RIF recently hosted an expert panel discussion on the topic Blockchain for Enterprise. Below is the transcript of the event.
Panelists: Ursula O’Kuinghttons, Global Partnership Manager at IOV Labs, Karen Ottoni,Director of Ecosystem at Hyperledger, Pablo Mosquella,Chief of Staff at Grupo Sabra, Pedro Perrotta, Grupo Sabra Co-Founder, Extrimian Co-Founder.
Moderator: Gabriel Kurman, Rootstock and RIF Co-Founder.
Gabriel: Hello everyone, welcome to this new expert panel. We’re going to be talking about blockchain for enterprise and government today. We have a great group of panelists with a lot of experience in this area. So, why don’t we just start? Ursula, could you introduce yourself a little bit so people know who you are… You are muted, you are muted.
Ursula: Oh! Oh my goodness. Such a newbie in the virtual world, thank you Gaku and happy to be here and see some familiar faces that have been working on the enterprise space for quite a while. I’m Ursula O’Kuinghttons, I’m a journalist as a profession but I’ve been working with different enterprise on the blockchain for the last of almost 6 years. I’ve been part of this huge experiment, started in Consensus some years ago and we have been having our ups and downs, so it’s really interesting to see the current moment on the blockchain right now, I’m very excited about that, because every year there is something new, we don’t get bored in this place. It’s evolving rapidly and building, and connecting the dots right now with IOV Labs with different enterprises.
Gabriel: Thank you so much Ursula, Karen?
Karen: Hi thank you so much for having me, I’m Karen Ottoni, I’m a director of ecosystem at Hyperledger, I’ve been at Hyperledger for about 3 years now and before that I worked at Tata Consultancy services on an innovation team where we were helping different companies understand the value of blockchain, the opportunity, different use cases in different industries, and then prior to that I actually worked in international development. So I managed the implementation of humanitarian aid projects with US Aid, in different parts of the world, so what drew me to this industry was the potential for social impact among the other interesting things that are happening out there. And I look forward to sharing with you more, about what the Hyperledger community is doing.
Gabriel: Thank you so much Karen, Pedro?
Pedro: Hi Pedro Perrotta, I’m co-founder of Grupo Sabra and Extrimian. Grupo Sabra is a solution provider over blockchain, we have been working for enterprise for the last ten years, first with digital transformation for enterprise and government, and then 5 years ago we started work with blockchain as a new value proposition for our enterprise, customers. And last year we launched Extrimian which is not a solution provider on blockchain it’s a platform provider over the cloud and we are working on that project right now, maybe Pablo will explain a little bit more later about this new company. Previously I had been working for Microsoft for 10 years in the enterprise space so… and previous for Santander bank for 7 years so I think I have been working for the last 25 years in the enterprise space. So I think we could share some experiences, not only in technology but specially, how to sell new technology like blockchain for this space.
Gabriel: Awesome, thank you so much. Pablo?
Pablo: Well, hi Gaku, hi, pleasure to be with you. I’m Pablo Mosquella, as Pedro said I’m part of Grupo Sabra and Extrimian, for the last couple of years we have been working on solutions for blockchain space and previously to that I’ve been working on City Bank and different financial entities always in the technology space. And always being close to technology and implementation of solutions and I’m fantastically happy to be part of the challenge of being in Extrimian and building the new platform were doing to help reach blockchain to the enterprise and government world.
Gabriel: Thank you so much. So as you can see we have a lot of experience in this panel. I would like to know, what is the most important thing that you explain to an enterprise when you present the benefits of blockchain technology? How can blockchain technology help a corporation and solve their problems? Ursula, which are the main issues that you point out to get them to hear and to be interested in what you are presenting?
Ursula: One of the most important things that people are interested in their business is how to improve or enhance their own business model. Because just everyone wants to have better productivity, saving costs, and have a better way to manage their income. So I think that first of all I always talk with, in this opaque system because is really hard, especially for big enterprise I mean to trust is just something high risk, so I always start to say that trustability of all the production could be enhanced with blockchain. And they get it, when we explain it that way.
