Conference on the Future of Blockchain in the Public Sector
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During the conference, Marloes Pomp did the kick-off on behalf of the Dutch Blockchain Coalition. She showed us the different uses for blockchain in the public domain, the different pilots that have been organised in the Netherlands, but also in the European Union and worldwide. Her presentation is here.
Next up was Dave Murray-Rust, who took us on a journey into the world of location based smart contracts, a blockchain coffee machine (probably the first of its kind) and art applications that inspire and help us think about blockchain and its possible applications. The presentation can be found here.
In the afternoon, August Botsford, technical director at Chromaway, showed us more recent technical developments surrounding blockchain. At Chromaway, the team coined the term relational blockchain. This is based on the idea that blockchain is a distributed database, which means we can learn a lot from already developed relational database management. When we combine blockchain and relational models, you get a usable blockchain that suffers less from ‘traditional’ blockchain models. Here is the presentation.
Finally, David Suomalainen took the floor. David is a civil servant at the Ministry of Infrastructure and adviser at Division for Digital Government. He told us more about the activities of the Swedish government concerning blockchain and shared his questions and observations. For example, how do you connect the physical world to data and how do you manage your quality of data? And do you really need a blockchain for this problem? How do you deal with privacy issues? In short, he asked the tough questions everyone working with blockchainrelated solutions should ask. Want to read them for yourself? Here they are.
To wrap it up, Otto Thors facilitated a discussion with the speakers. He wanted to know: if blockchain is the solution, what is the problem? The conference was the first external event organised collectively by the BLING partners. We will organise more of these events in the future. Watch the website or sign up for our newsletter to stay updated!