Thank you Zk Av Club, these Recording Station videos/audio clips are so vaulable, and will be more so in the future. I haven’t had time to watch them all yet, but I will. Thanks for the hardwork. 
3 Likes
Greetings, community!
We kick off the month of July with a new workshop as part of our Community Workshops program.
Omeka S is an open-source, self-hostable digital archive display and management tool. In this workshop we will look at how Omeka S can be used by communities to manage, maintain, and contribute to their own digital archive.
The workshop will:
- Introduce participants to digital archiving in general
- Discuss what metadata is and why it is important
- Discuss how to setup your own Omeka S instance with accompanying documentation
- Introduce and walk through a demo of Omeka S and its capabilities, including theming and the module ecosystem
- How to work with Omeka S together with the Internet Archive
- Demo custom built modules for integrating with Internet Archive collections
- Collaboratively sketch metadata structures
- Collaboratively sketch features for a bespoke Omeka S instance
- Expand the conceptual horizon of what digital archiving can mean
- Provide resources for self study
With this workshop you will:
- Learn the basics of Omeka S
- Learn about the wider field of digital archiving
- Contribute to shaping an instance of Omeka S for their own community archiving purposes
This will be the first in a 2 part workshop focused on Omeka S. The first workshop will lay the foundation, through collaborative sketching of metadata structures and instance features, for the deployment of a bespoke Omeka S instance that participants will work with in workshop two.
A guide for setting up your own instance of Omeka S will be provided before the workshop.
This workshop is facilitated by c-host, a digital archivist, artist, and researcher. Learn more about their work here: https://c-host.site
Want to learn more? Join us!
3 Likes
The Community Workshops program continues to move forward!
Since last year, we’ve been experimenting with different workshop formats and styles that involve the community. We believe we’ve come close to establishing a consistent, monthly lineup of workshops covering two areas: on the one hand, topics related to audiovisual production, multimedia, and communications; and on the other, financial tools related to Zcash, wallets, and nodes.
With that in mind, the coordinators of the Zk Av Club’s Community Workshop Program have prepared a schedule of topics covering the workshops for July through December 2026.
| Month | Comm/Media | Level | Zcash | Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| June | OBS + Akkadu | Intermediate | — | — |
| June | Affine | Beginner | — | — |
| July | Omeka | Beginner | — | — |
| July | Omeka | Intermediate | ZODL wallet | Beginner |
| August | Swarm | TBD | Zebra node | Intermediate |
| September | Mirotalk | Intermediate | Redbridge node | Intermediate |
| October | Cryptpad | Beginner | CypherPay/BTCPay | Intermediate |
| November | Peertube | Advanced | Nym | Intermediate |
| December | Privacy browsers | Beginner | Hardware wallets | Beginner |
The first workshops we held during the first half of the year helped us analyze the pros and cons of the process we’ve been shaping. Among these initial workshops, we can highlight the Git workshop, led by pacu, and the Signal workshop, led by Yoditar.
They exemplify what we aim to offer: experiential training activities led by expert facilitators who are proficient in the tool being taught, in a setting that allows for hands-on practice and the resolution of questions and concerns. In short, it is learning by doing—community-based learning.
What’s interesting about preparing the workshops for the July–December semester is that it has allowed us to identify community needs: tools that many community members don’t know how to use—or aren’t even familiar with—but it has also connected us with trending topics within our ecosystem, such as Nym, RedBridge, or Zebra nodes.
On behalf of the Workshop Coordinators team (me and @AuraBritoSM ) and the Zk Av Club, we hope everyone—facilitators and attendees alike—enjoys this experience, and we also hope that people will be empowered through the knowledge and use of new tools.
We are building not only a library of interviews and testimonials at the Recording Station, but also a library of educational content on the various tools that underpin the present and future of the Internet as we know it today.
Thank you all.
6 Likes
Greetings, Zcashers!
We inform you that we have moved the date of the 2nd part of our workshop on Omeka S.
Please make your arrangements.
The new date is 7/28, at 17:00 UTC
4 Likes
A new workshop!
We continue moving forward with our workshop program.
This time we announce a very special workshop:
Learn How to Use ZODL
The workshop will:
- Introduce participants to the core concepts of financial privacy and decentralized cash
- Discuss what a seed phrase is and why self-custody is critically important
- Discuss how to download, set up, and configure your own Zodl wallet with accompanying security best practices
- Introduce and walk through a live demo of Zodl and its capabilities, including sending and receiving unified addresses and managing shielded pools
- How to navigate the Zcash blockchain privately and understand transaction fees
- Demo the wallet’s key features for seamless, fast synchronization and daily transactions
- Collaboratively sketch a practical checklist for secure backup and personal asset management
- Collaboratively sketch features and ideas for local circular economies using mobile wallets
- Expand the conceptual horizon of what sovereign digital money can mean in the real world
- Provide resources for self-study and community onboarding
This workshop is facilitated by @NealJayu , a ZODL team member.
