I've become more appreciative of crypto conference culture.

Its value add is: it gives the benefits of cross-org in-person person coordination, serendipitous connections, weak ties, etc, without everyone being gravitationally pulled into NYC and SF.

It's maybe the only institution to have successfully done this.

open source conference culture does this, too!

ooh, good point!

(and makes sense, especially since crypto in large part grew out of open source, especially in the pre-VC era)

IETF/NANOG/etc used to be like this in the 1990s too. Stopped around the first dotcom boom, though.