Blockstart and Beyond conference, Heerlen
Since the main topic of this conference (Blockchain) is the same as Bling’s, there was a strong desire to cooperate between the two Interreg projects and exchange ideas and experiences. Therefore it was decided to send a few of our most successful projects to Heerlen.
Adri Wischmann from BlockchainLab Drenthe was there to represent Bling and share our stories. The use case developed by the Province of Drenthe: Self Sovereign Attendancy-application was used at the Blockstart conference to register the attendees and the EnergieKnip from the municipality of Emmen was featured in a 15 minute presentation.
The audience was very impressed since most of the projects within Blockstart were facing a lot of difficulties in order to get to the stage of a Proof-of-Concept (let alone the implementation phase). After lunch it was time for break-out sessions and Adri gave an interactive session about lessons learned (accompanied by Pieter Bonnema from the municipality of Heerlen) to the attendees.
In the afternoon there was time reserved for showcasing the blockchain applications in a market setup and BlockchainLab Drenthe demonstrated: Energieknip, SSA, VitalityKnip and the Parkstad EnergieKnip (which is a version of the EnergieKnip to distribute €5.000.000 to 20.000 families as relief money for high energy prices) deployed exactly in the region where the conference was organised (Heerlen, Kerkrade, Brunsum, Beekdaelen, Landgraaf, Simpelveld).
