On the evening of Friday 24 May, the blockchain and crypto-curious came together at Waikato Innovation Park, Hamilton, for a Blockchain Meetup as part of Techweek19.
A Blockchain event was also held as part of the Techweek programme last year, marking the beginning of Hamilt(r)on’s active participation in the wonderful world of DLT – with presentations on bleeding-edge topics such as decentralised identities and crypto-tax.
CultivateIT, a technology company connecting the Waikato technology sector and wider stakeholders, supported this year’s event and rewarded those in attendance with pizzas and cold drinks in return for sacrificing their Friday night. But of course, most of them were keen to swap a night of Netflix for the latest and greatest in local and international blockchain tech, emceed by Luke McGregor, coordinator of the Hamilton /dev/talk Meetup.
Alexis Chun, explaining, by means of videoconference from Singapore, how Legalese in Singapore designs ‘software that eats law’ and being a blockchain-agnostic company exploring several DLT use cases.
Pete van Velden represented both Blockstack and Hyperledger New Zealand and knew how to point out the importance of decentralization in the looming (US-China) tech war and the potential of DLT in businesses cases that would ultimately affect how we work in the Waikato
HealthTech Futurist, Tom Varghese, rounded up the evening with a great speech on the effects of blockchain on our medical data and what this means for how we may experience healthcare services in the future.
An upcoming Hackathon is now being planned in which local JavaScript developers will start to build ‘dapps’ on two blockchain environments for the very first time. All events in our decentralized community will be first announced in the following Meetup groups: Hamiltron and Hyperledger New Zealand.
