A recap of Zuzalu inspired pop up villages
Written Feb 06, 2024

The following are futurist oriented temporary coliving and coworking gatherings that experiment with new lifestyles and social structures ranging from 2-8 weeks and 100-1000 people
All of them are new events inspired by the pop up village Zuzalu.

Notable mentions for older pop up cities include Burning Man and Ephemerisle though those are closer to a festival rather than a coliving and coworking environment with conferences mixed in.

Shared characteristic among all of these pop up villages:
Residents populate the schedule with events they come up with (except for during conferences)
Certain times for certain themes related to tech or governance

Name: Zuzalu

Dates: Mar 15 - May 15 2023
Location: Lustica Bay, Montenegro, Europe
Theme(s): Longevity and DeSci, AI, Zero Knowledge Cryptography, Public Goods, Network States, Coordi-nations
Organizers (this is not an official list and does not mention many people who put in immense contributions): Janine Leger, Vitalik Buterin, Nicole Sun, Milos, Vjera, Laurence Ion, Marine

Theme week organizers:
AI: Timour Kosters
Network states:
Residents: 200 (about 150 max at any given time)
Visitors: 800 (about 150 max at any given time)
Organizer selection process: Referral system

Resident selection process: Organizers each invited around 15 people as residents. A small number of residents were selected from an application form.
Guest selection process: Each resident had two guest invites and guests could stay as long as they wanted but had to pay for each week. Each theme week conference organizer(s) also could select guests and speakers to join.
Cost and funding source: Some funding from Vitalik plus a few sponsors and residents paying for subsidized housing and guests paying for weekly access passes
Mission statement: To foster a global network of communities to advance humanity by creating playgrounds at the intersection of free and open technology, health, science and social innovation

Values: Authentic Kindness, Mutual Respect, Personal Growth, Freedom

Software used:

- zuzalu.city website for scheduling (Outdated: https://github.com/zuzaluorg/zuzalu )
- Zupass for DID (Ongoing: https://github.com/proofcarryingdata/zupass )
- viaPrize for crowdfunding (Ongoing: viaprize.org & https://github.com/viaprize )

- Zupoll for voting (Outdated: https://github.com/proofcarryingdata/zupoll )

- Zucast for anonymous messaging (Outdated: https://github.com/dcposch/zucast )

- Rubber Ducky for AI telegram bot with summarization and ability to answer common visitor questions (Outdated: https://github.com/publu/chatbot_public )
Projects created:
All of the items listed above in “Software used” and also these items presented during Montenegro Day to the prime minister and president of the country:

- AI river chat for the Moraca River
https://www.airiverchat.com/ & https://github.com/haonchon/riverai/tree/d35301b2a0a1e0ea774e3ccc854637d08d1958f9
- AI video about Montenegro folklore

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/48554895677664697189474334266767518779966264812796413400380362081508008132609
- This video about the rafting trip on the Moraca River
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh_EWsyJIcc

Venue(s):

- Geodesic dome (built for Zuzalu)

Facilities:

- Gym (built ourselves though there’s actual gym)

- Cold plunge area (built ourselves though there’s actual spa)
- Sauna (built ourselves though there’s actual spa)

- Coworking space

Cultural Characteristics:
- Free healthy breakfast every morning that brought everyone together to socialize

- Each theme week conference had its own organizers separate from the core team

- Daily cold plunges in the ocean
Feedback I heard:

- Pacing
With a conference every weekend but one and residents permissionlessly adding social events and presentations/workshops to the shared schedule it felt like there was very little time to get focused work done. It was exhilarating and the events were great but it could also feel like too much FOMO and burnout at times.
- Venue
The venue at an isolated oceanside resort was chosen with short notice and made the event possible, but it felt quite ritzy with expensive restaurants and yachts nearby and the WEF hosting a conference in the same place immediately after us and it just felt kinda artificial. It was a beautiful location for nature and the density of housing in a small village made it easy to see friends for house dinners and parties and the housing was quite nice. However, public spaces didn’t feel like “our” space to be in a playground of experimentation because if we even did something like sit cross legged in the lobby when chairs were full then staff would reprimand us. When the venue housing filled up some people stayed in apartments outside the Lustica Bay resort gates and used a shuttle to reach the venue. The suggestion is to find a cheaper location and work with a venue where the owners and team understand the concept and are excited for collaboration with your community.

