BLOCKCHAIN FOR SDGS — A HUGE SUCCESS IN HO CHI MINH
Ho Chi Minh is the emerging tech scene and strategic stop for Blockchain for SDGs Tour/Summit. European Blockchain Hub also officially appointed the Chairwoman of Vietnam node
Ho Chi Minh, 24th November — Under one roof in The Military Grand Theater, all of 500 delegates from various industries engaged in the networking for future possibilities of Blockchain related projects to achieve SDGs. This opportunity was only made possible by this tour — as European Blockchain HUB brings on aboard Blockchain experts and enthusiasts from around the world to one country after another.
The summit today started with Mr. Blaz Golob, President & CEO of European Blockchain Hub (EUBC Hub) welcoming the participants with great enthusiasm. In his speech, he introduced the European Blockchain HUB, the Euro-Asia blockchain tour of 2018 and the global vision to advocate for Blockchain Technology for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Continuing on to his sharing session, he also stressed on the importance for the European Blockchain HUB to make a global relationship with various countries who share similar enthusiasm and passion for Blockchain-related matters.
The highlight of the event was signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between European Blockchain HUB and Vietnam Node to jointly develop an international standard for blockchain technology to be adopted by every country. EUBC nominated Ms Doan Kieu My (Kimiko) as the chairwoman of Vietnam Node under witness of Co-organisers and strategic partners Getlinks, Startup Vietnam Foundation, Sihub, Nhip cau dau tu, Mekolor, UEH Connected, 2359 Media, Viettel, Imprint blockchain, Alfa Enzo and BSSC.
Ms Kimiko also delivered an supportive speech about the goal of EUBC Vietnam node is to become an independent initiative to effectively connect the key players. This can bring the seamless sharing across the ecosystem, especially the influencers, SMEs, businesses, government, NGOs, and startups, IT, technology, blockchain communities. She also shared with the participants the enthusiasm about the potential of Vietnam being one of the emerging Blockchain Hubs as well as the call for the new mindset to build healthy and sustainable blockchain ecosystem in Vietnam.
Delivering an opening speech today was Ms Doan Kieu My, Chairwoman of Vietnam Node of European Blockchain HUB who thanked all partners and the audience for their supports. In the invigorating welcome speech, she expressed the objective of this first-time-ever event in Vietnam to focus on the social impacts and business values of blockchain and how it is being utilised in various industries for SDGs. She then continued her speech with the introduction of VVIPs and conference agenda.
The summit was joined by three representatives from EUBC HUB Global — Mr. Scott Gass, Marketing Director of EUNEX, Dr. Eric Ong, Founder&CEO of Relianz, and Ms. Ice Ong, Business Development Manager of WOS. Mr. Scott Gass presented key points of Eunex’s transaction security and trading transparency, and additionally its high-end ecosystem.
Dr. Eric Ong shared a the specific case study of applying blockchain solution for electric car charging platform while globally renewable energy is predicted to be USD 7.8 trillion industry by 2040.
Meanwhile, Ms. Ice Ong talked about how WOS applied blockchain together with IoT and AI to solve the challenges of Big Data by a streamlined and efficiency project fundraising solution, which saves time, effort and delivers higher returns to the BIG DATA generation facility developers. This solution contributes to the mutual goal of sustainable development and integrity globally by covering geographical, ethical, cultural and language differences.
Mr. Sean O’Connell, Human Rights and Innovation Officer of UNDP Viet Nam envisions the same aspiration as Ice Ong’s. According to Sean, new technologies hold huge potential in accelerating the achievement of the SDGs. We have seen the 3D printing of prosthetic limbs reducing inequality for Persons with disabilities (Goal 10), virtual reality training for surgeons has improved health outcomes in the Global South (Goal 3), and even drone technology adapted to fight against deforestation (Goal 15). Despite these advancements, SDG 16, on Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, remained an outlier in terms of attracting the attention of technology leaders. Blockchain has helped change this. The central elements of being decentralized, immutable, and distributed have allowed blockchain developers, international organizations, NGOs and Governments team together to advance Goal 16 using this new technology. Seán explored some of these existing initiatives, including those driven by UNDP globally, and discuss lessons learned from early efforts in informing the design, prototype and scaling up of blockchain solutions for good governance and combating corruption.
