NEAR Hacker House Austin: Highlights💥

NearHackerHouse
6 min readJun 17, 2022

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The NEAR Hacker House in Austin, TX from June 8–12 was a blast! We have so many notable moments to share, so enjoy this showcase some of the best activities and highlights! For those who couldn’t make it — No FOMO allowed, because we’ll see you at the next one 😉

First, let’s talk about all of the amazing speakers and moderators that came to help educate and cultivate real community learning experiences.

Speaker & Panel highlights:

Launching Crypto Communities
Legal Considerations for Founders
Open Forest Protocol Product Update
Recruiting Top Talent
The Culture of Teams & Team Building

The NEAR Community showed up and showed out:

LEFT: David Morrison (NEAR Foundation) in his famous blue track suit, RIGHT: Cameron Dennis & Nichole Tay (NEAR Foundation) and Igor Stadnyk (Pembrock Finance)
Dorian (NEAR Foundation), Kayleigh (Open Forest Protocol), & Todd (NEAR Foundation)

🛠️Builders Workshops & 💆Wellness Activations:

Still no FOMO allowed — but if you haven’t experienced the genuine & brilliant synergy of the NEAR community, you’re missing out.

🛠️Willem from Aha Labs give a demo on Automated Frontends w/ Raen.

💸Matt Lockyer from Proximity gave DeFi on NEAR walk-throughs using Ref.finance, Burrow Cash, and Metapool.

🧪Amber Marie led a workshop on Decentralization, Equity, & Inclusion by facilitating a co-creation experiment.

💻Jacob Lindahl gave an Intro to Rust and NCD Tooling Orientation Demo & Workshop.

Subbora led the group in an identity & vision board-making exercise.

Willem Wyndham (Aha LAbs & TENK DAO), RIGHT: Jacob Lindahl (NEAR Edu)
Matt Lockyer (Many hats @ Proximity)
Amber Marie from DEI on NEAR, leading a co-creation experiment
Subbora leading Wellness sessions — we made vision boards!

Hackathon Demos & Winners:

A major highlight of the Hacker House was the Hackathon & the awesome builders who participated. Thank you to NEAR Foundation, Aurora, Metapool, Tonic DEX for sponsoring the Hackathon Bounties and encouraging our community to build on NEAR Protocol. Thank you to all of the builders who came out to participate and show the NEAR community how much talent and potential there is in the blockchain space in Austin.

Empoweb3 Demo
LEFT: Builders chatting in Hacker Space 1, RIGHT: Odyssey Labs team demoing Token List

To learn more about the NEAR Hackathon co-organized with Encode Club, the winning projects and builders, click here to read more.

Merch

We had a lovely merch display at the front checkin with rainbow NEAR shirts & Hacker House branded table cloths made by our friends at NEAR Publish.

NEAR Publish is a new nexus point between the digital and physical — original NEAR publications and boundary-advancing media for the growing NEAR Protocol Ecosystem. Their work is in original publications & cutting-edge media for the expanding NEAR Protocol Ecosystem. Bridging blockchain with physical collectibles, creating the #Phygital 🌐📰🎨🎹🎬🎮

Check out their linktree for more!

Events

The Lone Star Event took place at Sellar’s speakeasy in the heart of downtown Austin, where David Morrison (Community at NEAR) and Claudio Cossio (Co-founder of Metapool) gave some short talks about the NEAR Community. There were drinks, introductions, and a ton of great conversation and visibility for the awesomeness that is the NEAR Community.

Claudio, Co-founder of Metapool talking to some guests at the event!

Creatives ATXpo went down at The Factory on 5th, formerly known as Riot Bread on E 5th St. The local art scene came together with partners from the Web3 creative community & NEAR Austin! Artists learned how NFTs are made and minted, we featured local artists & vendors, had a live set by DJ Sahara & served free drinks!

States DAO Korean BBQ took place in our very own backyard! Drinks, mingling, and delicious food! Good thing we had the pool nearby to cool off😎

States DAO facilitates learning together, build fellow-mentor relationships, earning tokens, and finding talent & jobs in Web3. Read more here!

Miscellaneous Fun Stuff

The floating pool rhino became the Official Metapool Mascot for the House!

Chief Vibe Officer of 40 Acres DAO initiated himself into the NEAR Community with a “The Future is NEAR” tattoo.

Tattooing in action, and the result.

Cheddar Finance dropped off some cheese stress wedges for the Hacker House guests! Cheddar is a NEP-141 loyalty token that rewards users of the NEAR ecosystem of dApps. Their vision is to help create a thriving ecosystem of NEAR dApps and DeFi through strategic partnerships that promote the use of NEAR while rewarding users.

Thanks for the goodies!

Cheddar Finance dropped off some cheese stress wedges for the Hacker House guests!

We hope you enjoyed this photo recap of the NEAR Hacker House highlights in Austin! If you attended any of our events and took photos, please upload them to our public google folder.

Stay connected with the NEAR ATX & NEAR Hacker House Community:

📢In order to stay tuned for upcoming events follow 🐦 Hacker House Twitter, & NEAR ATX Twitter for updates on the Austin community and NEAR Hacker House movement.

✉️If you have not already, make sure to join NEAR HH Discord and the NEAR HH Announcements Telegram.

If you want to stay in touch with NEAR ATX hub, click here to join their Telegram ✍️

See y’all soon!

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NearHackerHouse
NearHackerHouse

Written by NearHackerHouse

⋈NEARHACKS is the monthly traveling Hacker House series. 🌴Miami➡️🌵Austin ➡️🗽NYC