Gabriel: Ok, so on the efficiency side and transparency on traceability. Karen?
Karen: Yah I think besides how you can make things happen more seamless or reduce errors in your processes, business processes or reduce costs. And I think there is also the opportunity for new business models as well, so the opportunity to potentially like insurance, new kinds of insurance for example, because you have this real time data and also real time transactions as well. So I think what interests enterprises a lot is improving their current operations but also exploring what can this do to make it a more modern company with new business models.
Gabriel: Very interesting. Pedro, in your experience dealing with enterprises so many years and blockchain in the last couple, what are the things or the solutions that get their attention the most and get them engaged into building blockchain for enterprise.
Pedro: Well we already implemented projects in many different vertical, energy, government, capital markets and banks. Those are the key vertical where we have been working on. And the key element or the common element is where in the scenarios where they need to share or they have processes where different companies need to do something, those are the places or the cases where they need, where they see blockchain as a great solution. Because they don’t trust each other and they need something that could solve that process in a private way, in a secure way, and this is the main attribute they see in blockchain and I give you an example: In energy, when you need to connect a gas customer, a new gas customer in the gas distribution company in Argentina, you need to sign more than 7 documents, physical documents. Well we solved that with blockchain, with the digital ID, and digital signature, and so on. So today, you can reduce the time in the half. Two years ago if you wanted to connect a gas service you spend more than 80 days, today you can do that in less than 2 weeks. And with that going in a physical office. In the situation that we have today with the covid-19, this attribute is a very interesting situation. So my icing is that when you need to solve processes between companies, blockchain is a great solution for enterprise.
Gabriel: Ok interesting so not only saving cost and promoting new business models and innovation but also streamlining processes and reducing procurement. So Pablo what do you think about this? And I would like to ask you also whether there is any difference between enterprise and government. Because we are talking about them as if they were the same, but is there any differentiation in your approach, or between one or the other?
Pablo: That’s a good question. I’ll start with the similarities that I see, because actually because when you think about them, both government and enterprise those are institutions that helped us move forward, by helping us reach into the same place for confidence and helping us define processes that we could follow or ensuring those processes are kept. One of the values I see for blockchain and I see it competitive will always get that glimpse when they understand it, is that they can rely on technology to make sure those processes are kept by simply the definition of the technology in some places would ensure that those rules, the institutions or guidelines the institution meant to define are followed and trustworthy. So it takes the trust to another level, it takes the trust to the technology itself. And that on itself provides to the institution like a benchmark, like a differential today. The problem is they don’t understand it yet how to use it and its kinda complex to break it out still, but as they move forward into that and they understand that by using blockchain they have a huge differential, they see that true value on it. And I think in the case of what you are saying, “what is the difference?” of course I understand that for enterprise that are meant to make a profit that the values that are just spoken as Ursula was saying and Pedro, everyone here was saying about cost, and timeframes and streamlining processes definitely helps to lower all the costs. Governments probably more focused on the fact of trustworthy processes and confidence, and you can see that with all the proposals for the vaccine and all these processes we can rely on. So, I see this switch, I’m not saying governments are not worried about costs, but definitely if you have government pushing technology that you trust just for the fact that you know how it works, you have better confidence in that government. And that’s because we are biased of course right? But that’s kinda how I see it.
Gabriel: Awesome. Ursula do you also see this difference between government and enterprises and how they approach blockchain technology?
Ursula: Yes, definitely. Actually I’ve been having a very close experience with the Estonian Government, which, one of the first if it’s not the first in the world, the year 2008 by the way they started to operate with the blockchain, because they have a digital country. Everything is digital, just two things you don’t do digital: when you marry and when you die… no, when you buy a house. There are only 2 documents that you have to go and do it-
Gabriel: So you can die digitally?