Mr. Tony K Tran, CEO & Chief Architect of Alfa-Enzo Foundation who used to be the Art Director at Microsoft also presented his keynote with the topic “Blockchain’s Last Mile”. He shared that most crypto projects today have failed to address a real problem or create real purpose. Tony also presented the applicable opportunities for Distributed Ledger Technologies, the nature of building a startup in this space, his methods to identify and qualify high-quality projects, and how it will apply in the context of Vietnam’s blossoming technology sector.
Everyone is seeing that Asia’s fast-growing emerging markets growth is highly fostered by penetration of internet and digitalisation of the economy. A joint report of McKinsey & Korn Ferry recently reported that the lack of supply for tech talents in Asia to feed this growth is resulting in a yearly $112b unrealised GDP, they call it the “tech talent crunch”. Local tech talents & new skill sets are lacking, resulting of 78% of technology positions remaining open for more than 5 months on average. In this context, curation and certification of technology skill sets for talents postgraduate or out of university program become an interesting angle to solve this “tech talent crunch”. How the industry currently & potentially could leverage on blockchain’s smart contracts to enable free technology education certification for everyone? That was what Mr. Djoann Fal, co-founders & CEO of Getlinks who is one of Blockchain for SDGs in Vietnam’s co-organizers brought to the conference today.
Following the networking session, Ms. Kimiko kick-offed the second part of this high-level conference with the sharing about Vietnam blockchain landscape. She started with the problem that there have been multiple discussions that Vietnam is a booming young market, and the potential soil for growth, but what are the real indicators? Kimiko brought a different angle regarding public awareness of blockchain technology via an extensive report based on millions online conversations from Vietnamese users in 2017–2018. This report marks the partnership between YellowBlocks and BuzzMetrics.
Continuing that inspiring spirit, Mr. Le Thanh Cong, Deputy General Director of Viettel Business Solutions Corporation shared local perspectives for blockchain. Blockchain is a technology with many useful applications in many fields such as banking, education, economics, healthcare, gaming, e-commerce and even agriculture. However, in the current market of Vietnam, the development of blockchain is still limited and narrow. Viettel focus on providing solutions to the development of sustainable business models and applies innovative technologies for customers, not research to re-invented technology. Mastering technology, turning the technologies of the 4.0 revolution into intuitive, simple, close solutions for government, business, people is one of Viettel’s mission in order to universalize technology in Vietnam. Collaborating with Government and enterprises, Viettel empowers private blockchain technology to solve problems of society while saving cost and reducing risk. Health, education & agriculture are always given priority because these fields have very few IT solutions providers and IT human resources are not enough. In front of the problem of how the innovative technology in Vietnam can expand and develop, Viettel would like to corporate with other businesses to all enterprises to build national digital platform as the foundation for deploying digital services.
Also presenting today is Mr. David Lang, currently the independent advisor to different startups and Fortune 100 regarding digital transformation and Blockchain. He contemplated about the Speed of Innovation based on his own experience in the last 25 years witnessing the technology disruptions in multiple industries and why “Blockchain is now”. He also shared some current real-life applications of Blockchain that are creating value for multiple industries, and leading the next digital transformation trends. He then presented an in-depth case-studies of how a traditional Fortune 100 company is building their private Blockchain networks and its impact to businesses and our daily life.
Coming next was the discussion about how Blockchain will transform the travel industry of the future by allowing faster, deeper, more meaningful interactions between travel service industry providers — the hotels, tour companies, booking agents and the customers. Mr. Hai Ho, Co-founder & CEO of Triip introduced about how blockchain adoption can court the traveller of the future and how Triip can work with the organization to realize their goals by activating Triip as a blockchain ally.