The date: 30/7, 15:00 UTC.
We look forward to seeing you to keep exploring valuable tools within our ecosystem.
5 Likes
Join our first Workshop Program Update open to the community!
For the past few months, we have been organizing and facilitating workshops on open-source tools, privacy, and decentralized technologies. Now, we want to open up a portion of our weekly meetings to share with the entire community how the program is evolving.
In this first public edition, we will discuss:
Highlights from our July workshops.
What we have learned alongside our facilitators and participants.
Improvements we are currently implementing in the program.
The upcoming workshops we are preparing.
How you can get involved as an attendee, facilitator, or contributor.
If you have participated in any of our workshops, are interested in open-source software, or would like to share your knowledge with the community, this meeting is for you.
Date: Tuesday, July 21st
Time: 15:30 UTC
Link: Jitsi Meet
Agenda: CryptPad
More than just an update, we want this to be a space to talk, exchange ideas, and continue building the ZK AV Club Workshop Program together.
We look forward to seeing you there!
8 Likes
Greetings, community!
The date of this ZODL workshop has changed. Keep an eye on your schedules!
The new date is:
Date: 7/30
Time: 15:30 UTC
Look here: https://www.youtube.com/live/CsjI388pKt0
See you at the workshop!
3 Likes
Milestone 7 Report — July 2026
Hi Zcashers 
July Overview
July was a month of overlap, recovery, and follow-through for Zk Av Club. After Berlin Blockchain Week, much of the event crew moved almost directly into DWeb Camp. Now we’re securing recordings, organizing source material, following up with contributors, closing out expenses and documentation, and making room for the crews to understand what actually happened.
At the same time, the rest of the club kept moving. The Workshops team delivered three sessions, including two on Omeka S that left us with a working community archive instance. Post-production continued through Zk Av Club and ZecHub, while a late-June Berlin recording was published directly by the people who made it. Submissions for the Zcash Playlist Challenge also closed. Winners will be announced next month.
Different people were able to carry different parts of the work forward, even while the event crew was stretched across two major activations. The club is beginning to hold several kinds of work at once.
We aren’t ready to give a full account of either activation yet. Berlin changed how we think about crew roles, source-media stewardship, and what it takes to keep a large Recording Station moving. DWeb Camp gave us a chance to test that evolving model in a very different environment. Both deserve more reflection than we could give them while moving directly from one production into the next.
DWeb Camp Recording Station
Zk Av Club returned to DWeb Camp with a clearer crew structure and a better sense of what the Recording Station needs around it.
The activation is complete, and the source material is now being organized and sorted.
We’re holding back from a full assessment until the crew has had time to recap the experience together. A separate field report will cover what we made, which parts of the production model held up, how the camp differed from Berlin Blockchain Week, and what we’d change next time.
One part of DWeb Camp we can share now is a feature created by Arikia and the team at CTRL+X: a two-page center spread about Zk Av Club in Samizdat Dezentral, the first DWeb newspaper.
The spread traces a history much larger than this latest activation. Its photographs move from Zcon Sessions in Barcelona and the planning circles at DWeb Camp Brazil in 2023, through the Migration Station at DWeb Camp California in 2024, the full Recording Station at DevConnect Buenos Aires in 2025, and our work at Berlin Blockchain Week 2026.
Together, the images show how Zk Av Club grew from the Zcash and DWeb communities and gradually took shape as a community archive practice, a public-goods media project, and an ongoing experiment in free and open-source media.
Massive gratitude to Arikia and the entire CTRL+X team for creating the spread and giving Zk Av Club such a generous place in the first DWeb newspaper. Thanks as well to @zerodartz, @autotunafish, and @j32804, whose on-location photography across these activations made it possible to tell the club’s story in images.
Post-Production and Releases
July included one long-form Recording Station release from Zk Av Club and two collaborations released by ZecHub.
Fork Around and Find Out: DAOs, Network States, and Self-Governance in Crypto
Wassim Alsindi, Nick Almond, and Fatemeh Fannizadeh explore DAOs, network states, “code is law,” and how communities govern themselves in practice.