Ursula: Uh no, so they started to use blockchain, too prove their data, to prove all of their data. So they didn’t upload all of the content on the blockchain because they said “2008” was very early days, just at the beginning of everything. They said it was too risky at the beginning so what they did was upload the content to prove the right of the data and then take it out, and they still do that until now they have their own system, their own software, and I think that their approach was for security reason, to record their citizen’s data, because they had a really bad experience in the year 1997 with a huge cyberattack that shut down the whole country. So yes, their approach is different to any specific enterprise. Although I have to admit that everything is evolving right now so I think that they are thinking in more specific use cases on the blockchain side, they have a e-residency where everybody from everywhere who apply for a residency in Estonia and they are trying to find new uses with blockchain for that purpose.
Gabriel: Interesting, thank you. Karen what differentiation do you see between enterprise and government when talking about blockchain technology?
Karen: I think there are a lot of similarities, I think they are looking for a lot of the same qualities, they are more conservative in wanting to make sure there is privacy in the information and data that’s being shared. They have to deal, especially in regulated industries, have to deal with a lot of the rules and regulations are round those types of things. Obviously there are differences in use cases and what they are trying to use it for, but I think there are a lot of similarities in what government and enterprise are trying to do. Whether it be, more efficient or offering new services because that’s something that DLT can do with government is offer new kinds of services. Ursula was mentioning the Estonia ID system, in Sierra Leone Kiva is a global micro-lending institution they are using on several Hyperledger technology together to create the first national decentralized identity system in Sierra Leone. It started with of course, so Kiva works in micro-lending, and one of the main things that keeps- that is a barrier to financial inclusion is people being able to interact with the formal banking sector. And a big part of why they can’t access loans and bank accounts in the formal banking sector is they don’t have a credit history. And so Kiva started with forming actually like a credit registry system, and then that evolved into a national ID system because they go hand in hand. And so now a process that use to take weeks for people to get their national ID or to set up a bank account, now takes I believe 11 seconds.
Gabriel: Whoa that is impressive.
Karen: They do it with their thumb print and a national ID.
Gabriel: Whoa, thank you. Pedro? What is your experience in Government and enterprises?
Pedro: You know, to add something different, I think government must have a government project, is very important to have a project within the government that wanted to transform the country. I will give you the example of Colombia, Colombia has an entire digital transformation project, that includes 4 technologies. One of those technologies is blockchain, the other one is related to information management and so on. But blockchain is a key element of this transformational process. And if you don’t have this element is very difficult to sell solution to a specific area of the government. And even if you have this project is very difficult to sell the solution within different departments of the government, separately, it’s important to have a central, and a project to act as a guideline in order to implement the project. And in Colombia we have been working with them in order to build a research center, in order to give them the guideline, in order to explain how to implement blockchain in terms of digital identity first, verifiable credentials then, and then cross to difficult or complex scenarios like asset transfer, value transfers between identities. Identities not only for citizens but also for enterprise and other organizations. And we have a very good experience with this process, we already implement a very interesting project in the energy sector on December, and was a project that was implemented in two months, and was a scenario with work very complex, but the tools and the elements, and the experience that we have already have in this space led us to give them a first version in two months, and they are very happy with this process and the research center, in order to replicate this experience in other scenarios. But summarizing, it’s very important for government to have a general project, not a question of one department, it’s important to have a more expanded vision, more general vision.
Gabriel: Interesting. Uh Pablo, I have a question because when we talk about Blockchain for enterprise, we might assume were always talking about permissions blockchains, are they the same? Should we assume that every time we are talking about government or enterprise solutions we are talking about a permissions blockchain? Or things are changing and now these organizations are more open to also using public blockchain or permission less blockchains for some use cases? What is your experience with this?
