The Blockhain&Society Policy Research Lab introduced itself to business leaders and decision makers in no less than three high profile events last week: the Flying Money Conference, the Barlaeus dinner, and at the Advisory Board meeting of the Faculty of Economics and Business.
First we participated at a panel of the Flying Money conference, co-organized by MoneyLab, and the City of Amsterdam.
Balazs was discussing the challenges of (blockchain based) governance of planetary scale resources with critical theorist Geert Lovink, Eduard de Jong, a sotware architect with a long history in e-payment systems, and Caroline Nevejan, the chief scientist of Amsterdam. Listen to the panel here (thanks Inte Gloerich!):
The day after, together with the Innovation Exchange Amsterdam, we hosted this years first Barlaeus dinner, the topic of which was “Trust in the data on blockchains“. The dinner, named after Caspar Barlaeus (1584 – 1648), the Dutch mathematician, historian, poet, humanist, theologian connects a selected group of leading industry/companies, local/national government, policymakers, research funding organisations with top UvA researchers to network, share insights, and lay the groundwork for future excellence. The event was opened by the Rector Magnificus of UvA, prof. dr. ir. K.I.J. Karen Maex, and Mirjam Leloux, Director IXA, the valorization arm of Uva-HvA. Balazs gave a keynote on the most pressing challenges, which then in turn were discussed around four tables, using four different languages: that of the market, of government, of the law, and of critical theory. The freshly joined Lab members: Valeria Ferrari, Alexandra Giannopoulou, and Joao Pedro Quintais were introduced, present, and involved.
And finally, on the 28th of May, Balazs was speaking at the Advisory Board meeting of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Amsterdam. Speaking after Heleen Kersten, Lawyer-Partner at Stibbe, Han van Dissel, the Dean of the Faculty, and Marc Salomon, the Dean of the Amsterdam Business School to industry leaders in the Board, Balazs was offering a realistic and cautious outlook on the industry applicability of blockchain technologies.