Another keynote on blockchain enterprise solution was delivered by Mr. Nguyen Van Cong, Co-founder and CTO of Imprint Blockchain Services. He enthusiastically shared the vision about the rise of the next platform to transform the way the world does business. He showed how he is using the technology 4.0 stack and blockchain to create a new Hospital Information System (HIS) that will enable patients to pre-pay for their scheduled services via e-Wallet. HIS will integrate with insurance providers for better and faster payments to improve cashflow. In addition, Blockchain will ensure accurate clients information and whenever data changes, it will be updated to all hospitals network so the same accurate information is shared and used by all hospitals. Lastly, how AI/Humanoid robot, Big Data and Blockchain backend databases will provide customer services by basic and advanced questions and answers.
Last but not least, as founder and CEO ImagineX Ventures, and Senior Advisor of Startup Vietnam Foundation, Mr. Tony Wheeler shared his viewpoints on what Vietnam can do to learn from the rest of the world and accelerate our own Tech Startup Ecosystem and the required mindset for growing in the digital age. Tony shared his direct experience of working with inventors, entrepreneurs, startups, industry, educators, venture capital and governments to build such a nation-wide ecosystem, and the critical roles that are essential to accelerating their development and success. Tony also further explored the need for real and open dialogue between all stakeholders in the ecosystem, particularly where it is involves a technology that was created due to a lack of trust around large institutions, such as Blockchain and CryptoCurrencies, and how to work with the apparent ‘anti-social’ people that create much of these technologies; they are the voice of part of the community and they show us ‘holes’ in the system and opportunities for the future.
The highlight of the whole conference was the successful panel discussion with the topic “The potential of Blockchain and emerging technologies in Vietnam for business and for Sustainable Development Goals” with different viewpoints toward three key discussion: (1) Viewpoints about the potential of blockchain and emerging technologies and sustainable development goals; (2) The most impressive projects that encouraging the blockchain ecosystem growth from other countries; (3) Viewpoints about encouraging the growth of Blockchain Technology adoption, and advice about encouraging the public and private sectors to seek more information about prominent technology, and care more about its real business values, rather be buried under the hype or doubts in different lights.
Participants in the panel discussion were:
Moderator: Mandy Nguyen — Startup Vietnam Foundation
Government initiative: Mr. Huynh Kim Tuoc — Saigon Innovation Hub (SIHUB)
Academics: Mr. Huynh Cong Thang — UEH Connected
Tech Startup Voice: Mr. Elvin Li — 2359Media
Representative from European Blockchain Hub: Mr. Rex Yeap — Founder of Asia Blockchain Hub
Thanks to the local and global perspectives speakers — both organisers and participants today learned about Vietnam’s current blockchain landscape and the EUBC HUB — Vietnam node’s visions on Blockchain Technology in local industries. This is one of the reasons why Blockchain for SDGs Tour Summit tours abroad across Asia and Europe so we can bring stories from different parts of the world together to learn and benefit from the knowledge exchange.
Blockchain for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Tour Summit 2018/19 is currently the BIGGEST Blockchain Tour Summit in Europea and Asia organised by the European Blockchain HUB. First time in Vietnam, this global tour across Europe and Asia is meant to take place in 18 countries, and will culminate in the prestigious Ljubljana Castle, Slovenia from 17th — 18th January 2019.
This is just the beginning of great projects ahead. Join us there to be a part of European Blockchain HUB’s global movement for sustainable development with Blockchain!
Full detailed materials: http://bit.ly/blockchain-vietnam
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About the Organiser European Blockchain Hub
European Blockchain Hub (EUBC Hub) is an independent organization who champions Blockchain Technology for transparent, democratic, decentralized, and safe business operation. EUBC Hub first established its presence as a pioneer in the Blockchain industry in May 2018 with aims to advocate the development of smart regulation for Blockchain development and digital entrepreneurship eco-systems at EU institutions, EU member states and other countries. Contact: kimiko@eubchub.eu
About the Co-Organiser Startup Vietnam Foundation
Startup Vietnam Foundation (SVF) is the first Socialized and Non-profit Fund to support startups in Vietnam by providing their founders with leadership skills and management skills in domestic and international markets.
About the Co-Organiser GetLinks
GetLinks is Asia’s leading tech talent network. GetLinks has over 500,000 profiles on the platform, consisting of the ‘3 D’s’ — Developer, Designer and Digital Marketer and over 3,000 companies across the region, including Tencent, Grab, Traveloka, Line and Alibaba.