Collaborations with ZecHub
Harry Halpin on Nym, Zcash, and Network-Level Privacy — Dark Prague
Harry Halpin discusses why private digital money also needs protection at the network layer and how Nym and Zcash approach different parts of that problem.
DappCon: ZK Loyalty & FHE with GiraeffleAeffle
Max introduces ZK Loyalty, an anonymous loyalty program designed to help small businesses reward customers without collecting unnecessary personal data.
Creator Publication from Late June
At the end of June, @readymouse and @fabacab also published their Blockspäti recording through their own channel.
Violet and Justine with ZK AV Club at Berlin Blockchain Week 2026
Violet and Justine discuss financial independence, banned or frozen payment accounts, and how privacy tools can support people excluded from conventional financial services.
This is another good example of the Recording Station working as source-media infrastructure. A recording doesn’t always need to be published by Zk Av Club to become a meaningful community output.
Zk Av Club Workshops
Workshops coordinators @aurabritosm and @gordonestv kept the program moving through July. The month’s workshops included two sessions on Omeka S community archiving and an introduction to the ZODL wallet.
The program also received encouraging feedback following June’s Affine workshop. One participant wrote:
“Hasta ahora vamos por la primera sesión pero me encantó la potencialidad de la herramienta, sobre todo a nivel colaborativo.”
“We’ve only had the first session so far, but I loved the tool’s potential, especially for collaboration.”
Preparing and running the workshops this month also helped refine how we produce them. The team strengthened moderator preparation, developed better contingency plans for connectivity problems, and created a dedicated Workshop Tech role for sessions involving self-hosted software. The new role is already making preparation more structured and helping us take on technically ambitious workshops.
The Omeka S series left the club with a working instance at archive.zkav.club. It currently holds demo content, which we’ll remove as we begin adding actual Recording Station artifacts to the free and open-source media archive.
We also launched a monthly public program update call to share changes, gather feedback, and document how the program develops. The call will take place on the third Tuesday of each month at 15:30 UTC.
Introducing Omeka S: Community Archiving
An introduction to using the open-source, self-hostable Omeka S platform to preserve, manage, and share community archives.
Onboarding to Omeka S: Establishing Community Archiving Workflows
A hands-on follow-up focused on editing metadata, contributing archival material, and testing community-defined workflows in a deployed Omeka S archive.
Learn to Use ZODL
An introduction to using the privacy-first ZODL mobile wallet to send, receive, and protect ZEC.
PeerTube, watchz.cash and the Zcash Playlist Challenge
The submission period for the Zcash Playlist Challenge has ended.
Later in August, we’ll announce the winners and publish our selection of the Top 25 Most Important Zcon Presentations. That selection will seed watchz.cash with a curated first collection of Zcon presentations.
The full Zcon video history will also be backed up to Internet Archive. We currently expect that work to happen in September.
Grant Status Snapshot
| Area | Where things stand |
|---|---|
| Recording Station | The DWeb Camp activation is complete, and the source material is being organized and sorted. The Berlin Blockchain Week and DWeb Camp field reports are still to come. |
| Post-production and releases | July brought one Zk Av Club release and two collaborations with ZecHub. A late-June Blockspäti recording was also published through the creators’ own channel. |
| Free and open-source media archive | Source-material organization continued, and the working Omeka S instance is being prepared for actual Recording Station artifacts. It still contains demo content. |
| Zk Av Club Workshops | Three July workshops were completed. The program introduced the Workshop Tech role, improved contingency planning for connectivity problems, and launched a monthly public update. |
| Community Fund | The fund continued supporting event production, workshops, post-production, and contributor roles. A report on its first six months is planned for August. |
| PeerTube / watchz.cash | Playlist Challenge submissions have closed. The winners and Top 25 Most Important Zcon Presentations are planned for August, with the Top 25 becoming the first collection on watchz.cash. |
| Public outputs dashboard | The dashboard is on hold indefinitely and isn’t part of our near-term plans. |
What Remains Open
Most of the open work is follow-through from July and the two recent activations:
- continuing to organize and sort the DWeb Camp source material;
- recapping DWeb Camp with the crew;
- completing the Berlin Blockchain Week and DWeb Camp field reports;
- preparing the Omeka S instance and archive workflows for actual Recording Station artifacts;
- reviewing the July Workshops cycle with the coordinators.
We’ll keep this work moving at a pace that gives the people and material involved the attention they need.
August Focus
In August, we’ll turn July’s activity into documentation, releases, and infrastructure the club can keep using.
