zach on Nostr: As Sovereign Engineering comes to a close, I'd like to take some time to reflect on ...

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 (npub1l2v…ajft) and Gigi ⚡🧡 (npub1der…xzpc) 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 (npub1jlr…ynqn) & 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 (npub1qny…95gx), Derek Ross (npub18am…p424), tyiu (npub1yau…vjmf), bitkite (npub1atn…h4x3), ROCKSTAR (npub1j8y…vrvg), 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 (npub1s0v…rmq5) 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 (npub1sg6…f63m), NVK (npub1az9…m8y8), miljan (npub16c0…6nvr), JeffG (npub1zuu…c2uc), hong (npub1jpv…qgsz), bradmillscan (npub1zjx…pvrl), 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. 🧡