Digitalia: Starting the Network State in Italy - Francesco Vincenti

Italiano or engl English Italian how many Italiano okay English okay okay I'm going to go in English I'm going to okay so we are in a church um this is the first time I'm doing a web three event in a church we're are also going to talk about church in a way later so it's on purpose today I I want to share with you um project that I've been uh researching um over this year so it's not a business it's not um service it's more a research in progress which I'm happy to share step by step which also has a name which is digitalia and um to give some background I think that many of us here are remote workers and uh digital Nomads right so this is definitely the era in which we are living uh other than like crypto people and web tree people um but there was one person which is called Balaji renasan which is a popular um web threee and not all investor which a couple of years ago created a book which is called the network state so basically he says in this interconnected digital era where we all live we are enable to create new companies online we are en able to create new currencies like Bitcoin but we can also to create new cities or uh what does it mean actually creating new cities we're going to find it over the way so based on this book and based on previous research um some experiments started to pop up all over the world I mentioned here one which is called zalu which was started by um vitalic buttery last year in Montenegro and there are many many others so basically zalu was a popup village where about 200 people I don't know how many we are today but let's say about the number of people we are here today instead of spending just one day into an event they spent um two months together co- living and co-working into a let's say a resort um and those people were not just crypto people so they were like Engineers they were philosophers politicians let's say people from different backgrounds and uh of course they were like the smartest people around vitalic at the time and he said okay let's put them together let's see what goes on because you know all of them are digital Nomas they travel the world they say they want to spend more time together they want to build deeper connections great so this year zalu didn't create a new event but actually created um some a quadratic funding on gitcoin where it was uh starting to promote more of these poab Villages and uh I got a grant from um this uh uh quadratic funding to actually create this pop-up Village in Italy or at least to make this research let's see how will they look like so I started to make a Meetup in January back in January we did the first Network State Italian node Meetup in which I called together all the community leaders in Italy so just to give some background we've been doing events for many years in Italy uh I've been kickstarting some of them with the other amazing group of people with Rome Milan so I just said hey let's let's spend some time together and see if we can actually imagine a network state in it how would they look like and um just Balaji also gives a definition of a network state which is a highly aligned online community so online community we are all on Discord and telegram with a capacity for Collective action which is the reason why I guess we're here today so we are collective acting towards something everybody is doing his different thing but also said we can potentially even crown found territory around the world so we can even like buy some lenss uh we can I mean I know that the step it's not that evident but I'm just saying that some of these people are starting to uh group together in different parts of the world right and they're maybe using even blockchain Technologies to start having some ownership over the place where they are I mean it would be nice if we could buy this church uh but maybe in another life so I started to think about hey how would it look like to instead of creating a new startup or company I would actually create a new institution and so I started this research all over Italy I've been traveling since uh January in main cities on Italy and I've been uhu looking at the uh I've been like capping which are the stakeholders so okay there r institutions for example institutions right now are creating like digital Nomads Visa passes like Thailand for example did of course the one in Italy is not that great as the one in Thailand I've been looking for Innovation hubs and districts so I know that the pictures are not very well very great but like the first one for example is the techn Poo T bino so I say hey how would how would a group of talents working and living together will look like so that's why I've been going to like un thir cities communities uh co- livings and co-working and they're actually different of them in Italy and of course I also been to monasteries um which I think there is a great opportunity for monasteries because there are about 800 monasteries in Italy and uh some of them are not very much used so how would they look like to switch one of them into a hub where uh actually crypto people not just crypto people could live and work together um I published the entire research um there I'm going to have a QR code later just in case you guys are interested to have a look I just came back from H Farm which is in uh which is close to Venice and I think it's one of the best uh probably the best startup Hub in Italy so for you that for maybe who doesn't know in H Farm they have like all the schools from elementary to University and then they actually accelerate your project and uh they've been also ping in web 3 there are um there are some projects that came out from there from the students in universities so I said okay why I'm mapping all these places