Pablo: I guess the change is definitely a constant, in this space, as it is in the technology world, always. So it took to the fact that if you would have asked me that about six months ago maybe my answer would have been different as it would be today, but there are different kinds of blockchains of course and there was a tendency to believe that permission blockchains where going to be better for enterprise and government segments. The truth is that the way that we see it evolves and pretty sure that the people here can expand on that is that, there’s standards in interoperability they are looking for. And truth is there is an imperative here, and companies and governments will definitely no longer have that much of a choice sometimes, depending on the use case or depending on the industry they are. So if there is a consortium of networks that becomes the standard for, just for example, international payments, you may have your own private network but then you will have to see how you jump on board of that network to process those use cases. And the other thing is the way the technology keeps on evolving is that maybe because of scalability and costs, other recent techniques that are getting more traction like zero knowledge relapse or different kind of relapse running on top of public blockchains makes even more sense in terms of how to deploy your own kind of infrastructure. So at Extrimian for example in this case we started with the premise of understanding and being able to support and deploy all kind of networks and platforms, but at the same time we see it evolving more like maybe a company needs to create their own kind of roll-up on top of a blockchain and be able to publish their own kind of transactions. And that’s something different that was considered before so what I’m trying to say here is that: They are definitely not the same but at the same time they will really need to understand the use cases that try to apply the industry in which they are in and how that infrastructure is going to adapt to them, which is a different paradigm to previous ideas in which a company or government would say “Hey I want to do an application, Ill choose the technology and do whatever I want”, this kind of way we work, makes them think more open in the sense of understanding what’s out there, and how they can connect to what is out there. Which I think is the beauty of this right because if you connect more companies and governments between themselves, definitely there is more powerful cooperativeness than by doing them in silos.
Gabriel: Perfect, so the amount of innovation happening on the public blockchains and the need for interoperability is pushing them to be more open-minded and interesting. Ursula, what is your take on this?
Ursula: I think that we are going to see a mix of private public blockchains, because as Karen said, a business model are crucial for every single enterprise, and I think that other- some of these enterprise they don’t need just a single blockchain. They might need different blockchains. So I think that we will see more of a hybrid or mix of different blockchains depending on the use case.
Gabriel: Thank you Ursula, Karen what is your experience and how is Hyperledger dealing with this trend? Have you seen this same trend within the team?
Karen: Yah I think you know a few years ago this is what everyone was always talking about: Private, public, permission, permission less and we always saw as a spectrum that you use whichever kind based on what you are trying to do, what your use case is. Or what your goals are. And so were fairly glad that that dichotomy has died down because while the technology within the Hyperledger umbrella are permissioned, they are constantly interacting, building upon, and leveraging what is happening in all of the blockchain space. So, for example, for many years we’ve had the project Hyperledger Burrow which is the smart contract engine, and is a permission version of Ethereum. And then in late 2019, think I’m remembering correctly, Hyperledger Besu was contributed to Hyperledger by consensus, and that is a permission version of the Ethereum client. And so we have a lot of examples of use cases being built on Besu, that are using the permission version for whatever they need that kind of control over who can see the information, who can write the chain, and then if they want to connect the public chain for whatever reason, to do transactions, that is available there. So for us, it’s never been an either-or, it’s been really about what can create business value and impact.
Gabriel: Thank you so much. Uh Pedro, which are the industries- I mean, everything is super interesting, but if- there are a couple, you need to choose a few, which are the ones you are most excited about in terms of adopting impactful blockchain technologies. Could be enterprise, a government…
Pedro: well capital market is our main industry today, we are working with Buenos Aires Stock exchange and the Colombian stock exchange in order to create a market place in order to negotiate digital assets for small and medium business, this is something that is growing very fast, Chile has the same project for their market. And many other stock exchange are working on that, because small and medium business in this context needs new possibility of finance their operation, and it could be a very easy and very cheap and secure way to negotiate e-checks, invoices and so on. So this is the one that- the sector that I think is very, very interesting, taking into account the context. And the other one is the financial services, banks, and the new way of payment, and having working for banks for almost a decade, and a decade and seven years or more, and I think that we need to rethink the financial service industry at this moment. And Blockchain has a lot to do in this space, not only for transfer and payment, but for many services that banks need to deploy for customer and not only actual customer but also the customer that doesn’t have the possibility to access to a financial service today. So those are the two main- besides the government, I- my background is a- I’m a political science, this is my bachelor degree, I like to say as Steve Jobs says many years ago, I link it the dots, and I understand that blockchain could change and could give a different services for government, but those are the three verticals that I’m exited for.
