First Internet of Agreements Conference

I've just finished four amazing days at the Internet of Agreements unconference, hackathon and conference in London.

Simon from our hosts, Monzo explaining money
The Internet of Agreements relates to smart contracts, which are neither smart nor contracts, but which offer immense opportunities for facilitating global trade and making it more efficient and cost effective. Smart contracts are pieces of computer code which run on blockchains and can therefore move value around according to logic and rules embodied in their code.

Meng Wong compares the toolsets of software and the legal industry
But real world assets are not on blockchains, so if we're planning to use smart contracts to help us exchange value for assets in the real world, then we need a way to sort out the mess when things go wrong. In practice, that means we need to interface to the existing legal system (which isn't going away, anytime soon), and that's where the idea of the Internet of Agreements comes in.
Broadly speaking, the idea is to trigger pre-existing international alternative dispute resolution processes (such as arbitration) to handle situations that the smart contract can't deal with.
Needless to say, this idea has huge implications for a variety of disciplines including law, finance, computer science and trade, to name just a few. This diversity of interests was very well represented in the mix of attendees (although, as @lloyddavis pointed out, we weren't as diverse as we should have been in other ways). I don't think I've ever been involved with quite such a large group of high-powered minds before. It's both exciting and exhausting!

Ian Grigg, the inventor of Ricardian Contracts, talks about Governed Blockchains
After four days of this, going back to my day job is going to be a huge context switch.