BTC Prague 2025 dev/hack/day design track

[GBKS]

This is the third year we have the option to organize a design track at the BTC Prague dev/hack/day (one, two). Last year was great, so let's decide whether we want to do this again, and if so, start planning.

This issue can serve as a planning tracker and be updated as needed.

[swedishfrenchpress]

I think the hands-on session during my ecash talk last year went really well. People seemed engaged and actually excited to download something and play around with it. I’d love to do more hands-on stuff like that.

Some ideas:

Ecash Lottery
Everyone who attends throughout the day gets a lottery ticket number. At the end of the day, we do a live drawing with three winners. The prizes? Three different ecash QR codes with different amounts—maybe $10, $21, and $100. Winners have to scan the QR code with an ecash wallet to claim.

Who Wants to Be a Satillionaire? (Design Edition)
https://youtu.be/8sJ1IwGXaVY
D++ built this game and played at Baltic Honey Badger last year—it was a hit. It’s a fun trivia-style game show. Pretty sure if we reach out we could get the code, fork it, and swap out the questions to focus more on design instead of technical or bitcoin trivia.

[UmarSalihu]

I think the hands-on session during my ecash talk last year went really well. People seemed engaged and actually excited to download something and play around with it. I’d love to do more hands-on stuff like that.

Some ideas:

Ecash Lottery Everyone who attends throughout the day gets a lottery ticket number. At the end of the day, we do a live drawing with three winners. The prizes? Three different ecash QR codes with different amounts—maybe $10, $21, and $100. Winners have to scan the QR code with an ecash wallet to claim.

Who Wants to Be a Satillionaire? (Design Edition) https://youtu.be/8sJ1IwGXaVY D++ built this game and played at Baltic Honey Badger last year—it was a hit. It’s a fun trivia-style game show. Pretty sure if we reach out we could get the code, fork it, and swap out the questions to focus more on design instead of technical or bitcoin trivia.

Just watched the whole 28 minutes of this and was quite engaging. If we can get the code and tweak it to fit design related trivia, that would be awesome and it'll definitely be a hit.

[GBKS]

Much of the planning on this happened in Discord, and we had a very successful (IMHO) design track last week in Prague. Here are some pics.

The presentations covered some pretty diverse topics and were a good mix of being general and/or project-specific. Our two bigger changes to the program, the socratic seminar and user testing also worked out well. The latter two came together pretty last minute.

For the socratic seminar, we were about 15 people sitting in a circle. Erik, Michael, and I had prepared a list of 19 topics (see here). We only got around to ~5 topics in the hour we had. The group would have been happy to continue chatting, but we had a to break for lunch and I needed to prep for my own presentation.

For user testing, it took a little longer than expected to get set up. the Bitaxe had some problems with the local wi-fi. And we had to lurk around outside and recruit testers. But it worked out pretty well, I think people really enjoy getting hands-on and discussing specific projects after a long day of talks.

Talk attendance was unpredictable. I tried to keep track of which ones get more attendees, but it fluctuated a lot. Several talks started with 5 people in the room, and ended up with 30-40. I think it was so dependent on what other talks were going on at the same time. Something I heard from 2 people was that their background was less technical, so they went back and forth between some lighter technical talks and our design track.

Huge thanks to everyone who helped organize (especially Michael and Erik), presented, or chipped in otherwise. If you were around, please share your thoughts how it went for you.

[swedishfrenchpress]

Good summary @GBKS. I want to echo two points

1. The design Socratic went really well. Opening up the floor to the audience was a great break from the constant stream of talks. I think people appreciated the chance to chime in and share their opinions. Since many of the topics were design-focused, it gave folks with less technical backgrounds a chance to participate. People actually wanted to keep going, which is a good sign that it was engaging. I think we should continue this format in the future. Whenever we have a physical presence, we should do this and pitch it as an open invitation for anyone, regardless of background, to join in on Bitcoin design discussions.

2. The usability testing was a big win. The Macadamia dev found it super helpful and learned a lot by watching regular users interact with his wallet. We should consider reaching out to him for a short testimonial we can share. Might inspire other developers to volunteer their projects or time for testing. One reflection: setup took a while, and since we only had a few hours (and it was later in the day), a lot of attendees were winding down and more focused on socializing. If we do this again I’d suggest allocating more prep time and scheduling it earlier in the day, so it doesn’t clash with the end of day wrap up time.

[GBKS]

Time to wrap this one up. We also wrote about the event in the latest newsletter. Will we do a four-peat in 2026 and organize another design track? Time will tell.