I had an amazing time working with the SF city team today getting to help host the IBM BlockChain Developer Conference. One of the perks of hosting the conference was that I was able to meet a lot of the really cool speakers.
Of the many amazing people I met today I really want to highlight 2 of the really really really amazing speakers I met.
The first was Sandy Khaund. Sandy was founder and CEO of Upgraded which really took the Block Chain to heart and turned traditional event tickets into secure digital assets through smart contracts. What really impressed me about Sandy wasn’t just how technologically complex his startup was, but how he found an actual use case where there was an extremely compelling business case for the technology. This was made clear when TicketMaster ended up acquiring his startup and bringing him in as their VP of Block Chain Products.
The next really amazing person I met was Porter Stowell, the head of Block Chain strategy here at IBM. Porter had flown across the country to attend the conference and it was amazing hearing him tell me about some of the really amazing projects in the space. One thing that is amazing about IBM being a huge company is the fact that they have a lot of resources they can put toward pilots. Whether that be in shipping or healthcare, IBM is working with a lot of partners who want to explore Block Chain, and it was great to meet the person leading the charge.