Impact IRL – Simona Pop

hi everyone it's me again I knew having to see so one of the reasons I think for a lot of you I'm potentially wondering why I seem to be a little bit everywhere this year I am the steward for the impact track and also overseeing the eath Denver Scholars Program so because impact is very important and building things that are impactful is very important so everything that I've kind of done in the work that I've done with bounties Network now with the guys that OSC Ihnen and with pepero has been about being impactful and about having an effect on whatever situation is happening right now that isn't necessarily serving people or isn't serving them enough so for me impact in real life is all about how do we affect change and how do we empower people which i think we can all agree that that is a very very good purpose to have when you're talking about a new technology so for a lot of people when they think about impact they think social impact things happening and lands far far away and it has to do with I don't know Africa it has to do with the dire state of the environment and so on but actually if you look at the definition of impact it is have a strong effect on someone or something this can be anywhere at any time in any location anybody who right now isn't being served by the current systems by the current socio-economical frameworks could benefit from a change from an alternative and maybe we are here to build those alternatives and one of the main things that I've always looked at has been how do we go out and pilot test very very quickly be able to iterate reiterate learn very very quickly so that we actually produce the value that we keep talking about let's you the a little bit of the walking whilst we also do the talking some SATs for you this is something that you see and and you know a lot of people are aware of these it's pretty dire and for a lot of the again for a lot of these stats you look and think these are lands far far away for where we are certainly here it's not necessarily something that that we worry about because the current systems pretty much serve the vast majority of us here certainly North America certainly Western Europe but let's look at some very interesting American good old American stats this is the situation right now and this kind of fluctuates because different years different reports different surveys but the key thing here isn't just look at the unbanked is to look at the underbanked what underbanked means is that you are not being served by whatever system is in place right now there's there for you to use but it may not be in your best interest or may not actually deliver the value that you need and so for a lot of households for a lot of people for a lot of areas even in the United States if you look for instance at New York there are certain it areas in New York where there are no banks no bank branches yes I might have an account but there is no way for me to actively look benefit from that current system and this is what we are looking at in terms of how could this be improved how can we do better how can we enable opportunity choice access for everyone and I think and I hope you all agree with me that the mechanisms that we could build on a cerium with crypto can be those solutions nobody's saying that it's the only solution but let's least try and see what happens and so this whole thing of opportunity and choice is very much something that I believe blockchain and etherium in particular is all about and this can apply to anybody I'm not even let's not even talk about the unbanked and the underbanked let's talk about people maybe stuck in a job that they hate because they cannot see an alternative because they cannot tap into something else they cannot try something else and when you're talking about that you are essentially talking about again broadening access to information education maybe I want to re-educate myself but I can because I'm stuck in a circle of debt how about we introduce some earn as you learn models for education where somebody could earn as they're learning and create a new alternative income source for themselves mobilizing people within the communities I'm actually very excited to see governor policies talk after I wrap up and they set up the stage because actually involving communities and individuals include the running of a certain community or a certain local authority is potentially a solution reward them for the 10 day they put in reward citizens for their involvement their active involvement in the running of a community of a local authority right we are at this point we are in complete apathy because we don't have the mechanisms to actively participate or the means to get rewarded for our active participation we are only rewarded for a very small percentage or a very limited skill set that we you know use in our nine-to-five not necessarily here but the vast majority we are not one-dimensional we are 360 degree humans with all sorts of talents and abilities that if we find the mechanisms to actually you know tap into those and reward to those that participation it could be that opportunity interest that we are looking at and create alternatives again that's pretty much what what I mean by all of these so making an impact and for anybody hacking on the impact track again you can do it through the folios you have the open track and the impact track I would keep these things in mind and again drawing from what the OSC team mentioned earlier it is very much about what is the problem is there a solution is there a problem specific to me or my community that would benefit from a solution a blockchain solution and these are some of the things that I've already tried and tested and piloted and learned from so transparent funding you can crowdsource money from people all over the world in a much easier way then right now I give the example earlier and I'll mention it in a second the fact that you can contribute funds without needing a bank account without paying international banking transfer fees without potentially sending it to a country that is or is not part of the Swift Network because again that is a network that is actually very small it turns out new means of income this is very important there are a lot of jobs that are revolving there are a lot of jobs that are disappearing there are a lot of jobs that should potentially evolve creating these opportunities to earn a living or an income from several sources from diverse sources is very important let's think about that when we have and lasting change creating frameworks to again involve and engage citizens this is very important right now we have upper echelons making decisions nothing everybody else let's maybe try to fill that nothing with some valuable things an example illustrating this because I said I've done all of those three things this thing and I'm sure a lot of you know of it for anybody who doesn't this was a project that we ran in the Philippines where we incentivize people with ease to clean up a beach in Manila Bay the cool things about this is we crowdsource the funds for the bounty from regular people from other projects in the ecosystem I even had somebody message me on LinkedIn saying hey I just got paid for a technical interview can I donate it all just contributed to the bounty yes yes you can and that's it being able to give people the tools to again access new means of resource this is again what we did we all boarded the group of fishermen that participated in this cleanup on two web three wallets it was painful as hell it was horrific but we did it and what happened a certain percentage of those people continue to fulfill other bounties do other things to receive an income and it wasn't necessarily something that just focused on their fisherman's skill set right they got involved in some art bounties they did they participated in some UX bounties again looking at the value that each of us produce not just in a very very narrow window these are some of the the things that we did again we needed to make sure that they had an off ramp from eath to Filipino peso which we did we partner with Coinstar pH I'm just mentioning this because I don't want you to think that we just gave the magic internet money and then left we did it Rhian Janee hring the flow of money again you think about money flowing to certain areas in need you always think charities how much do they take a cut of how much money does actually does it actually end up on the ground being able to rein reengineering and re-engineer it through a smart contract layer could potentially provide the transparency in the direct flows that we completely lack right now and creating new opportunities again these are the environmental stats that we got from this pile in the Philippines this cleanup literally took two and a half hours per day for two days and we have 224 people we collected 3.3 tons of trash but the Philippines do have a very big it is so small in the great scheme of things but what if we have these things happening at all times everywhere right it is possible this is the thing I didn't set up an office there I don't have staff that I pay there for two days give people the tools and then they will use them and actually maybe at some point maybe even expand their use Brandon and Krypto I want to touch on this because this is something that I mentioned in the UX workshop that we did just an hour ago but this was an important piece in terms of again that unbanked situation where Brandon was doing bounties to earn a living I posted a video on Peppo can see had messaged me saying his laptop had died and so posted him video on pepper telling you know asking people hey is there anybody in Phoenix Arizona who might have a secondhand laptop turns out there wasn't but what happened was 48 hours later I have 250 dollars worth of pepper coins that I then transferred into an Amazon vouchers sent him the voucher he got a laptop basic but so got it delivered to an Amazon pick a point and the local library is taking care of it at night for him so that it doesn't get stolen or damaged this is what I mean about impact IRL think about the people and how these solutions can actually get people into that opportunity status into that access status biddle the change you want to see in the world I think this is very important and I think we lose sight of that sometimes because everything is super fun when we go to hackathons we see friends and they're all wonderful and I love them dearly but let's also maybe think hey if we are not going to just be a little flash in the pan that and in some corner of the internet maybe we need to give people these real-life examples these actual real life applications that genuinely improve people's lives improve chances of opportunity chances of diversifying the resources that we access and that is about it so thank you very much Hakan in the impact trap [Music] you [Music]