- Housing

Organizers communicated that coordinating housing was one of the most demanding challenges and wished for better software for this
- Clarity on roles
There were not clear roles or wages for organizers though there was a small experimental retroactive funding round where people could add their contribution for the previous week and people could upvote it to allocate a funding award

- Financial sustainability

The model was not financially sustainable and was heavily subsidized. Ideas were considered of more sponsors, creating an incubator/accelerator, and real estate investment.

- Local connection

The prime minister and president stopped by for a Montenegro Day and there was a visit to a local university, but nothing remained long term in Montenegro that continued and few Montenegrans participated as residents.

- Life changing

Overall, the feedback generally was that the event was life-changing and exhilarating and everyone was grateful for the organizers who jumped in often without knowing if they would be paid and with very little time to pull together an incredible event.

Name: ShanHaiWoo

Dates: Aug 5 - Aug 31 2023
Location: Jilin, China
Presentation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CZiEERQbDTBBxiY79IGby4teKj7FLKOf/view?usp=sharing

Media: https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/42190
Theme(s): Web3, AI, Creator Economy, Coding Camp
Organizers: Audrey Tang of DRK Lab (lead organizer), MXX (core organizer - community & media), Yu Du (core organizer - local coodinator), Jiang and Eggy of Social Layer (tech & UI), Xiyu (event), Qiu Qiu (writing), Wenqian from 706 and SeeDAO (community manager), Adria (event & ticket), Frank of BuidlerDAO (hackathon)
Residents: 121
Organizer selection process: invited and referral

Resident selection process:

- Each co-organizer had the right to invite a certain number of residents.

- Most of the residents were selected from public applications.
Guest selection process:

- Invited by the residents. Each resident could invite two guests, and guests could decide how long they would stay at their own cost(pay by per week).

- Public applications, where most of the guests come from.

Cost and funding source: $21,953. 64% to volunteer expenses, 23% to travel expenses, 13% to material expenses. The costs do not include the venue rental fee which was sponsored by Beidahu Ski Resort. Both residents and guests paid for their own accommodation with a special discount.

Tickets:

Resident: RMB 500 ($70 USD) for the whole month.
Guest: RMB 200 ($28 USD) per week.
Tickets Income: RMB 13,908 ($1,932 USD)

Venue Sponsor: Beidahu Ski Resort

Donation:

Tim Yang	Founder of .bit	$10,000
Dr. XIAO Feng	Founder of Wanxiang Blockchain Labs & HashKey Group	$4,000
Audrey Tang	Founder of DRK Lab	$2,000
Yisi Liu	Co-founder of Mask Network	Projector ($250)
Total		$16,000

Origin: A Wechat channel discussion in June of 2023 led to an initial team forming on July 5

Mission statement:

By creating a surreal setting of ShanhaiWoo (originated from Chinese Mythology) in a remote summertime ski center, we brought people from diverse backgrounds to live and create together for one month.

Fostering an environment of caring, support and professionalism, we encourage everyone to express themselves and contribute to the event. Allow otherwise introverted individuals to shine and become vital members to the community.

In the end, ShanhaiWoo became an ideal place constructed by each member with their most romantic desire for the community ought-to-be.

(We didn’t have a big mission initially, simply wanted to bring the community spirit we encountered in Zuzalu to the Chinese-speaking community. The impact and its meaning grows by itself.)

Values:

Embrace new technology and ancient wisdom,

Dedicate towards work, Pioneer in thoughts,

A love of decentralization and respect of individual,

Mutual support and lots and lots and lots of love.

The more indie we become, the more community we need.

Software used:
- Social Layer for scheduling (Outdated: https://event.sola.day/event/shanhaiwoo?tab=past )

- Safe for multi-sign (Address: eth:0x2aec2FDdde7be7ea59e403B36f8c7B892feC368b)

- .bit for DID (eg: xxx.shanhaiwoo, https://d.id/ )

Cultural Characteristics:
- Organized with one month of prep

- Using Social Layer, residents received an NFT for hosting an event and could combine that with two NFTs for attending an event to evolve them into a mythical Chinese creature NFT.

- After ShanhaiWoo, many local community members expanded their reach to connect with the global community. Over 10 residents joined subsequent events like MuChiangMai, while more than 30 attended DevConnect and ZuConnect events in Istanbul, alongside various other activities. Many also participated in and contributed to organizing Wamotopia.

Feedback I heard:

- ShanhaiWoo Recap from residents

https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/42190

- Clarity on expectations

Some residents expected more of a vacation retreat and did not have a frame of reference to understand this style of pop up city

Name: MuChiangMai

Dates: Sep 15 - Oct 31 2023
Location: Chiang Mai, Thailand
Website: https://beacons.ai/the_mu
Theme(s): web3, ZK
Organizers: Audrey Tang of DRK Labs, Jiang of Social Layer, (Harry Liu?), Amber? Qiu Qiu? Eggy? X?
Residents: 121
Organizer selection process: ?