We’ll focus on:
- continuing the follow-through from Berlin Blockchain Week and DWeb Camp;
- announcing the Playlist Challenge winners and publishing the Top 25 Most Important Zcon Presentations as the first collection on watchz.cash;
- preparing the free and open-source media archive to begin receiving actual Recording Station artifacts;
- keeping post-production and Workshops moving while publishing the first six-month Community Fund activity report.
Gratitude
Thank you to the DWeb Camp organizers, the Recording Station crew, Workshop contributors, audio/video editors, ZecHub collaborators, and everyone who supported the work over the last month.
A very special thank you to @robmarn, whose responsibility, consistency, and care strengthened both the Berlin Blockchain Week and DWeb Camp activations immensely.
I’m personally grateful for what everyone brought and for the flexibility and care that kept different parts of the club moving through a particularly gnarly stretch.
July closed a demanding period of field production. We’re now sorting through what we made, completing the documentation we owe, and preparing for what comes next (#zcon).
Thanks to Zcash Community Grants and the wider Zcash community for continuing to support this work.
11 Likes
I feel proud to be part of this giant monster that is the Zk Av Club. We keep moving forward, learning and adjusting, but above all, leaving a legacy of content and education around this technology.
Thank you!
3 Likes
We’re continuing to make progress, Zcashers!
Here’s our schedule of community workshops for the second half of 2026. We’ve got some great topics coming up.
We’ll share more updates and exact dates for the upcoming workshops soon. Stay tuned!
| Month | Comm/Media | Level | Zcash | Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| June | OBS + Akkadu | Intermediate | — | — |
| June | Affine | Beginner | — | — |
| July | Omeka | Beginner | — | — |
| July | Omeka | Intermediate | ZODL wallet | Beginner |
| August | Mirotalk | Intermediate | Zebra node | Intermediate |
| September | Swarm | Beginner | Redbridge node | Intermediate |
| October | Cryptpad | Beginner | CypherPay/BTCPay | Beginner |
| November | Peertube | Beginner | Nym | Intermediate |
| December | Privacy browsers | Beginner | Hardware wallets | Beginner |
2 Likes
ZK AV Club Monthly Community Workshops Open Call
A new meeting, Zcashers!
Over the past months, we’ve been organizing and facilitating workshops around open-source tools, privacy, decentralized technologies, and other topics relevant to the Zcash ecosystem. These monthly open calls are an opportunity to share what we’re working on, discuss upcoming activities, exchange ideas, and continue building the workshop program together.
In this edition, we’ll talk about:
Recent workshop highlights and lessons learned.
Upcoming workshops and activities.
New workshop ideas and potential facilitators.
Updates to the workshop program and coordination process.
Ways for community members to get involved, contribute, or host a workshop.
This is an open meeting for anyone interested in learning, teaching, sharing knowledge, or contributing to the ZK AV Club Workshop Program.
More than just a monthly update, this is a space for the community to connect, exchange ideas, and help shape what comes next.
Date: 9/25
Time: 15:30 UTC
Location: Online — Jitsi Meet
Meeting link: Jitsi Meet
Agenda: CryptPad (feel free to add topics or quiestions)
We’d love to see you there and continue building the ZK AV Club Workshop Program together!
4 Likes
One beginner-friendly workshop idea could be how to choose a Zcash wallet based on what someone wants to do—shielded payments, transparent transfers, buying ZEC, or managing ZEC alongside other assets.
New users may see several wallet choices without understanding the differences. A simple comparison that includes Gem Wallet as a multichain option with transparent ZEC support, alongside wallets focused on shielded use, could help newcomers choose what suits them.
2 Likes
Yea, a multi-wallet overview is a nice fit for Zk Av Club Workshops.
We’ll keep it in mind as we design the 2027 Zcash track.
Thanks for sharing.
2 Likes
ZK AV Club Workshop: Start Your Zebra Node!
Want to take the next step toward running your own Zcash node?
The ZK AV Club Community Workshops are back with a new intermediate-level workshop focused on Zebra, the Rust implementation of the Zcash node software.
This session will be led by our facilitator @arya2 , who will guide participants through the practical process of setting up and running a Zebra node, while explaining the key concepts behind node operation and synchronization.
Running nodes is an important part of maintaining a decentralized, resilient, and privacy-preserving Zcash network. This workshop is an opportunity to move beyond theory and get hands-on with the infrastructure that helps keep the network running.
No need to be a Zebra expert — just bring some basic knowledge of Zcash, blockchain concepts, and the command line.
Learn. Run your node. Support Zcash.
Set your reminder: https://youtu.be/KKIPXNvbjqk
We hope to see you there!
Date: 9/10
Time: 17:00 UTC
2 Likes
Milestone 8 Report — August 2026
Greetings fellow Zcashers!