because there might be an opportunity to create uh some hubs in Italy and I found out that Italy really has huge problems real problem I'm talking about real world problems one of them is aging I don't know if you guys know but we are the second oldest uh country in the world so after Japan we are the countries with the highest number of old people also we have uh brain drain so a lot of people actually and young people are coming to Italy to study for vacation but not for working so of course some are there are always exceptions but in general Italy is not the place where I say hey I'm going to make like a lot of money I'm going to go to work in Italy yeah so with these digital nomades maybe some of people are starting to think about this but there are not the infrastructure and that's another problem like if you go to Lisbon there are hubs and uh places that really host you at a good price it's easy to meet other people so there is a community living there apart from Milan we don't have a city in Italy that really allows us to live and work together especially if we work in this field and um the population it's another real real world problem in Italy which I found out so I mean we are now in a big city okay Naples Rome Florence I'm sure that some of them come from big cities but there is a an entire fascinating side of Italy which is actually my favorite side I would say which is all the rural areas or the natural areas so it's full of them all over the place and the more I keep traveling the more I keep finding them um which unfortunately are dying there was an article the other day on the journal it says like the Forgotten Italy so this part of this this small areas small towns in Italy we call them borgi uh which are kind of forgotten by the central public administration so which are the opportunities with this problem I started to think about it's um what if we create an infrastructure for digital nals to live and work in Italy and what if we actually create some permanent Innovation hubs in this beautiful villages in Italy which I would love to I mean I've been living abroad for many years and now I came back and say I mean I would love to work and live in a natural place not necessarily on the sea that will be like the dream but even like in the countryside but then you know you spend three days you spend one week you spend two months and then you are alone because maybe especially if you're not Italian and you don't speak Italian it's really hard to connect with the local people so what if we start bringing these talents all together in some selected Villages that we could work together and um we create some projects and solution with the collaboration of with the local impact what does it mean it means that um I open many conversation with like measures of different small cities okay which is hey like would you like to have some people coming here maybe you know maybe your website is not that great I know a guy from uh from Thailand that might come to live in this uh Village for a while and maybe you know you can pay him to do the website so of course we got to create some jobs in these uh places these pictures have a sense so the first one it's a place where I I was just last week there was three days of 30 people living together in that cast in that castle and uh it was a conference about like web three in travel and of course they have the problem that this place which was an ancient town it's now turned into a place for wedding but they don't know what to do apart from wedding and events in these places so this may be a good place the second one it's U it's the first Bitcoin city in Italy which uh a friend it's uh trying to build let's say it's regenerating a a small town in it's called Rocka pirozi you guys can have a look later uh but basically they have a construction company and they've been regenerating this place and they want to create a hub for uh let's say people that work in Bitcoin to come the third one is Lial Village is a great place in the Marque region um which is um already trying to with some Co living and co-working uh activities uh not just for web Tri but in general really matches the philosophy of web 3 and the fourth one it's a farm where I spent my August in Sicily um in which this Farm it's basically using blockchain to uh do crowdfunding and they using this money to plant uh avocados in Sicily because there is a huge opportunity for avocados actually in Sicily because I don't know if you guys know we import them from other places and cily has the right climate so this kind of feels to me real world solution this is what I'm interested to build into with crypto like how which are some real solutions for real world problems in Italy I even imagine that some of these villages in the future might even be run by the new modern governance system that coming from crypto like Dows but this is too far from now so why new cities why we don't need to build new cities in Italy I think right so let's think about Dubai so Dubai came as a crypto Hub in the middle of the desert we don't need to build a new city here in Italy we just need to re regenerate update the digital administration of some of these places and I believe that some digital Nomads like us might be the right people to do it if we want so now let's come back even more to reality how how this really turns into something so okay with the vision of the network State what can actually we can do it now we're going to start a series of Pilots uh taking inspiration from like zalu POA villages in Italy in some of these small towns where we're going to have like group of 20 30 people living together for a week and we're going to try to uh match these people with the local inhabitants and see what happens of course we're going to do a lot of research and the