Ocean Protocol is proud of having a vibrant community with a strong sense of identity and purpose. Engaging with (and learning from) our community is an honor and a privilege and one of the many things that excites the Ocean team — besides building of course. This post is a roundup of activities and opportunities we’ve had to interact, learn and engage with our community over the past month.

Photo by Tony Reid on Unsplash

May was busy month at Ocean Protocol, with members of the team hitting the road, hopping on planes and jumping in and out of trains, buses and taxis to connect with community at local meetups, workshops and industry events around the globe.

Berlin

Trent McConaghy leading the Token Engineering Workshop on 28th May

In Berlin, you may have spotted members of the team discussing how businesses can implement AI in their company at the Hubraum Deutsche Telekom meetup or presenting practical use cases of blockchain in the automotive industry at the MHP LAB meetup.

We also connected with the local Berlin AI community at their City AI meetup, and attended a special data scientists lunch event at the Digital Future Conference hosted by Hassno Plattner Institut and BMW.

In addition to community meetups, Ocean founder Trent McConaghy lead a packed token engineering workshop at our Berlin office, which illustrated the importance of getting incentives right when building tokenized ecosystems. Meanwhile, Ocean co-founder and Head of Research Dimitri De Jonghe ran an engaging workshop on curation markets, highligting how Ocean’s marketplaces will leverage the power of token curated registries (TCRs) to rank data quality.

Geneva

Trent presented Ocean Protocol’s initial concept of Data Commons at the second annual AI for Good Summit in Geneva, a conference aimed at leveraging advanced AI technology to help tackle the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Over the course of three days, Ocean team members engaged with summit participants in working sessions focused on developing projects in four primary topic tracks: AI and Satellite Imagery, AI and Health, AI and Smart Cities, and Trust in AI. Read our writeup of AI for Good Summit here.

Europe — Sofia & Gdansk

We spoke at the Big Data Value Meetup in Sofia, Bulgaria, as well as the infoShare Conference in Gdansk.

United Kingdom — London & Cardiff

In London, we received a lot of interest from industry as we presented at a European energy event covering Blockchain, IoT and Machine Learning. Representatives in the Oil & Gas field are looking into how blockchain and AI can help improve efficiency and radically reduce environmental risk while exploring new reserves of energy. We also spoke at the Digital Festival Cardiff in Wales, showcasing Ocean to Big Data experts, academics, researchers, regulators and industry leaders.

North America — New York, Palo Alto & Ann Arbor

Furthermore, members of Ocean gave presentations at Stanford University on complexity and blockchain, FFX and AI DAOs, as well as opportunities in blockchain for GP researchers in Ann Arbor. One event that particularly stood out was the Women in Blockchain conference that highlighted interesting initiatives aimed at diversity and inclusion in the blockchain community.

And how could we forget Consensus — one of the largest annual blockchain conferences in the world, which boasted a record number attendees (8.5k) in 2018. In addition to countless fruitful discussions with potential partners and blockchain experts, Ocean’s Co Founder Trent McConaghy ran the first-ever token engineering workshop, which was very well received. The workshop centered around theory, practice and tools to analyse, design, and verify tokenized ecosystems. The workshop also dove into elements of Mechanism Design, Economic Game Theory and how various elements factor into designing properly functioning tokenized ecosystems.

On panel: Dr. Dimitri De Jonghe at Consensus

Giving Back

Last but not least; apart from meetups, workshops and conferences, Ocean Protocol was a proud sponsor of the Impact Summit in New York, a three-day event at Hunter College which focused on how blockchain can be used for social good, including a Blockchain for Social Impact Hackathon. Ocean’s support helped fund travel and expenses for students to attend who couldn’t have done so otherwise. Ocean intends to support more hackathon events in the future, so if you are planning a hackathon please reach out.

Full Steam Ahead

Ocean Protocol is ready to connect with our community in as many ways as possible. Please join us on our Odyssey to unlock data for AI. If you are interested in having Ocean speak at your event, or if you’d like to host an Ocean Meetup in your city, just reach out.