Blockchain for Business hosted by Invest Ottawa
At MLG, understanding the core components of blockchain is essential to what we do. Through our work, we want to enable others to understand the potential of blockchain technology and what the future may hold if they choose to pursue it for their business.
To do that, we hosted a free workshop in conjunction with Invest Ottawa and prototypeD earlier this year. The full-day workshop was held on a snowy November day at Invest Ottawa’s head office.
We were lucky enough to host attendees from a diverse range of sectors, including government, startups, not-for-profits, industry and education. Having a diverse range of attendees with decision-making power provided us a unique opportunity to help them learn about blockchain so that they could make better decisions for their companies.
Over the course of the day, attendees were given an overview of blockchain technology and the basics on how it works. Our introductory workshop then broke down the basics and history of the decentralized system, its benefits, how blockchain works and regulations surrounding it.
A highlight from the session was Dave McKay’s interactive ‘human blockchain’ exercise. Dave McKay, Head of Global Services, knows very well that blockchain can be an intangible concept to grasp for some, so he find it’s best explained through movement. By relating the concept through a literal human chain, attendees grasped the idea quickly and with a touch of humour.
Once we established the basics, we moved on to discussing mining, ICOs and STOs, taxation, networks, wallets and notaries. After our second half of more advanced learning, it was time for the final exercise: use cases, in which many attendees were rightfully most engaged.
In the afternoon our group of 17 broke into smaller teams for their final project of the day. Within their smaller groups, they talked through use case examples of blockchain that they could pull from their own working experiences. They then shared their discussions with the larger group at the end of the workshop.
It was fascinating to see their business prowess and creativity combining with their new knowledge of blockchain to ideate around potential uses and implementations they could take with them after the workshop ended.
Our goal with these workshops is to empower others in the field to feel like they are up to date on the latest blockchain technology and feel comfortable implementing it into their own work.
With that in mind, watching attendees going from almost no knowledge of the decentralized network at the beginning of the day to brainstorming ideas around implementation at the end really gave us a sense of accomplishment.
From the feedback we received, participants felt that they really connected with the content of the workshop throughout the day, and finally felt confident about their knowledge of blockchain. After a day of learning, networking and brainstorming around blockchain, the group had gained so much.
Thank you to everyone who joined us at the workshop. It was a successful workshop and we are overwhelmed by the positive responses we received from attendees. Thank you to those who attended, and we hope you can join us at the next one!
