How Ethereal is Building the Culture of Blockchain
In advance of Ethereal SF this Friday, an interview with Amanda Gutterman, Chief Marketing Officer at ConsenSys and Ethereal Co-Creator.
This Friday at the Terra Gallery in San Francisco, Ethereal SF will host the brightest minds in blockchain and beyond at the second of the ConsenSys-affiliated Ethereal Summit gatherings. Already renowned for its spirit of inclusion, collaboration, and groundbreaking ideation, Ethereal is proving an essential meeting-place for industry leaders and neophytes alike, a major platform for development announcements, and perhaps most importantly: an open environment in which we can all build a culture for this emergent industry together.
As the world of blockchain descends on San Francisco for Ethereal SF, we sat down with ConsenSys CMO and Ethereal co-creator Amanda Gutterman to get an inside look on the Ethereal mission and what it really means to build a culture of blockchain….
What’s the role of Ethereal within the larger ConsenSys mission?
Ethereal is a cultural meeting-place for the builders of the decentralized web 3.0 to connect with futurists, entrepreneurs, developers, philosophers, humanitarians, and artists to decide together how we want to shape the next generation of the internet. A lot of the time, we are working remotely or at our various offices building products, doing market research, and what we do at Ethereal is bring everyone together physically into one room for a conversation about the future and how we want to shape it. It’s a really important way to bring the community into our world. If what we’re building is truly open-sourced, then it benefits from having the most robust community of contributors participating in it.
In creating a culture of blockchain, what are the values we should be striving towards?
If we think about Ethereal as “building culture” the same way that we’re building open source software — open source culture — that we’re going to use to influence the way this technology plays out in society, then the values are inclusion, transparency, justice, self-sovereignty. We want people to get really getting inspired and activated, understanding that this isn’t being built for them, and that they need to jump in the ring and build it themselves.
There is something really radical at the core of Ethereal, and at the core of what this technology is. I think that acknowledging that is really important. At the end of the day, this is about decentralization. This is about providing a platform for humanity to build better systems for itself, which don’t necessarily look like the ones we have now. These systems do not have intermediaries. They are decentralized, peer-to-peer, they’re highly transparent, with high degrees of accountability and community responsibility. That’s the ethos that we’re bringing to the table.
What I think really excites people is: We live in a world where we acknowledge that the institutions that feel permanent are not permanent truths. Instead, we are now empowered — through this technology — to actually build better systems. Having the confidence to do that is a key part of the cultural message.
In a community with a decentralized mindset, is there an added importance to physical meet-ups?
When you’re decentralized, it’s even more important than ever to find ways to connect. That’s something that we do with ConsenSys. We’re a remote-first company. We have over 400 employees now in 23 countries, so we find ways to connect both online and off. Being able to be decentralized for Ethereal and ConsenSys means that the movement is open to anyone, regardless of where you live. But it also makes it even more important to find places where we can connect.
In order to find more of those for Ethereal, we’re planning on bringing the movement to LA to London, Dubai, back to New York, to all the different places we have offices, to allow as many people as possible the opportunity to attend in person, in addition to our livestream. Last time, we didn’t have an official livestream. This time we do! That link will be going up on our social media the morning of Ethereal.
Blockchain is still small enough of a space where the leading figures are within reach, particularly at events like Ethereal. How important is this to the growth of the industry?
The people who are leading the building of these technologies should continue to make their voices heard, and their participation has been key to making Ethereal successful. The other thing I’d say, though, and people were surprised by this at the initial Ethereal Summit in New York this May: We have a lot of diversity in terms of seniority. We had someone on a panel on the main stage who’d been an intern at the company, along with the CEO of Coinbase and Joe Lubin, who is the Co-Founder of Ethereum in addition to ConsenSys. It’s not just those leading voices who have a responsibility to continue engaging, it’s everyone. Sometimes you can get a much better talk from someone who hasn’t been drilled by ten PR teams and speaking coaches, someone who is on the ground doing the work. That’s something we care about a lot as part of our philosophy of inclusion.
What memories in particular stick out from the first Ethereal Summut back in May?
Brian Iselin, founder of Slave Free Trade, suddenly took off his pants on stage. He took off all of clothes, actually, and sorted them into piles to show which clothes had been made with slavery, and which clothes made without. It turned out that almost none of the clothes he was wearing were made without having any kind of slavery in their supply chain. We’ve been talking to Brian and his NGO about all of the different use cases for blockchain technology in supply chain management, making sure that we can guarantee the authenticity of materials and guarantee that high ethical standards have been upheld at every node in the supply chain. He made a really interesting point in a way that surprised me a lot, which was exciting.
The other great moment, which is going down in history, is Joe’s keynote. People were crying! It was emotional, the story of how he went through the journey of realizing that we need to create better systems for the sake of humanity. It was a personal side of Joe that a lot of folks hadn’t seen before. It was really inspiring. The ‘what’ became very clear over the course of the day, but the ‘why’ really came through in his address, the earnestness really came through. There’s a reason why these systems are being built, and it’s not to make a quick buck. Just the opposite, it’s to provide a platform for better human processes to be created.
What are you looking forward to at Ethereal SF?
I think it’s really cool that in addition to leaders in the blockchain technology space, our event is able to attract world-renowned futurists and serial entrepreneurs like Peter Diamandis. He’s going to be speaking about how blockchain is helping to enable a transition to a world of abundance. Another really interesting one is Dr. Ben Goertzel, who is the father of general artificial intelligence, and Sophia Hanson, who is actually a humanoid. She is not a human, she’s a robot with artificial intelligence. They’ll be giving a talk together on SingularityNET, which is bringing together AI and blockchain in some really interesting ways.
I think that the financial inclusion panel and workshop will be really cool. They offer an opportunity to meet Sheila Warren, who is the new Head of Blockchain at the World Economic Forum. She’s someone super cool who has joined the space, and the WEF is putting a lot of thought into developing blockchain tech.
Our Policy Team is doing a legal and regulatory workshop. Semi-ironically, they’re calling it Jeopardy, and structuring it as a mock game of Jeopardy. Their panelists are ex-regulators and lawyers, policy-makers who will be answering questions from Legal and Regulatory Jeopardy. It will also be really interesting to see how Joe follows up his keynote from the first Ethereal.
What’s one way that Ethereal differs from the traditional tropes of tech or finance conferences?
We’re gonna have a meditation station! It’s in an outdoor area with sound healing and movement exercises, dancers and acrobats. Some of the feedback we got from the last event was that it was so action packed that people wanted some space to breathe and feel some room. We’ll also have a number of decentralized art installations. Ethereal has been called “Davos meets Burning Man,” so we’re not opposed to some zaniness.
At the event, we’re going to announce the dates for the next big New York-based Ethereal Summit, which we’re scaling up pretty radically, while preserving our unique and quirky culture. We’ll also be announcing several other Ethereal events around the globe, which reflect mostly the places where ConsenSys is opening offices. We’re very excited to share that news.
For more information, check out EtherealSummit.com or follow @EtherealSummit on Twitter.
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed by the author above do not necessarily represent the views of Consensys AG. ConsenSys is a decentralized community with ConsenSys Media being a platform for members to freely express their diverse ideas and perspectives. To learn more about ConsenSys and Ethereum, please visit our website.
