Solana hacker house - Prague

I have been following the Solana NFT ecosystem and communities for a few months. When I heard there would be a Solana event in one of my favourite cities, I had to attend. It was basically 100s of Solana enjoyers under one roof for 5 days. I didn't know what to expect before I went, but I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of organisation that went into it. So thank you, Solana, Rockaway and FTX, for this event and one of the best weeks ever.

I will try to break down the whole week into categories below.

The main venue

This hacker house took place in paralelnipolis. It is a crypto first cafe with hipster vibes and a hidden events centre at the back. The venue is just outside the Prague city centre, around 10 mins by tram. There were a lot of hotels, gyms, cafes, shops and bars, walking distance from the venue, which was very convenient. Around a quarter of the people in the venue were just there to help facilitate the event. Like bouncers, waiters, cooks, baristas and event organisers.

There were 2 rooms with monitors, ethernet cables and plugs, where people can hot desk to work on their project. I went to this event alone, so I got to speak to many people in this hot desk set-up. It was really cool to overhear people talking about tech in different languages. The stage room had a load of neon lights and constant deep house playing.

The NFT gallery is a bit smaller, but there are more chill spots like couches, games and massage stations.

There were a few other rooms like the bar, a foyer, lobby and smoking area, where people chilled, worked, and networked.

Development

Speaking to many people in the event, I concluded that I should switch my attention from NFTs to Defi. For the next few weeks, my goal is to learn what all the keywords mean and start making small investments to see how different methods work.

Also, speaking to many teams of devs and investors, I realised a shortage of Solana backend developers. We need Rust language to create smart contracts in Solana. There is not as much shortage of Javascript developers, as this is a widespread language. However, still, the demand is very high for them.

I realised that I need to learn Rust with the Anchor framework for the backend. I have started learning this in the last 2 days of the hackathon, during workshops.

For the front end, the most in-demand skills are React with NextJS with Solana libraries for Javascript. To get familiar with the Solana libraries, I created the NFTs page on this website to learn more about how to fetch data from the Solana chain and connect a wallet to my site. I have made this in the first 2 days of the hackathon.

One of the benefits of working here was that everyone uses the same tech stack. If I ever got stuck, I could always ask someone random next to me, and we could solve the issue together.

Networking

This was very special event for networking. Many like-minded people who share a common interest were all under one roof.

I met and spoke to investors and people who work at VC firms first time in my life. They gave me some incredible life, career and entrepreneurial tips that I will never forget.

I also met a lot of entrepreneurs, each in different stages of their careers. I learnt how important it is to have a co-founder when starting a company. I also learnt that it never gets easier when you are running a business.

I met a lot of developers who all were working or learning the same technologies. Hearing people talk about the same technology in their languages felt good. They were very eager to talk about their projects, which was interesting.

Partys

I attended three private parties with great food, music and drinks.

The first one was in one of the best clubs in Prague called CrossClub. It was 15 minutes walk from the hacker house. The best part of this venue was that it was covered in fantastic steel structures everywhere.

The second event was in the Lobkowicz Palace at Prague Castle. We were situated at the museum/ballroom. There were Professional dancers, Live music and DJs. Also, we got a tour of the Palace from William Lobkowicz, who also gave us some inspirational speeches.

The final party was in the Coal mill, around 40 mins away, so we took the Solana Express to get there. Again fantastic food, drinks, dancers and music. The headlining Dj of the night was Ben Bohmer from Anjunadeep, one of my favourite deep house DJs.

Food and Drink

One of the week's highlights was the amazing food and drinks we got offered. It was especially good, so we didn't have to go out and hunt for food and spend more time building, networking and exchanging ideas.

There was a bar with unlimited soft drinks and caffeine all day and alcohol from the afternoon, acting as a catalyst for networking.

Breakfast nibbles at the bar and open buffet food were available for lunch and dinner, all local high quality and tasty food.

Also at the three parties we attended, there again loads of food and alcohol. I tried caviar for the first time in one of these events.

Conclusion

This event showed me how vibrant the Solana community in Europe is. I met some amazing people that I am keeping in contact with. It gave me the motivation to double down on my Solana learning journey and build some amazing stuff.