. There will be a K-12 youth summit before the event that we're supporting and a hackathon. Thursday of the event is Community Day. There are all sorts of cool stuff being planned throughout LA that we're supporting and sending our ticket holders to. The creativity in this space doesn't live within too many walls or boundaries. We want to expand the boundaries of what this gathering is all about. If people come to LA from Asia, Europe, or South America, they get to see all of the Web3 creativity going on throughout LA.
Is there a coupon code for my audience?
Let's say ALTCOINDAILYVIP. We will get that code generated for you pronto.
Aaron and I will be moderating a panel. I want to pack the house. I want our audience to be there. If you don't come for us, it's understandable. There are way bigger notable guests speaking at this conference. Can you touch on 1 or 2?
As we announced our theme of the Outer Edge, we also wanted to celebrate our latest keynote edition, which is the one and only William Shatner who's going to help us boldly go to the outer edge of what's possible.
That's such an amazing highlight for us. I don't think there are too many people throughout the globe that have not encountered Star Trek in their lives. He has been such an early supporter of blockchain technology. He's always pushing the outer edge and visiting new galaxies. We want William Shatner at our event. He's doing a cool project with Orange Comet that we will learn more about.
We've got some familiar faces from 2022 and a lot of new faces. Yat Siu, the Chairman of Animoca Brands and a true global leader in this space, is almost coming back, as well as Nicole Buffett, Neil Strauss, and Tom Bilyeu. In addition to that, we've got Erick Calderone. What he has done with Art Blocks has been as pioneering as it gets in terms of generative art. He has been a true leader in this space.
We also have the one and only Champ Medici or Cordell, Snoop Dogg's son who's incredible. There are local major contributors to the space like Baron Davis, a former two-time NBA champion. He has done some incredible drops. We also have expanded to some folks that play in the Web3 space beyond NFTs like Shyam Nagarajan, the Head of Web3 and Sustainability for IBM. They're also building the future of this space. We wanted folks like that.
We've got Andrew Choi who is one of the co-founders of Supernormal, one of the vast far-ranging projects in Asia that not everyone in LA knows about but one of the most important projects of the year. There are folks like Marta Belcher, the General Counsel and Chair of Filecoin Foundation, and Scott Page, the sax player for Pink Floyd, a true technologist. It's a cool lineup. I'm going to have trouble deciding what talks I get to go to in the middle of putting out fires.
There are so many more than we could get into. We haven't even touched into the many different facets of the sports world where we've got both former NBA All-Stars and current C-Suite from the LA Rams among some more. It will be jam-packed. If you care about anything, probably your niche is there with some real leaders on stage and in the audience.
I want to encourage our audience to check out whenever Scott Page is speaking. I met him for the first time at your conference in 2022, and then we turned out to be both speaking at a Dubai conference later in the year. He's the man. He is so passionate about this space.
He's a good friend of ours. He was one of the early guests on Edge of NFT. I've known Scott for years. He has been a technology pioneer and always breaks boundaries. He's so in love with this technology.
Zach, what's your why in terms of being a founding member of a conference or whatever you want to call it? It's tough. A lot of people don't know the headache of organizing. You're probably not going to make that much money in the first five years of starting up any conference. Why do you put yourself through this?
I ask myself that all the time. There must be a pathology that keeps us coming back because, in many ways, the craziness of it can't possibly be worth it, yet we keep coming back. I stumbled into doing technology events here in LA more than a decade ago as I was building some FinTech startups and trying to grow my network. No matter what I tried to do, it kept coming back. Whenever I would start something that I cared about that involved getting people together, that would end up growing so well that I couldn't let it die. That ended up taking over much of my life.
It's almost a default for me. If we can get awesome people together in person, let's find a way. I met Josh by hosting some tech and startup meetups in Los Angeles. We have done projects over the years. Edge of NFT showed what happens when you get entrepreneurs of Josh, Jeff, and Eathan's caliber together doing something that might sound as silly as an NFT podcast. There is so much greatness that has already happened, and even more is coming. It made too much sense not to try.
I reflect on my crazy entrepreneurial journey since childhood. I've always liked to bring people together and disrupt the status quo. Back in the day, I created an event when I worked in consulting and found myself more gravitated towards creating that event than my day job. I created a FoodTech company with a couple of guys, including Jeff, called Territory Foods where we were delivering meals to gyms but stacking them in refrigerators and then co-creating with chefs.
I like to bend the rules of what's possible with good people and create an environment for people to gather, have fun, and create things that are bigger than what I can create in the world. It's how I'm wired. With that wiring comes this tendency to do things that oftentimes feel impossible even as you're doing them. I'm reminded that it's important to take fear in the eye, look at it, and keep going anyway. That's what keeps me fired up every day.