Resident selection process: ?
Guest selection process: ?
Cost and funding source: $21,953. 64% to volunteer expenses, 23% to travel expenses, 13% to material expenses. The venue was free (how? Funding source? Charged residents?)

Origin: ?
Mission statement: ?

Values: ?

Software used:
Social Layer for scheduling (github?)

Venue(s):

- Developers hostel
- Mentors hotel
- Coworking space
All venues were within a 20 minute walk of one another within the old town of Chiang Mai
Facilities:
- People found gyms and spas and massages at the various places in the city

Cultural Characteristics:

- Divided residents into developers and mentors
- Offered free dorm style housing in a hostel for developers
- Offered hotel rooms for mentors

- The third venue was the coworking space in a remodeled warehouse

- It felt somewhat like a ZK bootcamp with Starknet and Starkware sponsor representatives helping mentor developers to learn Cairo ZK programming language and a mentor from the Ethereum Foundation teaching the Chiquito ZK programming language in a series of workshops

- The “muvathon” was an ongoing hackathon throughout MuChiangMai with builder updates weekly on Thursdays where people shared/demod what they were working on, ideas for projects and asks for collaborators, and asking for advice for things they are stuck on.
Feedback I heard:

- Clarity on expectations

Some residents expected more of a vacation retreat and did not have a frame of reference to understand this style of pop up city

Organized with a month and a half of prep

Name: Zuconnect

Dates: Aug 5 - Aug 31 2023
Location: Jilin, China
Presentation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CZiEERQbDTBBxiY79IGby4teKj7FLKOf/view?usp=sharing
Theme(s): web3
Organizers: Audrey Tang of DRK Labs, Jiang of Social Layer, (Harry Liu?), Amber? Qiu Qiu? Eggy? X?
Residents: 121
Organizer selection process: ?

Resident selection process: ?
Guest selection process: ?
Cost and funding source: $21,953. 64% to volunteer expenses, 23% to travel expenses, 13% to material expenses. The venue was free (how? Funding source? Charged residents?)

Origin: ?
Mission statement: ?

Values: ?

Software used:
Social Layer for scheduling (github?)
Projects created:

Zuzagora

Cultural Characteristics:
?
Feedback I heard:

- Clarity on expectations

Some residents expected more of a vacation retreat and did not have a frame of reference to understand this style of pop up city

Organized with a month and a half of prep

Name: Wamotopia (Bonus)

Wamotopia may have occurred regardless of Zuzalu and the first Wamo pop up city occurred before Zuzalu existed, but the second iteration with Wamotopia certainly received inspiration from Zuzalu.

Dates: Aug 5 - Aug 31 2023
Location: Jilin, China
Socials: https://twitter.com/Wamo_topia

Theme(s): web3
Organizers: Audrey Tang of DRK Labs, Jiang of Social Layer, (Harry Liu?), Amber? Qiu Qiu? Eggy? X?
Residents: 121
Organizer selection process: ?

Resident selection process: ?
Guest selection process: ?
Cost and funding source: $21,953. 64% to volunteer expenses, 23% to travel expenses, 13% to material expenses. The venue was free (how? Funding source? Charged residents?)

Origin: ?
Mission statement: ?

Values: ?

Software used:
Social Layer for scheduling (github?)

Cultural Characteristics:
?
Feedback I heard:

- Clarity on expectations

Some residents expected more of a vacation retreat and did not have a frame of reference to understand this style of pop up city

Organized with a month and a half of prep

Name: Vitalia

Dates: Jan 6 - Feb 29, 2024
Location: Prospera, Roatan Island, Honduras, Central America
Website: vitalia.city
Theme(s): Two conferences on longevity (including topics like biotech and biohacking), one on startup societies (related to network states) and crypto cities, and one on AI.
Organizers: Niklas Anzinger, Laurence Ion, Zoe Isabel (Builder experience and scheduling), Kevin Pineda (housing), Kara Isabella (logistics, beach club, and branding), Nelson Milla (transportation), Oscar (community connection), Sonia Wendorff (Accommodation cleanliness and community), Tails (communication and announcements), Colby Whitted (the dome and volunteer coordination), Kiba Gateaux (software), Christian Betancourt (legal counsel), Tim Dort-Golts (volunteer coordination)