August Overview
August was a slower month for me. Personal responsibilities and some burnout meant I had less capacity than usual, and a few things I expected to follow up on after July didn’t happen.
Most of my time went into the historic Zcon video project.
We finished the research behind our Top 25 Most Important Zcon Videos, published the Playlist Challenge results, started adding videos to watchz.cash, recruited an archivist to lead preservation of the full collection, and designed and announced the Zcash 10th Birthday Short Film Festival.
Elsewhere, the club released two more Recording Station conversations, kept organizing archive material from Dark Prague and Buenos Aires, delivered Affine Part 2, prepared the Zebra workshop, and published our Berlin Blockchain Week field report.
Zcon Video Archive
Top 25 & Playlist Challenge
The Top 25 is live:
Graphic design by @zilk
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAk91cn5Gk6k
The Playlist Challenge submissions gave us a starting point for deeper research. From there, we worked through transcripts and historical context, compared overlapping talks, looked at what happened afterward, and built an independent editorial ranking.
We also finished scoring the challenge:
Dnilshon1 — 16 points — 1 ZEC
farad — 15 points — 1 ZEC
Aminag — 13 points — 1 ZEC
Thanks again to everyone who dug through years of Zcon talks and made a list.
Full results:
We’ve been documenting the research process along the way so it can eventually become a reusable method for working with historical video archives.
Zcash 10th Birthday Short Film Festival
We also designed and announced the Zcash 10th Birthday Short Film Festival this month.
Graphic design by @zilk
If you want to make something with Zcash history, dig into the Zcon collection, find a story worth telling, and turn it into a short film for Zcash’s 10th birthday.
We’ve picked an initial Top 40 collection for watchz.cash, and uploads have started. In September, we’ll finish adding those videos so participants have a curated set of source material they can watch, download, and reuse.
Preserving the Full Collection
We recruited an archivist to lead preservation of the complete historic Zcon collection. They start in September.
Before the end of the year, we want all historic Zcon videos on Internet Archive using the best-quality source we have, with new metadata and a dedicated Omeka S instance that makes the collection easier to browse and use.
That archive is separate from archive.zkav.club, which is for Recording Station material.
Recording Station
August brought two more long-form releases.
Signal and Cipher: Roos on Ham Radio and PGP at Dark Prague
Roos talks about ham radio, PGP, mathematics, and cultures where understanding the technology is part of using it.
Embrace Variety: Ira on Web3 Reputation for Developer-Founders
Ira talks about what happens when Web3 projects borrow branding that doesn’t fit who they actually are.
Three more long-form conversations are lined up for imminent release, with many more videos moving through post-production and metadata behind them.
The Dark Prague 2025 material is documented, with YAML metadata and recording identifiers ready for Internet Archive. The first Buenos Aires material has also been sorted and documented.
We’re tightening the release/archive workflow and working through consent questions around publication and reuse.
archive.zkav.club itself didn’t advance this month.
Berlin Blockchain Week Field Report
We also published our Berlin Blockchain Week field report:
One of the clearest things from Berlin was seeing more people run the Recording Station. Club regulars took on more of the setup and recording workflow, and three newcomers with little or no production experience joined in too.
We also got decentralized livestreaming with Swarm working after last year’s failed attempt.
The DWeb Camp crew retro and field report still haven’t happened, so we’re holding off on drawing conclusions from that activation.
Workshops
We delivered Affine Part 2 in August:
We also prepared Start Your Zebra Node, now scheduled for September 10, to be facilitated by @ZcashFoundation Engineer, Arya Solhi (@arya2):
The Workshops team adjusted the calendar around facilitator availability and kept improving what happens after each session. Changes to titles, SEO, and distribution helped bring more traffic to the ZODL recording.
One loose end from July: I said I’d put together a report on the Community Fund’s first six months. I didn’t get to it. It was an extra report, not a grant deliverable, and I shouldn’t have promised it when I didn’t have the capacity. I’m not carrying it forward as a September commitment.
September Focus
Our new Zcon archivist will start work on the full collection, including source reconciliation, Internet Archive preservation, new metadata, and the dedicated Omeka S archive.
We’ll finish publishing the Top 40 on watchz.cash so Short Film Festival participants have source videos they can watch, download, and reuse.
The Recording Station release/archive pipeline will keep moving with Dark Prague and Buenos Aires, and Workshops continues with Start Your Zebra Node on September 10.
Thanks to Zcash Community Grants and everyone helping us keep this work moving.
4 Likes
Great job team! I’m so proud to be part 
1 Like