DAVOS 2018: Adventures on the Promenade of Change

When I arrived in Davos, the Snow of the Century was setting the stage for President Trump’s visit, giving more fuel to the naysayers and an icy slap in the face of climate change fighters – whose messages screamed loud from the buildings along a white Promenade fallen hostage to the long line of limos jammed in traffic.

This gave the distinguished and untouchable 1% stranded together with the rest of us plenty of time to reflect upon the issue...

Some, like Liam Fox eager to make it to the next press conference on time, decided to jump out of the limo comfort and risk sliding on the icy sidewalk together with the 99% - me included – and of course reporters jumped on the spontaneous chance to throw in a few questions about his infamous takes on the climate matter. 

WOOW! I was already immersed in the Davos excitement woven in the fabric of multi-faceted happenings spicing up the events. Such as when Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau jumped in the same elevator which was carrying me to the parking lot of Hotel Ameron – OOOH! “Don’t forget to breathe Mihaela! It’s only the first day”… I told myself while admiring his jogging suit – of course he was in his element in snowy Davos!.. 

On that evening at the Global Blockchain Business Council dinner where I was invited by Jamie Smith, I was reminded of the tenacity of committed and talented women leaders like her – when I saw that enormous ballroom filled with most distinguished government and industry leaders (and many still scrambling to find a seat…) What a dramatic increase in interest from last year’s dinner which could barely fill a small conference room… I chose a more remote table in one corner at the back – without any sign of “Reserved” on it – yet in an instant I found myself in the company of Eva Kaili Blockchain champion at the European Parliament, Taavi R?ivas, former PM of Estonia and Pēteris Zilgalvis, Head of Blockchain at the European Commission. WOOW! I felt the “Davos bliss” in my cells again… Throughout the evening, we savored along with the delicious meals their inspiring talks pointing to so many examples of how Blockchain can improve the lives of citizens by creating more secure, equitable and functional societies – and I took the opportunity to share with them how the companies which I advise contribute to this common cause. Such as Sapien.network whose reputation engine deployed on Blockchain sieves away the fake news, Endor.com – an MIT startup which is democratizing access to advanced predictive analytics that citizens can use to make informed decisions about their everyday lives, or Esprezzo.io which simplifies the implementation of Blockchain platforms such that "the rest of us, coders" can easily implement decentralized applications.

It was so heartwarming and astonishing at the same time to see the rise of interest in the Blockchain as a transformational institutional technology - for which I advocated to be included among the Top 10 at WEF amid strong opposition only two years ago…. The dedicated efforts of this community, their commitment to use the distributed ledger to accelerate the achievement of so many goals dear to the Forum participants – from poverty alleviation through financial inclusion enabling economic involvement, to the fight against fake news and corruption to democratizing access to investing and technologies accessible only to those with deep pockets in a centralized world – brought the Blockchain on everyone’s lips in Davos.  

… and Serendipity touched my Davos experience again when on my way out from the dinner I stumbled upon Eric Schmidt – who was presiding over a Google dinner next door. Seeing him next to our banner I could not stop myself from speculating on how much he must regret Blockchain did not exist at the time to have Google implemented on it … Just imagine Google on Blockchain… Oh, wait! Someone already imagined it, in fact more than one! While Endor.com is building the “Google of predictive analytics” on Blockchain these days! - but I’ll save this thought for a future post…

At their Lounge with an oxymoronic name – Blockchain Central (sic) – the GBBC Team assembled an amazing lineup of government and academic personalities who took the stage along most successful Blockchain entrepreneurs sharing their “governance revolution” successes.

Among them, the Panel on Blockchain Infrastructures starring Leanne Kemp, CEO and Founder of Everledger – the infrastructure for tracking provenance which is revolutionizing supply chains; Gemma Green, Chair and Cofounder of Power Ledger – decentralizing the energy industry such that people have choices in which sources they use; Veronica Garcia, Cofounder of Bitlumens – a platform for microfinance using Blockchain technologies to give access to electricity coming from renewable generating sources in Latin America and India and Callie Stinson who leads the Water initiatives at the World Economic Forum. It was truly stunning to see the contrast between the colossal achievements of these women who are transforming entrenched industries one fight at a time, and the modesty with which they presented these achievements – among others Gemma having to quiet her toddler who was in the audience… Reminding once again of the incredible force of change which women of talent and commitment bring in creating a better world.