Gabriel: Thank you. Being a political scientist in Argentina must be quite interesting.
Pedro: If I had studied that before my MBA… but because, I had to do something else. But I studied that in order to try to understand the Argentinean society.
Gabriel: That’s impossible. Pablo I would like to hear about the industries that you like the most, but please mention on the CBDCs because I know you are an expert on the subject, so it would be interesting also to see your take on that.
Pablo: Yah I was thinking about what Pedro was saying and the truth is that the financial industries and services are kinda one of the obvious ones because of the start of blockchain and they have more time, and what is actually coming ahead, the fact of the CBDCs projects that are taking place, the way that they are seriously being considered and the pilots that are being done, where engaged in a couple of them. And trying to help define how a CBDC may actually be rolled out beyond the theoretical points and the pilots that are taking place right now. It’s really proven that the financial services already has changed and it will change even further coming from the institutional side. Considering the way that governments are trying to jump on board with this and are seeing the danger, “danger” that its bringing to fiat money. So I think that that is going to be the biggest disruption, it’s the most interesting to follow because it has real changes happening today and more interesting changes coming to the future that will bring future more into the technology more progress. Now I understand from what I’ve seen last year that the pandemic is also bringing interesting progress to other areas like health or everything that is related to the intrinsic values of blockchain about issuing and transmitting value, you know. Whether it’s in a token or a certificate, now that suddenly since the middle of the year last year everything has opened wide for everyone to understand this value, see that it is very, very accessible if you go past the understanding how to use it, past to understating the potential on how to implement it. So I see that there are several industries that are going to be impacted short term, probably because these changes are forced, and I think that CBDC, once it is rolled out, it’s going to help close down the knot in governments vision. I share Pedro’s vision about government project they have to be like conclusive and comprehensive, and I believe that the fact of having an e-government solution and tie it with the CBDC currency will help to really materialize the vision of an electronic government that can provide value to citizens instead of being like a — in some countries could be. Not talking about any one in particular.
Gabriel: Interesting, so your seeing enterprise or government blockchain is some kind of bridge between the old traditional financial system and the new that is coming to-
Pablo: Yes, definitely. And actually, just to close, a real functioning added value CBDC will definitely need have to be a bridge.
Gabriel: Perfect. Ursula, I know your passionate about financial inclusion and the micro-loans which we mentioned before.
Ursula: you know, your reading my mind. Because as Pablo was talking about I was thinking, CBDC could make sense for financial inclusion as well. Because I know that some countries in Latin America, especially in Ecuador, they are trying to roll out a project with CBDC and then the first thing that I thought was: whoa this could be a good relief and how to distributed relief checks because of the covid right now, everybody is trying to see how to get their paycheck. Especially elderlies, you saw that in Buenos Aires with long, long, long lines with elderlies trying to get paid. And when people were saying don’t get out of your house, so if you couldn’t have a way to connect this with the real world, with the public, through the government through and CBDC, and I think that could have be- could have a big, big impact. And yes, I’m very enthusiastic about financial inclusion, it was one of my motoes when I joined IOV labs and I always admire what you guys have been doing from Argentina, I think that has been incredible and remarkable, and I think that Latin America along with Africa, there is a huge, huge experimenting places to drop with the technology. And talking about the business, I just wanted to bring- I was thinking about my own business that I’ve been working for the last year, uh, few years. And thinking about media, media is a huge industry with multi-billion, when I saw billion, with B, capital B- dollars, and its shrinking. And its struggling. And it’s trying to find new business models for every single industry. I’m talking media, when I’m talking about media its newspaper, radio, movies, just every- entertainment as well. And I’ve been experimenting this first hand, in a new York startup the last two years, it was civil, because we were everywhere. We were everywhere in New York and it was like a big buss in the New York loco, communication areas. And we failed, it was an experiment, we leant a token, it was super hard to get a token, 44 steps, just to get a single token. So there is no way that you can get an inclusion with 44 step to get in a single token. But I’m glad that I saw it but I still think that this interest right now with N-F-Tiff, NTs are getting bigger and bigger. Its evolving, and media industry is something that we have to keep an eye on, in IOV we have the riff storage. That I’ve been always publish on Gaku, you are the one who knows the most about the riff storage and I think that’s something that would take- we have to take an advantage from.
