Our readers are getting more exposure to (and interest in) topics like Web3 & NFTs these days. Was there a tipping point that led you & your team to launch this new event in Tallinn?
The founders of our team have been building various businesses from the early 90’s and 00’s, first without much technology, then with more technological innovation. Our latest venture that brought us together is dabbling in the web3 space, even utilising NFT technology for supply chain innovation. However, as we started building our new company and its community, we understood that the market didn’t yet understand the basics of web3 and NFTs. For the most part, most people still consider web3 to be a playground for only financial services and think NFTs are only about art and games – both of which are far from the truth. Instead, web3 is about innovation in ownership and collaborative creation models, mixed with the possibility of introducing traceability, tracking and trust into everything we do. And based on that, we decided to launch an event that would showcase to people what this world is all about, without any hype – only talking about technology use cases and philosophical ideas about the future and regulation. And, of course, we’re using this event as an opportunity to bring people together, face-to-face, first time in years.
Even within the boundaries of a 1-day event, there’s still a wide range of content on the agenda – including policy, art, gaming, the future of work, investment & even ecological impacts! Which speaker(s) are you most looking forward to hearing from?
We’re super excited about all the speakers joining the event, and we hand-picked all of them based on how differently they approach the web3 and NFT space. However, if we had to bring someone out, it must be William Entriken – the lead author for the ERC-721 standard, the NFT standard. We’re bringing the father of NFTs to Estonia – live, in-person. He will give us a keynote on the future of NFTs, lead the panel on regulation and even run a workshop on creating smart contracts and dApps – and this is only one of the coolest aspects of this event!
Other than the talks on stage, what kind of workshops are you the most excited about?
We’ve tried to make the workshops distinctly varied to have something for every type of attendee, from NFT novices to experienced professionals. There’s a workshop for developers, one about the basics of staking tokens and even one about buying high-value art via NFTs. Yet, we’re very much looking forward to a workshop called, how not to go to jail by the lawyers from Lextal – this sounds promising, only based on its title! The deep-dive discussions will also be a must-attend, e.g. the one with the e-residency team discussing how Estonia could bring its national identity onto NFTs and make it accessible via the crypto wallets.
Last but not least, are you planning any special networking opportunities to maximize connections between attendees?
Yes! Networking is the key for any event, so we’re hosting a pre-event side event, a pre-event VIP dinner, an afterparty (and the after-afterparty) and some additional side events. And there’s also networking at the event via the Worksup app that lets people connect and meet anywhere at the event or the particular meeting area.