Ashley Taylor is a Social Innovation and Strategy member of Consensus Systems (ConsenSys), a blockchain company pioneering development on the cryptographically-secure, decentralized network called Ethereum. She is specifically interested in the potential of the technology to catalyze communities to build fluid, reputation-based economies. She is also one half of Future Culture, a web series for Futurism.Com.

At the Bitcoin Wednesday conference on 4 November 2015, she will talk about how cooperative ownership and social enterprise are catalyzed by a new wave of decentralized technologies such as the blockchain. Her company, ConsenSys, is developing solutions that enable cooperatives and communities to form more easily, to manage their resources, make decisions, collaborate, transparently distribute equity and shares, and evolve themselves. These include:

Boardroom.to, a group governance and decision-making tool;

Inflekt.us, an open-source community network and events management platform;

Balanc3, a solution for accounting and shared budget management;

Weifund.io, a decentralized crowdfunding and equity distribution solution; and

uPort.me, a cryptographic identity and reputation system.

These tools are alos foundational for open industry platforms like FarmShare, for community-supported agriculture, Ujo, for music, and TransActiveGrid, for energy. These projects and many others demonstrate a future web where people are empowered by controlling and managing their digital selves.

Ashley studied Cultural Anthropology and Visual and Media Studies at Duke University. Previously she worked with a group of data and media artists who work on engaging the human side of data called the Office for Creative Research. She was also part of a think tank, the Center for Planetary Culture, which developed a wiki that crowd sourced viable models for social change. She grew up in the Piedmont foothills of North Carolina, and teaches yoga therapy when the moment arises.