BEN India travels to MIT Bitcoin Expo 2018
Conferences are one the most preferred way of learning an emerging tech. And Hackathons are the new documentation, when it comes to learning how to code using a technology.
One of the emerging technologies is the Blockchain, which has penetrated every technology domain, disrupting the decade Centralized Architecture and replacing that with the new Decentralized Architecture.
India is considered to be the second to the US, where the Blockchain Adoption has started at light speed and progressing towards new ideas and developments every single day. The largest blockchain consortium comprising of 30+ banks to adopt Blockchain by 2021, called BankChain, is India’s child which will showcase how Blockchain has revolutionized the largest Democracy in the World.
And Blockchain Education Network, India (BEN India) is a community of such students who thrive to take Blockchain to the next level, to be the next Google, to be the next Facebook, to be the next Apple. And to fuel this, BEN India had the opportunity to enable 5 students from India, to travel half way across the world to attend the MIT Bitcoin Expo 2018, back in March’18 at MIT Cambridge.
While BEN supported them financially, by paying 40% of the flight costs, BEN India also enabled them to collaborate in the foreign land. Whether it was figuring out how to attain the VISAs or about traveling or about accommodation, the community supported us. They were our family away from home.
It was the first time for me, that I was going to step out of my comfort zone, Indian Territory, and travel all the way to the US to attend the most intriguing Bitcoin Expo ever. They enabled every session to be an Adrenaline Rush, followed by a Hackathon.
The most astonishing part was how BEN India proved to be a boon for all 5 of us, where we collaborated on what we needed to bring, what VISA documents were required, our travel itinerary, our accommodation, our food, our woolens and many more things. We were the Indian Team of Students in the Expo who traveled half-way across the world, to learn Blockchain.
I cannot imagine how we would have collaborated for such a trip. Sounds exaggerating, but this is the true experience, we all went through. If I look back and see, I would say that BEN India was the original reason we all had adrenaline flowing through our body. It allowed students to attend an Expo, bringing the tangibility to our dreams.
And the day I landed in Boston, my first step into the United States, I learnt what BEN India had the capability to do. It was not just a community of students who wanted to learn and teach and educate and research Blockchain, but rather my family in the technology space. And that day, I learnt the value of Community Building.
After that trip, my stance on learning Technology shifted by 180 Degrees. I now learn to Give Back to the Community. I would want more students to experience what I experienced, to attend Hackathons which they can only dream of, to collaborate with students across the World and build a decentralized knowledge pool where every one gets to learn from everyone else.
This effort by BEN India attracted me towards it and I cannot be thankful enough for providing me the opportunity to live my Dream.
