Are you Ready? Decentralized Web Summit 2018 is almost here

They are coming from Helsinki and Tokyo, Berlin and Niteroi, Brazil.  We’ve invited archivists and activists, policy wonks and protocol builders to join us at the Internet Archive and SF Mint for the Decentralized Web Summit, July 31-August 2, 2018.  This three-day event is for anyone interested in building the Web we want—and the Web we deserve.

The full schedule is now available here.  And with 140+ sessions spanning six tracks, there promises to be a rich mix of conversations happening in every corner of the historic SF Mint.

“There’ll be coders. There’s going to be lawyers and policymakers. There are humanitarians. There’s diverse voices from all over the world, coming together to try to be part of the discussion,” explained Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive, the organization organizing the Summit. “So it’s not just about locking a bunch of coders in a room, and saying ‘Gosh, what do they have for us now?’ It’s ‘let’s do this in the open. Let’s go and make it so that people can participate and be part of this.’”

If the Decentralized Web Summit of 2016 was a call to action, this year’s event is a demonstration of how far we’ve come in the last two years.  There is now working code to test, new global regulations to consider, and the realization that it is time to grapple with real world applications and challenges.

“I am so excited for the Decentralized Web Summit. I want to have real, and maybe sometimes hard, conversations about the implications of the technology that we’re all experimenting with now,” said Danielle Robinson, Co-Executive Director of Code for Science and Society, stewards of the DAT Project. “I want to bring people to the table who weren’t at the table two years ago at the last event, and make sure that new voices in the community have the space to speak, and the support to talk about what’s important to them. So I’m looking forward to a big, diverse and exciting event.”

Highlights include:

  • Jennifer Granick of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, will deliver a keynote, “The End of the Internet as we knew it, and What Happens Next.”
  • Learn how to build your own P-2-P website on Beaker Browser with no server!
  • Enter our decentralized virtual world, where VR meets the browser and your virtual media stays in your hands.
  • Sir Tim Berners-Lee will unveil his latest innovations with SOLID, the project that allows users to store and maintain control of their own data.
  • Experience demos of the latest breakthroughs in Decentralized Identity.
  • Hear the Stories from the Field from those working with partners to create decentralized tools in remote regions of the world.
  • Meet the leaders of 70+ Decentralized projects in the Opening Night Science Fair, where you can have one-on-one conversations with the innovators.
  • Explore how decentralizing social networks may be challenged by current and proposed regulations, and how we can influence those policies before they become law.
  • Hear from tech leaders grappling with everyday issues of governance: how do we all prevent the DWeb from becoming centralized all over again?
  • Experience the Secrets Exhibit in the vaults of the Mint, and conversations with Whitfield Diffie, the creator of modern public-private key cryptography.
  • And we haven’t forgotten–the Web should be fun!  So we’ve commissioned famed Defcon cryptographer and puzzle master, Ryan Clarke, and artist Mar Williams to create six paintings, each holding the pieces of a deviously difficult puzzle for you to solve.  The winners will receive OMG, ETH and ZEC coins to donate to charity.

So get ready for hands-on learning, probing conversations, new allies to meet, and yes, tons of fun!

Six deviously difficult cryptographic puzzles will be hidden in these paintings, ready for you to unlock.