Gabriel: Thank you Ursula. So Karen, you mentioned identity before, we’ve been talking about financial inclusion, which are the areas that you are the most exited for, and also do you share this vision that Ursula said about the opportunity of the emerging markets? You know given that we are suffering the most and need the most these technologies and these solutions, are you bullish about the innovation in these markets?
Karen: Yes absolutely, you know I mentioned the keeper stories so that’s in Sierra Leon, that’s where you know, there are now millions of citizens now that have access to national ID, which means they can build a credit history which allows them to then build wealth and start small businesses and engage in entrepreneurship right? So the potential for impact is there, there’s- I agree with what Ursula said about how CBDCs is one of the main reasons that central banks is because of financial inclusion. One example we were just hearing from in our community, we have a capital market special interest group that meets regularly- there’s presentations from all kinds of examples of what is being done in the financial market space. And we had someone come and speak who was working on the eastern Caribbean digital currency, if you’re not aware, the eastern Caribbean is a collection of islands, it’s like Antigua, Anguilla, Barbuda, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, like a few of those, it’s one of the oldest monetary networks in the world actually. Which is very interesting- something I learned in that presentation. But they are using Hyperledger fabric to build a central bank digital currency, and one of their main goals is to make it a lot easier for their citizens to transact across islands and too be able to use digital payments. And so I think that’s one of the main reasons why we see a lot of the central banks exploring it, and when it really begins to roll out I think we are going to see a lot of impact from that. So their project is currently in pilot and we will be launching I think in the next couple months. Another example we have is actually in Cambodia with a project called project Bakum and they are using Hyperledger Eroja to do a almost like a CBDC, it’s a digital payment system that again is a trying to achieve that same goal- they are live, you can use it now today. We’ve also had them present in the same special interest group and hell show you the app and it shows exactly how it works and it’s very easy and very simple. So just the ability to unlock that kind of ease of transacting, there is so many ripple effects that it can have.
Gabriel: Awesome, very interesting, I love to see all this innovation happening in the parts of the world that need it the most. Where arriving towards the end of this panel so I have this one final question and then I’ll leave it to you for final message, Pedro there are many enterprises and government officials that are going to be watching this panel, and they have several options on which Blockchain technology to use: permissionless, public blockchain- which are the keys that you would that you would tell them to look after before choosing a specific solution. Is it the security? Is it the interoperability? The openness of the source code? So which are the keys that they should keep in mind? Or marrying- because these are the kind of technologies that once you choose one is very difficult to move to another one. So what is your recommendation to talking to a CEO or a responsible in the government, before choosing the right blockchain technology for their needs?
Pedro: Well based on my experience, what companies or goverments needs is not only technology, but also services, I think maybe in the future like in the automotive industry every car is very similar. And every provider in blockchain ecosystem, will be- maybe will have something different from one to another, but the service, the support, and the in the all the process, since the begin of the process where they wanted to understand how blockchain is, and to the pilot process and then to the production and the maintenance process. This is something that you need to support your customer, and if you’re on site, maybe it will be better if you have resources that understand the vertical market that you are working on and mainly if you have a demo, is very difficult to share- to show something if you don’t share how to- how it functions. I used to say with ppt only, many other technologies which are simple to explain, but blockchain is not simple and you need to show a demo. And lastly, I think that if you have a customer that already has a project in production it will be better. Is very difficult to build a big share in an industry. And this is our experience, we have in the capital market, in financial services in government, and this is a key element. If you go to Colombia, they wanted for example the Colombia stock market, they use to talk with the Argentina stock market experience because they already do it- did it, so they- this is the three elements: Your support, your experience in the vertical, and your use cases that you previously implemented in this use case. Those are the key elements to sell.