The next day I decided to visit John Wolpert who invited me to some amazing events at the Consensys Ethereal Lounge featuring most innovative applications of smart contracts on Blockchain. Among them Pangea, a startup of the Consensys Labs, delivers a Blockchain platform for investing in shared property changing the game in the real estate industry

During the Green Machine Panel where the climate and Blockchain themes synergized to offer solutions for a sustainable future – I met Stephen Cutter, Chief Visionary Officer at WUJI – a carbon neutral ride sharing company tackling the climate issue by taking action “on the go”! Stephen was involved in the sustainability hackathon where he was implementing WUJI platform with a commitment to make an impact by securing a tree is planted for every ride and an acre of rain forest is being saved for every 100 rides. Given our alignment regarding the data revolution we brainstormed around a tokenized data model using the Endor.coin, to help people improve their communities, environment and transportation by providing their data and be rewarded in tokens that will pay for those improvements. 

Still thinking about ways to make this happen faster I found myself enjoying lunch next door at CryptoHQ - instantly surrounded by the genuine community spirit of the true Blockchain warriors, those who’ve been leading the Blockchain Crusade since Satoshi opened the Pandora box with his seminal paper. Here a next level of Magic stemmed from the co-creative energy of those who built the foundations of the irreversible “tokenomy” rocking the centralized world these days, a community growing the new digital economy on the Internet of Value which enables everyone (not only those “accredited” with deep pockets…) to both support and contribute to ideas and products they believe in. The energy here reflected the free spirited inclusive democratized future of innovation and entrepreneurship enabling everyone to get engaged in the creation of wealth and also reap is rewards.

This was the topic of the Panel which I was spontaneously invited to chair at CryptoHQ featuring a handful of amazing entrepreneurs shaping this new space: Zane Witherspoon, Founding Partner at The Bureau and CTO of Dispatch Lab; Kai Peeters, Founder of HiP.property – a unique interactive property exchange platform due for beta release later this year; John Wise, who is redefining the landscape of innovation as CEO of LOCI; Brian Magierski, who co-founded Nano-Vision to turn around the healthcare system and Dustin Boyer from DARPA. After an intense discussion we all agreed on a decentralized future where the tide is reversing by empowering the individuals to support and contribute to every idea they believe in - including by leveraging the power of Blockchain to incentivize participation and contribution in the uprising token economy. Endor.com supports this radical shift by democratizing access to predictive technologies to enable everyone make the best investment decisions using the proven MIT science https://lnkd.in/d_Ewvgw, which so far only large institutions and those with deep pockets could access before. In my intervention I underlined how Endor.coin encourages citizens to get involved and contribute to improve the (already best in class) predictive capability, by rewarding in tokens those catalysts who implement new prediction algorithms – to answer even more questions for everyone. Endor’s ingenious tokenomics also reverses the tide from data slavery to data sovereignty by rewarding citizens in tokens for contributing their data and subsequently buying answers from the prediction engine using those tokens.

One of the issues brought up during the discussions was easier access to the Blockchain technology, a need which Esprezzo.io addresses by making the so far onerous task of coding distributed ledgers – now easy for the average coder. This raised also the issue of using more friendly human-machine interfaces – which were addressed in the next session by  Sophia, the adorable android as well as by its digital version, Soul Machines presented lateron at the WiseKey high level event. Both of these “ladies” can make a superb interface between the Endor prediction engine and its users, making the interaction so much more pleasant and natural. 

And here I cannot but pause to note the resonance with the “women raising” theme prevalent in Davos this year. With an all women co-chairs team – featuring six of the most powerful executives in industry, international organizations, scientific research, and non-profits, Davos made a strong statement to the world that the gender power balance is shifting under the scrutiny of a novel “FQ” metric featured on the Promenade.

And it was encouraging to see so many men supporting this trend, among which Michael Casey, former journalist turned MIT Blockchain researcher who was promoting his new book The Truth Machine while evaluating the “Blockchain sanity”of Davos elites at the Annual Meeting.

But above all I'm dreaming of an inclusive future - so genuinely pictured in this pic shared by Stjepan Anic.

It was hard to say good bye to my new friends from CryptoHQ – who wanted me to bring a token of their kindness back home – a cup with Switzerland mark that will ensure I start every morning recalling the warmth, acceptance, openness and overall inclusive atmosphere at the CryptoHQ headquarters - to be inspired for a new day dedicated to our common cause of building a truly decentralized future. And as I sip my coffee each morning in my kitchen, many more Davos moments awaken.

Such as when I bumped into my Berkeley colleague and famed entrepreneur Bernt Wahl,at the Open Forum ...

...or when I ended up on the last day at the same lunch table with Alena with whom I mixed coats at one of the events wardrobe and almost gave up finding it after all my assiduous attempts had failed... So in the end we could both go home wearing our own coat!... How did this happen? - you may ask… How could two people who needed to meet but did not know each other nor have any way to find each other among thousands of participants roaming Davos – how could they end up at the same lunch table on the very last day, to discover they were wearing the other one’s coat? No – it’s not a movie script – it’s the Davos alchemy of serendipitous encounters!...

Come join us next year so you can be immersed in it as well!