Friday night approximately 300+ people gathered in the city of Chicago to listen, learn and discuss blockchain technologies. It was an incredible event with professionals, academics, and community leaders from all over greater Chicagoland.
Truly amazing to think that on a weekend evening in a world-class city with all the incredible ways to spend time that so many folks would gather and invest their time into exchanging ideas about distributed ledgers.
The conference event was produced by @DisruptionJoe and Lexy Podromos in conjunction with the Chicago Blockchain project. Thematically, speakers were tasked with telling the audience about their “eureka” moment in pursuing blockchain solutions.
Taylor Gerring went onstage first and presented on his early exposure to blockchain technology in Chicago. He highlighted client needs for solutions to problems utilizing blockchains in earlier days when the concepts were still relatively unknown to most people.
BlockchainWTF is a brand channel looking to advance the knowledge base of those being drawn into the cryptocurrency world. Jeremy Cogan is the hosting personality you will see on screen while watching their videos. At the event he spoke about how he was introduced to these technologies and how it inspired him to develop content for the community
My personal favorite of the night was 
The world needs a huge supply of forgiveness and Danny Johnson of Pinkcoin has divised a compassion engine to aid in allocating it. This token allows people to donate into causes they are passionate about, such as raising relief funds for those affected by Hurricane Irma.
Many communities are underserved by the macroeconomic forces at work in the world but they deserve a a mechanism to to incentivize and promote citizens toward success.
Hannah Rosenberg lead a panel including Hong Wan of Purdue, Heather Sullivan of Marquette, and Jochen Renz of New Mobility Consulting.This group closed out the evening in a lively discussion about how they came to understand tokenization and the value it has had in their professional life. Really incredible stories about organic problem solving and the pursuit of understanding.
Unfortunately, this is the last photo I took. The networking going on at the event was incredibly lively and I was attempting to maximize my exposure to both the speakers' presentations and the folks hanging out to connect in the hallway outside the conference room.
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Disclaimer: All photos are mine and may not be used without consent, credit, and compensation. Screenshots are just captures and I claim no ownership of imagery or statements visible in them unless otherwise stated.