Gabriel: very interesting. Pablo?
Pablo: I was just thinking about it while Pedro was discussing it and just first I agree with Pedro that because of the level of complexity of the technology you need to be understanding why you do it. And I’m going to go back to what we were discussing at the beginning, understanding first what they are trying to achieve with blockchain and where blockchain is actually going to have value. To the process of the company, because there is a conception that the technology by itself is magical and everything will be great because we have blockchain, but the truth is that it’s very important to understand that implementing blockchain usually has impacts in lots of departments in a lot of sections of the company that are not just IT related. So in order to have a proper blockchain use case implementation you need to make sure that- for example if you are doing the signature of a certified or verified credential, that has not to be reputable like- can be… and that has to be implemented properly and that probably has to do with legal processes and business processes, so what I mean is, there is not just a technical decision that they need to make, but it’s a whole comprehensive decision that impacts all the government and enterprise. For example, we are trying to make the technology as easy as possible with the platform that we are building at Extrimian, and lowering the technical difficulties, however implementing a project we understand that we want to advice to see all these kind of things. So it makes you- it forces you to understand that this is not a simple software procurement service purchase, that you need to understand that you are trying to add value to everything you do in your company, through a new kind of technology. And I think that’s a key point to understand, and of course if you are doing it with somebody that can help you navigate through that vision, its definitely going to help you.
Gabriel: Yah the education part is critical no?
Pablo: 100 percent
Gabriel: Ursula, which would be your tips for anyone choosing which blockchain technology to use, or what you should be analyzing?
Ursula: My tip first of all is trying to understand the deep, deep, deep part of blockchain, you have to understand why do you need blockchain. Which are your use cases? Because maybe you don’t need blockchain for everything. We keep saying that in many, many, many times and when you do need blockchain, try to make it the most useful for your company because it’s going to be great if you know how to use it. So I think that the education part, Gaku, is crucial for sure, but not everybody is a developer, so you don’t need to understand the deep root of the technical part, because then you will get so confused. And same thing when the first time that I was approached by the email, I didn’t try to understand the HTML no I just wanted to know why- what was the use case. Should I communicate with friends? Family? Or Boyfriend? Whatever? That was the most important thing. So I think in this case and the blockchain, we have to simplify that. People need to understand the WHY, the why is the most important thing. Why do you need the technology?
Gabriel: And if the why is not clear maybe you don’t need the blockchain for that no?
Ursula: Probably. Yes.
Gabriel: Thank you Ursula, Karen?
Karen: Yah I think I agree with what everyone has said on you… 100 percent have to start with the up relevant use case that actually uses the benefit of the technology. If you don’t ac- if you don’t need a network, if you don’t really leveraging all the benefit of blockchain technology, then there are cheaper faster ways to do what you are doing, so 100 percent you should definitely start with the right use case. Then I mean look at the resources that you have, are you going to be- do you have the resources to build this in house? Or do you need to seek out outside services? Do you want to build those resources internally, or not? I think also the buy in is very important at a leadership level, so the ones that have the most success have a lot of- this is like what Pablo said earlier about how blockchain projects in the public sector need to be part of a larger, broader vision. The same goes for any organization, otherwise it can tend to be some team off on the side doing their innovation work and it’s not really going to go- become a DNA or a part of the business. And starting small, you know start with something you can demonstrate impact and success and then build from there. And I think that understanding that its cutting edge technology, it’s going to be evolving constantly and being ready for that adaptability, something that I think isn’t considered enough when people organizations go about starting their blockchain projects is the government of the network that they are forming. A lot of people focus on the technology, that makes sense, and that’s necessary a lot of the technology part is figure-outable, I don’t know if that’s a word but it’s somewhat clear how to go about doing it, or eventually how you will reach that point. But there is a lot of challenges in the government and how to bring competing parties together onto work in the same network towards this common goal. Because you need a network to really make it a worthwhile use of this technology. So that government aspect is something that we are hearing, a lot more people struggle with and become an important part of the consideration. So much so that we actually have launched a new project at the Linux Foundation, that is called open governance. Because that is something that we have done a lot at Linux and it’s something that you need a neutral home for. And so there are some new government networks that are coming about as a part of that project, and they are- not all of them will use DLT but the new ones that are coming out will.
