To call EthDenver a conference would defy its very essence. 

“How do you describe emergent order creativity? You can’t. You have to experience it for yourself,” John Paller, co-founder of the can’t-miss free event that takes place every late February, said to me recently.  

“Mainstream conferences are too much talking and not enough walking,” Paller said. “I always think of that South Park episode when they’re enamored with themselves so much they’re happy to smell their own farts.”

EthDenver was first imagined back in 2015, when Paller was experimenting with start-up ideas. He was introduced to Dmitry Buterin, Vitalik’s father, and a friendship grew with both Buterins, as did Paller’s interest in Ethereum and web3. This coincided with a burgeoning meet-up scene in Denver, which grew from 15 people to 400 in less than a year. 

That same type of explosive growth has made EthDenver need a much larger venue this year after more than twice the number of expected attendees showed up last year. 

The festival and hackathon is a testament to what can happen when an egalitarian, community-owned approach is honored, especially as it grows. EthDenver defies the constructs of a conference with its meetups, workshops, technical demonstrations, hacker houses, investor pitches, parties, raves, and dinners – truly embodying the web3 ethos to allow people to make of it what they want. 

“People don’t come to EthDenver just to sit in an audience and listen to leaders tell them how it’s going to go,” Paller said. “Our attendees aren’t conference goers either. You’re not going to see any suits here.” Unless it’s Paller’s “suit” – a banana t-shirt and sport coat. 

What Paller looks forward to most every year is being surprised. “I never know what I’m going to see and that’s the way we’ve designed it,” he said. “There could be some 17-year-old high school kid who hacks together some genius project. It’s our humanness, the dynamic expression of creativity, which is really beautiful to see.” 

And it’s struck a cultural chord. The EthDenver FOMO is real. 

If last year – EthDenver’s sixth – was the “awkward gangly 12-year-old teenager,” this year Paller feels “we’ve matured a bit” after some major growing pains. The team didn’t expect EthDenver’s explosive growth. In 2022, they’d planned for 4,000-6,000 attendees but over 13,000 people showed up. 

“EthDenver is kind of like Denver’s Super Bowl”

— John Paller

“We had a three-hour line outside a venue in 25-degree weather. I was wondering why they were waiting outside when they could’ve just gone to another spot to hang out. What this experience showed me was that the community wants to be together,” said Paller.

This year, organizers have already received 27,000 applications for the event – which Paller said will reach 40,000 – as well as more than 2,000 speaker applications. He estimated they’d only be able to accept 15 percent of the speaker requests. The event takes place from February 24 to March 5.

To accommodate that crowd, Paller rented a million-square-foot venue in the River North Arts District. Paller and Co-Founder Justin Moskowitz have built out the team to nine full-time people, plus 60 to 70 seasonal stewards that run various areas and a crew of 400 to 500 people. 

“We’ve learned to operationalize a lot of the complexities of scaling  an event culture like this,” Paller said. 

What makes EthDenver extra special is that it remains free.

“We’ve been criticized a lot for keeping it free, but we have no extraction goals. We just want to nurture that alpha signal of creativity and let the value spawn itself. There’s no agenda or expectations. EthDenver is basically the largest live action web3 experiment,” he added.

Paller admits he’s a social anthropologist at heart. His “pure creative ethos” for the event remains undaunted today. 

A talk at EthDenver 2022

Coming from human-resources tech, Paller has a keen interest in employee satisfaction. “80 percent of people are actively disengaged with their work. They maintain jobs as a means to an end. We live in a paycheck culture, where most people aren’t invigorated in their work. What does this mean about their expression of who they are? When people are integrated in the work they’re doing, they feel joy,” he said.

“To me, web3 is synonymous with the future of work because we’re talking about new economic models, game designs, monetary policy and fundamental shifts in the way we relate to our commercial experiences,” he said. “EthDenver gives people a kind of license to come and express who they are, however they see fit.” 

The emphasis is more creativity than crypto. But EthDenver is also a great way for newcomers to see what all the fuss regarding Ethereum is about. 

“I realized, instead of paying expensive developers, why not host a hackathon and give people a path into web3? It took off and we ended up with 1,500 people in the first year,” Paller said. “EthDenver is kind of like Denver’s Super Bowl.”