Take fear in the eye, look at it, and keep going anyway. Click To Tweet
You touched on this a little at the beginning but can you explain again the outer edge of the floor plan of your conference? That's a big differentiator where usually, these companies buy booths. That's how you pay for the conference but gentlemen of the people or regular people can have a presence at this festival with their projects on the Outer Edge. What is that?
It's in the name, so it's important to us. What we want to be is for the community. We're part of the community as well. This isn't some giant Death Star corporation that is doing this only with the big companies that can write the Microsoft-level checks, and then the community has to go off and do something separate. We are a startup in the Web3 space. We make media tech and events for this amazing movement. We want to do it with everyone here, especially those people who are either based here or often participate in Los Angeles, but this is also for everyone around the world. That is the point of the Outer Edge section and activation.
It's powered by what we're calling land grants, which means any community-powered project, artist, or anyone who wants to can apply for a land grant. You get a space inside the convention. You're not applying for some expensive sponsorship or anything like that. It's for you and your community to come co-create something awesome as long as you've got the chops and the desire to put on an awesome activation, experience, or learning. It's up to you inside. We want everyone to at least for a day or two come together that week because there's so much magic that happens when the community coalesces. We've got so much space at the convention center that we want to share.
If you're a community project and you want to do something outside our venue, more power to you. Do something with us and then create a breadcrumb trail to your experience, your after-party, or your event on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. This is a pretty novel way of decentralizing a central event in a way that might work. It's an experiment. We will see what happens. We're going to have a lot of fun figuring it out along the way and getting feedback. The response has been currently positive. I got an email from an artist that was thinking of doing his late-night rave, and now he wants to do something with us. That's cool. That's what we're going for.
We announced on Twitter spaces a collaboration with the one and only CryptoJeweler. Once that launches 500 VIPs and 500 GAs, we will get a custom piece of collaborative jewelry. It's this beautiful Outer Edge VIP bracelet that he designed with a digital twin. That's how we're co-creating with him. We are encouraging the crazy. If anyone has an idea, we want to talk to them, and they can apply for a land grant in addition to coming. The thing about conferences is people tend to associate two dimensions. You're either speaking or attending. What we're trying to do is make every single participant a co-creator.
That's why we're going to a festival and not a conference.
I can't wait to be there. Let's say somebody is watching this and they say, "I'm in Los Angeles. I want to use the code ALTCOINDAILYVIP and get a little percentage off the ticket." If they go there with their general admission ticket, is there an official after-party like the first or second night where maybe they can party with William Shatner if he attends?
I can't guarantee that we're going to get to party with Captain Kirk. We do always build in some fun entertainment and a happy hour. It's very casual and fun at end of the day, but because the community puts on so many and such high-quality parties, we don't even want to try and take anyone away from that. If you're putting on an amazing after-party, please let us know. We are going to be publishing all the best events. We're not going to make everybody rely on a handful of random Google spreadsheets that are filtered around. We're happy to take the web development work of displaying that easily to format. That's the point. We're not going to go late after the conference because we want to party with you too.
I love it. Final thoughts, gentlemen. Is there anything we didn't cover on Outer Edge LA?
There's so much. Josh alluded to it briefly. There's some new stuff happening. One is a hackathon the weekend before the conference on the 18th and the 19th. If you're a builder, a great developer, a designer, or amazing at putting together pitches, please check out what we're doing with the Outer Edge hackathon. It's going to be awesome. This is the first time we're doing it.
To some extent, it's an experiment but we know some amazing stuff is going to come out of it. The theme is empowering creators and supercharging the creator economy. If you've got an idea of some new product tech or hack that you think you might be able to whip together with a great team over a weekend, and that makes life better or more profitable for creators, please come be part of the hackathon. It's going to be awesome.
I would emphasize that this event is aligned with celebrating the builders and the creators of the future of this industry. The last few years have been a giant experiment. We have learned a lot, and now it's about taking that learning and putting it into incredible applications in film, music, and entertainment. We're going to be having those provocative conversations. The people that are coming to this event are truly building the future with this technology.
If you want to meet entertainment executives, founders, builders, creators, VCs, and all the people that are key ingredients to making the sausage, then you want to come to this event and get to collaborate with people that you could build long-term relationships. It's humbling how often I hear stories of people who met their lead investor, met a collaborator that they made a piece of music with or met a co-founder through NFT LA. We're expanding the outer edge of what's possible for co-creation. We want everyone to be part of it.
My brother met his girlfriend in 2022 at NFT LA.
There you go. That's another story to put in the book.
Everything is possible at this festival. Thanks, guys.
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