Edge City Monthly — June/July 2024

Updates on Edge Esmeralda and our next event

Edge City Team

July 8, 2024

Hello friends!

Timour here with another monthly update for Edge City ☀️ I hope you are having a lovely day.

I’m writing this on the flight back from Edge Esmeralda, our month-long popup village in Northern California. I’ll share more below but TLDR: it was magical.

We’ll also share the official announcement of Edge City Lanna, our next popup village, which will take place October 10th to November 10th, 2024, in Chiang Mai, Thailand. You can apply below.

On with the update!

Remind me, what is Edge City?

Edge City creates “popup villages” around the world that convene people working at the frontiers of tech, science, and society.

We aspire to be a ‘society incubator’— a lab of experimentation for new ideas, tech, culture, social tech, and organizations, all dedicated to accelerating human flourishing.  

We aim to partner with folks who are building new cities or permanent living environments, so please reach out if you are building something relevant!

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Edge Esmeralda

What a month!

Our deepest gratitude to everyone who trusted us and participated in the weird and wonderful experiment that was Edge Esmeralda. We had a fantastic time, and we can't wait for the next one. We’ll have more thoughts to share in a few weeks, including what we’ve learned and how we’ll continue to improve in future events, but we’ll share a brief recap here.  

What was Edge Esmeralda?

Edge Esmeralda was a popup village that brought together ~1,200 folks who believe the future can be better and are actively working to make it happen. We gathered for a month of living, learning, and collaborating in Healdsburg, California. Our design principles focused on emergence and co-creation (which you can read about in the Edge Esmeralda handbook here), so the truth is we didn’t actually know precisely what would happen. We created the container and then watched it unfold.

This quote from Simone, a local reporter with the Healdsburg Tribune, sums it up nicely:

‍“Edge Esmeralda was one of the weirdest, wildest, most ambitious, most unexpected — and most fun — things I’ve ever watched unfold in Healdsburg.”

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Read more about the impression that Edge Esmeralda left on locals in Simone’s full article, or in this one from the Press Democrat.

By the numbers

We had:  

  • ~1,200 people come through the doors during the month, including full-time residents and local visitors, and ~40 children
  • 25 ‘tracks’ or programs that were organized by experts
  • 551 sessions of programming throughout the mont, including a majority that were organized by the community and attendees  
  • 167 unique session hosts
  • 3x increase in Bird bike usage in the town during the event!

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Programming highlights

You can see the 25 ‘tracks’ here; these were organized by experts and institutional partners with whom we worked to plan their programs. These tracks ranged widely, with some highlights including:

  • LabWeek: Organized by Protocol Labs and Foresight Institute, this program looked at the future of frontier tech including Neurotech, AI, VR/XR, and Biotech/Longevity.
  • Cities of Tomorrow: This track, organized by our main Edge Esmeralda collaborator, Devon Zuegel, focused on urban planning, city management, and future city innovations.
  • Crypto Academic Workshop: We brought together the world’s leading academics in cryptography, systems design and game theory for a week of deep-dives on crypto problems, in partnership with Uniswap Foundation and with support from the Ethereum Foundation.
  • Governance Week: this week featured the Governance Games program with Butter and Uniswap Foundation, and the Network Nations deep-dive led by Primavera De Filippi.
  • Longevity Summer Camp: Organized by Laura Deming, this program brought together longevity leaders for a weekend of brainstorming the future of this industry.
  • Summer of Protocols: a week of focusing on futures and world-building with protocols, led by Tim Beiko and Venkatesh Rao.
  • Edge Esmeralda Hackathon: Our hackathon program lasted the whole month and culminated in a hackathon with judges including Ivan Zhao (CEO & Founder of Notion). Huge thanks to Optimism and Prime Intellect as our main supporters.
  • Art at the Edge: We hosted an art program at Edge Esmeralda with the exhibit Imagined Realities: Perspectives on Change, curated by earthbits. Thank you to Optimism W❤️TA for the support!  
  • And many more!

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These programs provided a solid structure to the month, but the bulk of the programming emerged organically from the community of attendees who joined us at Edge Esmeralda. The community self-organized hundreds of activities, including AI-wearable soldering sessions, daily running clubs, sharing circles, impromptu lightning talks, night markets, and many others. If you’re curious, we left the full calendar up online so you can see what took place.

On a personal note, these events continue to be extremely meaningful experiences for me. I love the feeling of my comfort zone stretching within a container that supports that growth. As an example, I jumped in to lead our hackathon efforts after our prior lead had family issues come up just before the month started. I had never organized one before, but ended up having an amazing time with great results (full video of the demo day coming soon!).  

These months are intensive, but we’re already excited about the next one!

And now, speaking of the next one…

Edge City Lanna — Chiang Mai, Thailand

We are excited to officially announce Edge City Lanna, our next popup village, which will take place this October 10th to November 10th, in Chiang Mai, Thailand!

Join us for a gathering focused on incubating novel technologies and ways of living. Experience a blend of ancient history and modern innovation, starting your day meditating in 700-year-old temples and ending it by discussing the latest advancements in AI and BioTech.

We’ll be sharing a lot of details over the next month, including how to book rooms and the structure of the popup village, so make sure to sign up for updates below.

You can see more details on the website and apply to join here.

But that’s not all!

Crecimiento — Innovation in Argentina

We are advising the team behind Crecimiento on their popup village Aleph, which will be in Buenos Aires, August 5th - September 1st, 2024. Sign up here!

Crecimiento is a movement bringing together Argentine and global innovators focused on transforming Argentina into a world-leading crypto, startup, and innovation hub.

The August pop-up will bring together 200-400 founders and startup teams, builders, mentors, experts, leaders, believers, government officials, and regulators across multiple tracks: crypto, startup, Crecimiento, wellness, culture, and more.

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If you’re curious you can read more about the popup village here, and join the telegram group here. To attend and be directly part of the moment please apply for General Admission here or as Startup/Builder here.

Reads

Learning from Popup Villages, Jon Hillis

This is a thoughtful write-up by Jon about his experiences at various popup villages, and why he believes they are an important form-factor for the future.

Edge Esmeralda: My Experience, The Healdsburg Tribune

Simone gives an honest view on what the event was like from the local perspective.

As ‘pop-up city’ Edge Esmeralda departs Healdsburg, a look behind its walls, The Press Democrat

Another great perspective from a local reporter!

If you have a relevant article or podcast that you want to feature, here, reach out!

Photos

Usually this section has concept art but there are just so many good photos coming out of Edge Esmeralda, I’m going to share them here instead.

Follow along with us on Twitter or Telegram. Thanks for reading and see you soon!

The Edge City team ☀️

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