As Sovereign Engineering comes to a close, I'd like to take some time to reflect on the past few months. It feels like it was yesterday when I was sitting in a Panera Bread in NYC listening to a Nostrovia episode when these guys
@PABLOF7z and
@Gigi mentioned a crazy idea to bring a bunch of hackers to an island in the middle of the Atlantic to work on Nostr stuff for two months. At this point I had only recently heard about Nostr, in fact, I was still debating between building on Farcaster vs Nostr 😅. By the end of that podcast I was hooked, I knew I had to find a way to get myself into the Cohort and start contributing to the future of the web. So I started working on a client, learning all about the intricacies of the protocol as I did. A constant flow of Nostr podcasts streamed into my ears, fueling the next few weeks as I put together what eventually became Flockstr. (Funny enough, Flockstr was originally supposed to be a Patreon/Substack client where users could subscribe to creators and consume long-form content). Once my MVP was done I sent DMs to a bunch of the big names on Nostr to get some feedback. Luckily, despite not having much cred to my name at the time, I got some awesome encouragement from
@hodlbod & Pablo which pushed me to keep going. Fast forward 4 months and now I find myself sitting in a cafe in Madeira, writing this retrospective as I get ready to return home tomorrow.
In that time I've:
1. Turned Flockstr into the first Nostr Calendar events client
2. Built Flare.pub the first YouTube/Video sharing app on Nostr
3. Built Find Me On Nostr a fun little game to spread the word about Nostr and share some sats
4. Contributed to the Nips repo
5. Visited Bitcoin Park in Nashville to meet a bunch of Nostriches like
@ODELL,
@Derek Ross,
@Terry Yiu,
@Rod,
@UNCLE ROCKSTAR, and others
6. Joined SEC-01 in Madeira where I got to work with some of the most capable developers in the space and discuss the future of the web (I could gloat more about my time in
@Sovereign Engineering but this is a kind 1 after all so let's keep it somewhat brief 😂)
7. Created Seeker, an Events app for Bitcoiners built on Nostr ready to onboard the next generation of Nostriches.
8. Presented at Bitcoin Atlantis where I was able to meet some incredible people like
@jack,
@DETERMINISTIC OPTIMISM 🌞,
@miljan,
@JeffG ,
@Hong Kim,
@Brad Mills, and so many more.
All of that in just a few months. I was just checking my GitHub, and my first ever Nostr commit was Oct 5th, 2023 marking tomorrow my 5-month Nostr-anniversary. It's amazing how much can happen in such a short time. Thanks to all who I've had the pleasure of meeting so far in this journey, I can't wait to see what the next 5 months have in store. 🧡
