Crypto, conversations and conviviality.

So today was the London Cryptocurrency Show 2018 at the Novotel Hotel in Hammersmith.

Although I was in 2 minds whether to attend or not as cryptocurrency is somewhat platitudinous to my mind. However, as I freely told everyone, blockchain technology on the other hand is very interesting to me and seeing it used in new and interesting ways fires my imagination.

Yes, I kept a low profile and am highly camera shy which is why I had to half cover my face during @Allasyummyfood talk because they decided to take video of the audience which was a bit peculiar. Apologies for that, I must have looked quite silly.

That being said I did manage to catch a few choice conversations not least of all with Dylan((@anarchotech)) smart, passionate guy and a good moderator for the Main Hall talks. His talk about Steam Token intrigued me and I will have to read up on that a bit more.

I also chatted voraciously with @breadcentric who seems to know his stuff (especially bread) too. Did not have the heart to tell him my grandmother on my dad's side was a bread maker too during the war. Maybe he can attempt a Le pagnotte di Enna sometime?

I talked also Ilana (@techslut) ,a more inappropriate user handle I could not think of as she was lovely in every respect, as well as Diego (don't know his steemit name) from the Utopian.io team who I have to confess have never heard of until today.

Oh the shame!

Utopian have a really cool idea and being an ardent Free Software Freak myself I had the utmost respect for there efforts. Bring develops and projects on board while helping them build up a community and fill in missing gaps is genius. Far too long it has been a question of squaring the circle when it comes to Free/Open Source Software projects to be able to get the right feedback they need from users and for the users to be able to easily support the developers while also engaging into a higher level interaction needed for bug fixing and feature requests. I might well be recommending it to some developers I know. Let's hope I can explain and sell it as well as Ilana and Diego did to me.

Next to the Steem/it booth were the MiningFarmboys. They build custom racks for heavy use hashing systems and rent out such usage to clients. I had a nice chat with Artur and the logistics of cooling server racks. 15+ years of IT gives you plenty of insight into cooling issues within a server room trust me. Interestingly enough Artur too does not see crytocurrency as a be all and end all of life for the block chain and rather enthusiastically told me about other systems they want to use for weather prediction as well. Worth checking out there site above I say.

I also got talking to some random guys who came up to me while I was in the food area while I had my laptop out (I was prone to doing some work in between talks and stuff) This was curious but interesting nonetheless. I didn't get their names and they never asked mine so...

The topics mostly floated around the alternative use of blockchain for things like medical records, journalism and even politicians.

These are the most interesting aspects of decentralised databases with cryptographically signed transactions as I summarised it. The reason it can be such a transformative technology is because of the inherent auditing and distributed nature. As I said because transactions can be signed and encrypted you can personalise blocks so only the people who access to the keys can use them. In medical context that mean you can allow temporary access to that data to your doctor or the hospital but to NO ONE ELSE. This is revolutionary if you think about it because it brings back control of YOUR OWN DATA back under your control.

We have all heard about the Facebook furor which while entertaining is rather missing the point. This is neither a surprise or even unexpected , but the real story is how ALL the big companies are doing this. Google, Microsoft, Amazon even your ISP is prolly caching and selling your data where they can.

I could really go on a very very long diatribe about the value of keeping hold of your own data which is why some of you have noticed I don't have many pictures of the event. I did take a few but I will not publish any photos without permission first. I expect likewise. If you want to know more on the subject, contact me and I will happily fill you in on my reasoning.

That being said I was very happy to talk to Ivar (@ivargereiko) and learn a bit about his background and how he got into fitness. Made me smile to think of a young Ivar feeling the need to better himself just because he felt the weakest our of his peers. It reminded me a little of my family from my fathers side who were all , as he describes it, 'powerful'. Of hearty Sicilian farming stock the tales you heard about them sounded like something out of a movie like Hercules.

We talked all about health and fitness and I am really glad and encourage by his enthusiasm and expertise. His fitness blogs are great too and I heartily recommend them if not for inspiration then for good solid advice. Pretty sure if I stick with his guidance I will end up with the body I always dreamed of.

Yeah, Tarzan himself. I don't like overdeveloped pecs or anything I was born fish and I am happy to have a swimmers body.

The only person I really did not get to talk at length with was @AllasYummyfood. This could not be helped given she was constantly being surrounded by photographers, well wishers and people interested in Steem/it and cooking in general. Sadly after I just spun up a test setup of friendup in a docker container, that was another talk that I overheard, and went back to the booth she and Ivar had both gone.

Hey ho.. no matter there will be other occasions I am sure. At least she knows I exist and am not a figment or her imagination ;)

All in all it was an interesting event and I met some delightful people so I am glad I went, and although the Cryptocurrency stuff still bores me a little bit, it was encouraging to see other people starting to use the blockchain in new and interesting ways, not least of all Steem itself. I am proud and glad to be part of the platform and although I am not the world's greatest blogger, I feel I ramble as I wish and feel comfortable about doing it.

Thanks for reading :)