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The very next morning after hosting the first steem metup in Luxembourg with @alexvan (from @adsactly), @roxane (#fr and @utopian) and @hightouch (from @fundition) I headed to Brusseles for a packed day.

In the morning I joined the last workshop of a series of events organised by the European Commission's "Joint Research Centre" (JRC) in collaboration with Directorate General (DG) GROW.

Yes, I've added links because I think there might be some people, maybe not now but later, people who might want to understand better the complex institutional arrangements which have been devised to allow 27 countries, that have spent centuries quarelling and waging wars against each other, to come together and set out to build stuff rather than destroy each other.

Anyway, back to the workshop who was slated to last the full day in the flagship building of the Commission, the "Berlaymont"

_{[Yes, that reads "Good bye roaming fees", as a reminder ...](ec.europa.eu)}

This was the last workshop of a project called "#Blockchain4EU: Blockchain for Industrial Transformations" which had started in March 2017 as a "forward looking exploration of existing, emerging and potential applications based on Blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies for industrial / non-financial sectors."

The full site of the project can be found here: blogs.ec.europa.eu/eupolicylab/portfolios/blockchain4eu

I only had time (for reasons that will become clear in my next post) to sit through 2 "Stakeholders Dialogues"

Digitalisation and the Uptake of New Technologies

On the panel, Alistair Nolan from the OECD, Christ'l Joris from "ETAP / Agoria" (which I suppose is some kind of employers organization) and Laurent Zibell from industriAll, a pan-European federation of trade unions

I cannot report much from the discussions of this panel as I felt they were too high-level and didn't touch on anything to do specifically with blockchain. Predictably enough, the trade union representative was clamoring for more power for the trade unions but aside from that ...

Blockchain challenges and opportunities in the Near Future

This second "stakeholder dialogue" as much more interesting. It brought together Catherine Mulligan from Imperial College London, Burkhard Blechschmidt from Cognizant and Alexandra Moraru from Everledger (yes, a fellow Romanian). The recording here contains the intervention of Burkhard Blechschmidt. He justly observed that blockchain technology challenges the nature of the firm because the firm is by definition a domain of trust and blockchain extends that domain.

By design, as Milton Freedman put it, "the business of business is business". Competitive advantage is built inside "moats". Blockchain goes by nature against that and demands courage to review the business model. Burkhard enjoined firms to look at blockchain from a strategic perspective and for once not put the business case at the front.

From about 05:15 Alexandra Moraru adds a more technical angle by talking about the needs in terms of data standardisation

Later on, Catherine Mulligan disagrees with Burkhard by advising firms to not start anything blockchain related unless there is a clear business case (which I'm sure is bad advice but well ...)

This is my first attempt to post to DSound so things might not work out as well as i wish

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► Listen on DSound

► Listen from source (IPFS)

Other posts on blockchain technology that you might enjoy:

• Blockchain revolution: the CIOs' dilemma
• Le printemps de la blockchain - (fr)
• Blockchain and the End of the Western Civilization
• Toward a pan-EU blockchain infrastructure
• Sovereign identity on blockchain
• Blockchain revolution: Money and Credit
• La Blockchain et la Fission Nucléaire - with English abstract
• Blockchain Global Expo 2018 @ London Olympia
• Blockchain Global Expo 2018 - day 2
• The Holy Blockchain

Other posts on the impact cryptocurrencies are likely to have on our societies:

• The future of society
• The Church of Bitcoin
• Hack Your Life in 3 Easy Steps!
• Small worlds
• Steemit and the Fractal Society
• The Press needs to be Freed from the Tyranny of Money
• Steem $10Bln!
• A New Hope
• Immigrate to Romania!
  

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1. Help Yourself! (steemit for dummies) (in short)
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