Raine Revere: Culture | ETHDenver

up next we have rain Rivera from Maidan hello my name is rain Revere I'm the co-founder of Maidan and I'm going to talk a little bit about what this event can be and beyond this event what this community can be I'm the co-founder of Maidan on the former lead architect of shapeshift prism so I'm a cryptocurrency engineer I'm also a therapist so there's some different streams of wisdom that I look to every day and I know all of us have many streams of wisdom that we look to I'm gonna speak to a couple that are really meaningful for me so I've programmed for 15 or so years and I love it it's a blast I took on programming as a career because of how much fun it was to solve problems to be able to work in this space and use my mind and one thing that I didn't pay a lot of attention to over all of those years when I was learning to program was my body and I'll show you something I have this device called a spire I wear it right here on my belt loop and it's one of these devices that have been coming out to provide some feedback about what our body is doing from moment to moment and this one's very simple what a spire does is it tells you when you breathe in and it tells you when you breathe out and it tells you if you're breathing a little faster than usual or it'll tell you if you're breathing slower than usual and I was coding last weekend and my spire was going off it vibrates and I don't breathe fully and I'm taking shorter breaths and every time I would get stuck on a problem my spire would go off I wasn't breathing and I thought that was so fascinating that I have this direct feedback something that I'm was vaguely aware of what happened to my body when I lost track of it and here was this device confirming that yes actually I am doing something outside of the present moment and programming can be a beautiful experience where you're in the moment and in the flow and I think we all many of us know that flow experience whether it's with programming or with another activity and that flow is enhanced when we're aware of our physical experience and so I have a challenge for all of you this weekend and it's different than the challenges that have been presented I also want you to create beautiful api's and I also want you to create applications or libraries that advance our ecosystem but in addition to that I want you to pay attention to your body this weekend and notice what it's like to be engaged in your packing or engaged in a conversation with someone on your team and take breaks if you're doing work for a really long time take a break and see how that affects your work because what we're trying to create here what many of us are trying to create is way bigger than just the technology or just a new means of transacting that's powerful but what is even more powerful is if we can come together in a way where we feel the experience of being with each other and that starts with being in our bodies so there's another thing that I'm really excited about and that makes this community worthwhile for me to part be a part of and that's the people in it so the second idea that I want to share with you it's in addition to paying attention to your body and the physical act of being here at this hackathon I mean look at all of these faces here look at all these people that showed up you can do a lot of this stuff in your bedroom I don't know if you realize that you didn't have to come all the way out here why did you come out here why are you all here is there something that you wanted to be a part of is there an energy by being in person here do you notice when your mind is present and attuned when you're in the flow or do you notice when you're distracted or tired I think all of those things contribute to having a really powerful experience no matter what you're doing but the second thing I'm really excited about as I said is the people here and so I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who is not a typical tech person who decided to show up today I'm a trans woman and it's a great joy to be a respected member of this community it also has its own challenges and so whether you call yourself someone who's underrepresented or marginalized or whether that's not your identity but maybe friends or people you know I'd like you to keep in mind that it's not the same for everyone to show up here today and it's not the same for everyone to keep coming back if they're coming back into a room that doesn't acknowledge who they are or what matters to them so I just want to give a special thanks to the women who are here tonight special thanks to trans people queer people people of color this is who we are thank you and no privacy token is going to take away our embodied identity so we should learn to not just celebrate that but acknowledge it and acknowledge it in the day to day and the moment to moment exchanges in this hackathon and this hackathon has a chance of being something really different so experiment with presence in your body acknowledge differences and appreciate people that might have additional challenges coming here and build something beautiful and build something that changes the world and build something that makes the economy more accessible and makes technology more accessible to people who haven't traditionally been included so if you're interested in the culture of etherium and blockchain and you care about how this space develops in a holistic and integral way I invite you to check out Maidan global sign up for our mailing list I've been shifting my attention towards this key issue of culture and the kind of world that we're creating technology is a part of that and who we are and how we show up is another part of that thank you so much and have a great weekend [Applause]