Conference leads: Sebastian Brunemeier (Longevity), Noah Chon Lee (startup societies and crypto cities), Veronica (AI), Max Unfried (Pathways to Life Extension)
Other programs: Shina Foo (art residency), Shaka Lei Kaumaka (music and the dome), Midabi (installation art), Luis Vaskez (painting), Victoria Forest (fitness), Cristabel (families), Cassox and Francesca (the lab), Kyle (makerspace and legal counsel)
Residents: 200 (about 150 max at any given time)

Demographics: In the opening ceremony with 80 people, everyone stood in a circle and someone asked a question and those who identified with a yes took a step in. About 5 were developers. About 80% were single. Almost everyone had used crypto.
In a session mid January with Tyler Cowen with about 60 people in the audience:
Maybe three were below 25

Maybe fifty were 25 to 55 age

Around ten were above 55

About half were start up founders

There were maybe five families with kids ranging from a baby to about 13 years old and some attended the Montessori School in Prospera.
Organizer selection process: The co-founders hired team members. They started by making an application for “curators” who were to invite 3-5 people to apply as residents. During weekly curator calls, they also noted areas/programs they wanted people to champion and certain curators jumped in to start forming those programs and some were hired.

Resident selection process: A lu.ma application form with applicants mentioning if a curator referred them
Guest selection process: The conference leads accepted conference attendees who needed to buy the same Vitalia access pass as the residents. Housing for conference attendees was generally self-arranged.
Cost and funding source: Cost unknown, it is a startup with 1.5M in funding raised in one week from VCs with Laurence Ion and Niklas Anzinger as co-founders

Origin: ?
Mission statement: To make death optional.

Longer version: To seed a permanent city fostering drug development at warp speed - 4 months to get to market instead of 10+ years.

We will start with a permanent district on Roatán, then explore new locations where we can build self-governing cities.

To extend healthy lifespan for all - by the people, for the people.

Software used:
Social Layer for scheduling (website: https://blog.sociallayer.im/)

viaPrize for crowdfunding (website: viaprize.org github: https://github.com/viaprize)

Housing Venue(s):
- Villas around Pristine Bay which is a resort town owned by Prospera

- Villas and apartments a 7 minute drive and 50 minute walk outside of the hills and gate of Pristine Bay

Event Venue(s):

- The Beach Club with a restaurant for free breakfast

- The geodesic dome

Facilities:
- Gym

- Cold plunge

- Sauna

Cultural Characteristics:

- Free breakfast 8am-11am

- Daily 30 minute sunrise meditations on the docks at 6:15am

- No scheduling other than daily wellness events on Monday and Tuesday, with the town hall on Tuesday late afternoon as the one exception. This was resoundingly popular so that people could have time for focused work during those days. They also decided to do 4 conferences instead of 7 like at Zuzalu because many people were too burnt out from that pace during Zuzalu.
- Gathering people closer at start for density, then venues booked by others so shift people farther out on Jan 22.
- Decentralizing the program management where seed it with funding but don’t manage it, trying to create entrepreneurial incentive of splitting revenue with program leads

- Put out areas/programs they wanted people to champion as volunteers, though potentially offered compensation for volunteers, expectations not set and roles not clearly defined
Some programs didn’t have a lead and so just didn’t happen, such as Blueprint breakfast
Strong connection with the host and jurisdiction government
- Generally people had an attitude of making the best of it such as when the beach club main space was flooded and the roof started falling down in the downstairs room, everyone had a good attitude and joked around and even had fun pushing out the water together in creative ways.

- The Vitalia ops team met around 2x per week during Vitalia

- Offered an extension of Vitalia with some percentage deciding to stay longer. With this, they suggested there be people to volunteer as “camp leads” who manage a particular area where people are living.

- Sometimes when issues were brought up, the founders would say “who wants to volunteer to help with this?” and oftentimes someone would raise their hand.
Feedback I heard:

- Wifi

- Diet

I may add in pictures to this later

Other pop up villages to note:
Zanzalu
ZuBerlin
MuAccra
MuBuenos
Aleph
ZuVillage Georgia
Zuitserland
Zelar City

In the Archipelago in Chiang Mai (a pop up city of pop up villages):
ShanHaiWoo
Edge Lanna
MuChiangMai (Again)
HER DAO (grouphouse?)
MegaZu (perhaps considered a residency)
LovePunks
Web3Village
SeaPunks (grouphouse?)
Invisible Garden (perhaps considered a BootCamp)
Funding the Commons (residency)
[Redacted] NEAR house (hackerhouse)
Filecoin house (hackerhouse)

Upcoming:
ZuThailand
ZuGarden

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