Gabriel: Very interesting, Karen if someone wants learn more about what you guys are doing at Hyperledger or if they want to contact you, any links or information that they can learn more about it?
Karen: yah absolute, so the place where everything comes together is on our website, Hyperledger.Org, um a few thing to draw people’s attention on the website though is our event, so we have our hyper ledger global forum that we just announced last Friday the dates for: So its June 8 to 10th virtual. We currently have a call for proposal out for that as well so if you are building something with Hyperledger technology, go to our website and you can register for the event and also maybe cement a proposal. I mentioned a few times we have these different special interest groups, we are an open source community, anyone can participate in our groups, all meetings are public, and so if you go to our website under the participate tab, you’ll see all the different groups I mentioned: Capital markets, we have a climate action sig, we have a social impact sig, public sector- so there is a lot of different groups that you can join and then we have- there is a new media and entertainment interest group that is now forming and will launch soon. And then finally on our learn page of the website or on our YouTube you can find all the- like we have so much content there, webinars from the past years, were now doing more interactive sessions were you go really in depth 1 hour with lots of Q&A, recordings of previous events we’ve had, we’ve recently had our five year anniversary last December so-
Gabriel: Congratulations
Karen: — um panels and conversations with Brian on there as well.
Gabriel: Ok, thank you so much. Pedro, where can the people contact Grupo Sabra or learn more about your use cases and yourself?
Pedro: Well first our website GrupoSabra.com or Extrimian.com, were we publish all our services and value propositions and news. Our Social network also updates information related to our use cases or new release of the platform, so you can search over different social networks in order to contact us also, and also in this activities that we’ve been doing with you IOV labs, together in order to share the experiences- the new technology components for our development community and well, no se. I don’t know Pablo if you want to add some- a common related to that?
Gabriel: Any final message Pablo?
Pablo: Yah so picking up on that from Extrimian side we are very brand new, taking our first steps, so you can find us at extremian.com, we have a couple of exiting things that we are preparing for our social networks you can start following us on twitter at Extrimian, and linkedln as well and so we expected to start releasing a couple of interesting stuff in the next months. We are just born into this, and we are actually very excited because we are bringing Grupo sabra’s experience to the product we are building. And we expect to do the first launch very, very soon. So we started to do a limited release for the product to be tested, and as a final thought in this is that the ones that will join Extrimian are very, very excited to be doing this and to be part of this community and industry at this time, because our purpose is to lower the barrier to make blockchain more available to everyone and we’ve just discussed over an hour how valuable it is for enterprise and government so definitely we’ve seen a lot of value into this for all of us here and we are very happy to be involved in this. So it’s very- as they say in the movie “It’s a great time to be alive” which is probably valid every time, but in this particular case we are trying to do our best to make a difference so happy to be part of that as well.
Ursula: Well if you want to reach out to IOV labs is IOVlabs.org and its internet value by the way, we are building different products through our partners like Grupo Sabra and Extrimian and some others, and so happy to connect on twitter, LinkedIn or social media like YouTube as well. So my last thoughts is just to thank you Gaku because he is a force a nature, he’s always moving events, he’s so passionate about blockchain, bitcoin, cryptocurrency, about the whole ecosystem, so I just highly appreciate your invitation.
Gabriel: Well thank you so much for the kind words; I thank you all for being part of this. As we said before, education is super important so let’s keep on pushing, trying to explain this amazing technology and how it could help us improve the world in several ways, so thank you so much for being with us today and talk to you soon.
Everyone: Thank you, bye.