The Non Central Conf & the power of #Coalitions 4GOOD
A weekend experience in Leon and the discovery of a ‘4GOOD’ community
This past weekend I had the fortune to have joined a fantastic group of people filled with dreams and passion for a better world.
Leon is a picturesque town, about 3 hours away from Madrid. This town hosted the NON Central Conf, a weekend event that welcomed anyone interested in taking a more active role in developing entrepreneurial ideas using emerging technologies or wanting to share their knowledge and experience gained in the blockchain space.
My weekend adventure started at Madrid airport where I was meeting fellow attendees (I had not met before) and embarking on a spontaneous road trip. I was lucky to be offered a ride by Josu, a person I felt I had known all my life by the time we arrived at Leon. The “non-conf” feeling was already celebrated by everyone who I had just met on the way to Leon.
At the NON-Conf, we were presented with the NON-Agenda, packed with exciting talks from individuals who have been in the blockchain space for a long while. All attendees were speakers by default; everyone was invited to give a Talk or join a panel discussion. What was most amusing was that attendees were encouraged to bring their families along, it was refreshing to get to know people and their families in such an environment. The words, NON-Conf were used to describe or challenge any conference style habit, so the atmosphere was always friendly and relaxed. So relaxed, I found out I was expected to give a talk an hour before.
The spontaneous aspects of the ‘NON-Conf’ highlighted a strong point of differentiation from the conventional conferences we usually experience in this space. So once in this environment, your creativity awakens and drives you to develop your talks on the GO and forget about power point slides!
“It is time to get out of the auditorium, walk outside and enjoy the fresh air and the glorious sunny day”
I said to my fellow ‘speakers-friends’ when the time came for my talk. We left the conference room, marched outside, and relaxed on the lawn. I paused and quickly looked at my scribbled notes’ 3 points I wanted to make:
1-b4H, 2- Prosperity paradox’s non-consumer, market-maker ideas, and 3-Coalitions4GOOD. It felt encouraging to share with a group of like-minded people. I went on to explain what we do at the Blockchain for Humanity (b4H) Foundation and why we support projects that bring a concept and develop use cases leveraging the power of emerging technologies to positively transform the lives of many and address gaps in society and the environment. We want to stimulate socially responsible businesses to offer more than just benefits to a selected group of shareholders. We believe in the new wave of entrepreneurs and business leaders that are challenging the traditional extractive bias corporation approach that is mostly aligned with the maximization of quarterly returns for its shareholders. These new generation entrepreneurs, go beyond just creating a sustainable businesses; they create a purpose organizations in pursue of grassroot social and environmental values above extracting circulating currency from the economy and transfer it into profit. These businesses see the value in having communities reap the benefits instead.
Clayton Christensen’s “The Prosperity Paradox” how innovation can lift nations out of poverty (Alleviating poverty is not the same as creating prosperity) has been an inspiration for my work at the b4H foundation, it sparked my entrepreneurial spirit and reinforced my mission to guide and support market-creating ideas targeted to non-consumers in developing countries. It shows the catalyzing effects of market-creating, behavior-changing and culture-forming innovation on economic development by providing products and services people didn’t know they needed, thereby converting nonconsumers into consumers (WSJ By Rupert Darwall)
There was a moment of reflection as I shared examples of great entrepreneurs who overcame the challenges of non-existing infrastructures and business logic and how they were able to achieve systemic changes in societies and transform the economic landscape for countries and their citizens.
“The only way to make these kind of change happen is to ignore our different views on technology and particularly protocols biases or community dissimilarities and unite forces towards a common goal” I stressed and looked around to see if the expressive faces of my audience would gesture support.
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world” -Gandhi
The #Coalitions4GOOD is a movement purposed to drive the power of united forces 4GOOD. Supporters of different protocols, activist of diverse communities and technology-driven Foundations with the mission to support application development on their own protocol are especially invited and welcomed to join this movement. On August, we are planning to meet in Berlin at the Coalitions4GOOD hackerspace organized within the #web3summit; b4H together with Coalitions partners is developing a program around problem-solutions ideation sessions and round table discussions to prioritize efforts, create the opportunity for collaboration and align resources towards projects.
Call to action: Tezos Web3 Foundation Team EF Æternity Crypto Foundation Bitcoin Foundation Zcash Blog NEM Official (Editors) Binance TRON Foundation Litecoin.Com Ripple COINBASE — we welcome your participation to the roundtable discussion and looking forward to reach consensus to a united effort to do good.
We continued the 4GOOD path and engaged in a very active panel discussion about Sustainable Development Goals (#SDGs) ‘Myth or Reality’? and the capabilities of blockchain to accelerate the achievement of these goals. Each panelist offered insightful points of view and ideas to achieve some of the most obvious SDGs. I would like to thank my outstanding rock star panel: Fran from ClimateTrade, Gabriela from EthicHub, Jana, Solange , Gustavo, and Guillermo from Eldorado Exchange for sharing your views and help with the debate about the future of the SDGs.
We will build on this input and continue our work at our #Coalition4GOOD hackerspace next 19–21 August and determine concrete steps that will lead us to measurable results. I know we can do this!
If you wish to join the movement: read this post and apply here.
The NON-Conf and the remarkable people I met there have ignited the torch and help concretize my next steps.
I am so happy to have shared special moments with Ale from RSK, Vojtech from b4H, Edu from DAppNode, David from Iden3, Pablo from Creativigo, Ismael from Kunfud, Josu for the ride and great company, my buddies Liam and Tom from DogandBird media.
Finally a very special THANKS and CONGRATULATIONS to Alex Casas Rodriguez from Shelpin & b4H, the organizing team and the city of Leon. All the efforts paid off!
Thank you for hosting us!
See you all next year!
About The Blockchain4Humanity Foundation (b4H) is a not-for-profit organisation that identifies, supports and help implement a pipeline of social and environmental impact projects. B4h drives a Coalitions4GOOD movement purposed to ignite a blockchain ecosystem of ideas, concepts, partnerships, mentors, sponsors, impact investors and charitable donors. The b4H team helps define the next steps and build a catalyzing plan for projects to go further in their development stage and validate blockchain powered use cases.
Email: hello@b4h.world or join our Telegram Group