goal is to do more of these Kings pilot or even to scale them so from 20 people to 200 to 2,000 let's see what happened so from one from popup to permanent from one to many and uh from disconnected to interconnected what I what I mean here I mean that as I was saying some of these small villages and towns are um forgotten so they're really disconnected they don't even have internet or they don't even have um um the right possibilities that you might have in a big cities but maybe if they're interconnected between them if they share some resources knowledge software toolkits they might actually rework together so I leave you I just add did this slide this morning because I hope it can like even later start a debate or it's more a provocation for everybody who's working in network state but in general in crypto and I think that as of today and that these research is still ongoing of course uh there are two possible paths for a network state in Italy so one it's um as also balashi says it's a parallel system so these smart Villages become U administrated by for example a crypto entity or a DA or or other group of people okay that can regenerate them so this is like okay we're creating a network State this is working off from the main central government and it's begin take Taking Over some opportunities where these places don't have today or the other one which seems to be I don't know I don't know if it's the right one or not it's more an integration so with the mission of of a network State since history teaches us that we need a lot of time to actually make these things happen we can rather integrate with the uh actual government and state and we can just create a spin-off to administrate the Innovation value chain the digitalization and startups ecosystem which is not web three of course uh but it's um it's here today it has a real problem like startups digitalization Innovation we are really far behind in it respect to Europe and other places of course we have an amazing cultural heritage we have churches like this that other places don't have but it wouldn't be nice to innovate more on digital work so if you guys want to know more I just this is the research I've published I'm going to make a part two soon uh hopefully next month with the new towns and Villages have been and uh well that's it thank you for [Applause] listening thank you very very very much do we have any questions please um yes I can do the mic have so Francisco thank you so much what's was really interesting what you've been talking today something that personally I think almost impossible to do in Italy and to see that actually there's somebody willing to invest money to do a research someone that is willing to do a research things are actually happening it gives me a very very good feeling and um so actually um I would have many questions later on at 6:00 uh outside we're going to have a little live event and where I would like you to ask you some questions if you feel like joining otherwise I definitely going to invite you to this Twitter space we do once a week and uh I think it's very special topic what you've been talking about today and um yeah many questions just one question is you one is do you think it's possible in Italy with the the way of thinking the government has to achieve achieve something [Music] or no so um I don't know I mean like I I think it's worth trying and uh of course when I'm thinking about Network State like there are very few people thinking about this in this way but uh there are a lot of companies that are already moving to innovating the digital and startups ecosystem and also there are some companies that are working to innovate the the gotech ecosystem which is like Technologies for public administration this is not possible with a top- down approach like you cannot go today to the Prime Minister and say hey let's do this but I think this is more possible by creating uh Real Life Solutions metrics and data in small towns and small villages the interest is really high and there are being R some pilots and some things so I think it's not possible I think it's uh even necessary in a way so this is a way that I came up with and other people let's see if it's the right one or otherwise it's just going to be like a a research in progress to bring to something else but I hope it can this it can even open other other doors thank you do we have any other question anyone who would join the network State tomorrow oh come on come on well maybe maybe it's curious to see also from people why would you not join or what do you see the challenge in implementing this network States anyone courageous enough to speak up War well in Italy at the moment maybe anyone no yeah amazing session um I'm curious because we I wasn't at Montenegro was other uh Village but um is it the zoo Village Grants that you've achieved that you received zalo Village Foundation is that the grants because I'm curious as how we can collaborate with you to be honest like I know I'm going to speak to you after but how can we get involved in this uh on a consumer level now to support the project you mean like how someone can participate in these popup Villages well they they have a some of them are more open some of them are more closed but in general like there is a uh there are like T chats there is z City for example which is a the software where there there is list the list of these events going on and um on foraster you can find some or you can just ask to someone and uh they will get you into these uh projects there are ongoing many of them all over the world so basically all this year it's been populated with different projects and probab Villages so yeah we can talk about this later wonderful thank you very much please another round of applauses thank you very much okay