ETH Denver Wrap!
I had a great time attending ETH Denver for my first time. It’s said to be the biggest crypto event in the US, and I believe that. There are a lot of great things about the event, and my experience this year, and a few things I’d do differently next year.
Overall, Denver is a nice city. It’s not in my US cities to visit (Las Vegas, NYC, Miami, Austin, Boston) or to live (Las Vegas, Austin, Miami-metro, Tampa-Metro, Bellevue (Seattle suburb), etc.), but it’s a nice place, and probably a bit nicer if you do winter sports, or visit in the summer. Some decent but not really world-class hotels downtown (Renaissance Downtown where I stayed is a nice building but maybe a 3/5 as a hotel; Four Seasons and Ritz looked nicer), lots of great old buildings, good restaurants, etc. Colorado laws suck (for guns, taxes, etc.) and are getting worse/going in the wrong direction, so there’s little risk I’d want to live here, but I’m not against visiting.
This is an “Uber” city vs a “Lyft” city (2x price difference!), and the airport is really far from downtown. During the event, parking would have been a huge pain, so I’m glad I didn’t rent a car, but otherwise I’d probably drive here, and it would be utterly insane not to own a car if you lived here.
People were consistently nice, even outside of tourist interactions. It’s a basically good place.
ETH Denver itself is amazing, much more so because it’s basically run entirely by volunteers. There’s a little bit more chaos than if it were run by a professional event management team, but it’s not actually that much more chaotic than many professional events. Truly impressive show of community.
I personally didn’t like the venue all that much (“National Western Complex”, which is basically a livestock exhibition center). The facility itself was decent — a big floor area for an expo center with lots of booths, with stages mixed in — but it was in a very industrial area and not a short walk from hotels, restaurants, etc. As a result, people went to the venue and then had to get uber ($20-40 each time, and 5-20 minute wait, on top of a 10-20 minute trip), or try to use shuttles (I never bothered). It was also somewhat overwhelming to be on-site in the big room all day — I would have preferred a structure with more chill-out areas or just lower volume, or in a place where it wasn’t so cold, outdoor meeting areas mixed in with the event.
Some of my favorite experiences during the con were “side events” — probably 200 were running throughout the week, and I got invited to at least 25, and attended maybe 10. These ranged from a great dinner at the Four Seasons EDGE steakhouse, to a VC-funded house which ran all week and had a great bar, food, and amazing people to talk to, to various breakfasts, to bar buy-outs, to casual get togethers. Unfortunately these couldn’t be as spontaneous because of how spread out everything is in Denver (especially this area), but somehow I did manage to run into the right people most of the time through pure serendipity.
Ended up with about 40 people to follow up with after the events, hopefully over the next week, so quite successful for me.
I’ve heard some pretty high prices for booths at the event itself, so I don’t think I’d go that route (even if we’re in a position to get one next year), but I loved getting a chance to speak on-stage with some amazing people on Saturday. I’ll probably try to do a couple dinners and maybe a one-day parallel thing next year, especially if I can find some partners to run it.
ETH Denver is relatively good timing (except for weather in Denver), in that it doesn’t conflict with other established events. I’d during the “great weather in Puerto Rico” season where I’d by default rather stay at home, but it’s well worth the (long, connection-required) flight from PR.