ETHDenver 2021 Opening Ceremonies: State of Colorado and ColoradoJam

okay well thanks a lot wilson thank you uh john and ken for teeing up what's already been pretty crazy opening um we're just getting started and still there's been so much going on already on discord and gamer um jive and streamyard and twitch and throughout the community uh it's good craziness and i'm glad to be a part of it my name is russell castanera i'm the director of digital transformation for the state of colorado office of information and technology and i want all of you to understand why the state of government is so deeply involved in denver and the blockchain community at large um if you look back 20 years or so about how people were living their lives how we were living our lives it was a lot different than it is now so we read books not phones or tablets we watched movies in theaters there were only four star trek franchises debit cards were innovative technology paypal was a part of ebay amazon wasn't a technology company and i lived in hawaii aloha oh well well government and democracy however were not all that different the government cannot afford and that is to say we cannot afford to stay in the technology dark ages uh i see the writing on the wall and you all do too right times are changing and if we want colorado we want state government to continue to be a place live work play create we need to change drastically our adherence to old paradigms and methods cost us money opportunity well-being happiness and profit we know that digital statehood is coming the problem is that we don't know what digital citizenry looks like in practice right colorado is embarking on an experiment to transform state government into what it needs to be to support digital citizens constituents and residents and to make them successful you know if you look back the internet was largely a crowdsourced collaborative series of projects that progressively led to more and more possibilities tim berners-lee didn't know all the cool things that would result from his inventing the world wide web but he knew people would follow up and do amazing things with it it's uh it's crazy you know we're asking group of like six or seven thousand people who haven't been at all social in the last year or so to help us conceive of the future of statehood what are the building building blocks that we need to help transform government and that not just government but of course business leisure life and the pursuit of happiness bonus after this is over there's even the colorado jam incubator to help you once you've piqued our interest in your projects so let's let's just review really quickly two years ago governor police announced that colorado wasn't watching for the win 16 months ago he declared colorado digital id was a legal proof of identity one year ago he read b is for buffalo going to eat denver 2020 with vitalik six months ago he hired the external counsel for the ethereum foundation to be the commissioner of securities if you don't think that blockchain technology is a fundamental part of where we see the state going you're just not looking at the science and i have to admit i'm biased i came from the crypto world i recognize that we really couldn't move forward without digital digital identity at anything but a sluggish pace and the state has taken the first steps forward we're already showing the rest of the world what we can do with digital identity i mean if you get pulled over by a state trooper or broomfield pd in colorado they can accept your colorado digital id right now without any contact completely electronically can share your id your right your your insurance card and your vehicle registration no contact whatsoever so what we want is we want your engagement on our bounties that we have as part of our you know our colorado jam all those bounties that we have i think we have 14 of them and we also want you to help us with our greenfield pitches and watch that to help us shape where we're going with this help us paint a quick sketch of what digital statehoods technology will look like because honestly talking is boring right if we show everyone a glimmer of what we can do with blockchain and web 3 we will succeed so i urge you to focus on stuff and not fluff and if you need i give you permission to be like hedy lamarr or jaggedy chandra bose or tim berners-lee or madame curie or mark andreessen or linus torvallis let's all go out there and discover the frontier of government and our future so thank you all welcome to east denver and uh help us uh rock the the rock the world with colorado jam thanks