Wingtip in action at SXSW

Blockpool attended SXSW 2018 from the 9th of March to the 16th with the objective of achieving the following goals:

Business awareness

Industry updates - (tech and music, AI, AR, Blockchain)

Finding opportunities - not exclusively music

Wingtip PoC feedback

Exploring potential partnerships with agencies

The Conference Overview

Blockchain, outside of the technical forums and looking towards the mainstream is in a very interesting place right now and we believe it will become more so over the next 12 to 18 months. To the layman, blockchain is making some inroads into the mainstream conscience, but those of us who have been involved with blockchain and the crypto-world for a good while need reminding occasionally that to the rest of the world, the technology is still very early.

This can be frustrating for the majority of us but we will have to be patient because the opportunities are becoming more compelling. There are tremendous potential efficiencies and creative opportunities for the music industry to benefit from blockchain technology. Although there are fiscal restrictions compared to historic business practice, blockchain can still give the industry innovation and impetus at a time when there does appear to be an appetite for disruptive ideas.

The message from SXSW for blockchain enthusiasts and investors is that the industry is still tech heavy and for the majority of businesses very few have reached beyond the Proof of Concept stage, but what was increasingly noticeable was the collective call to get beyond the chatter and push more projects into production. Very exciting.

It had been discussed on more than one occasion that one day soon no-one will talk about blockchain only the applications that sit upon it.

Blockpool arrived in Austin on March 9th ready to hit the ground running and between the 3 of us we had a lot of ground to cover. SXSW is immense and this year was no exception.

CEO Kevin Bacon spent the majority of his time working his contacts within the music industry and was met with an overwhelming positive response to Blockpool’s technology. This is significant as we are approaching a critical mass to give us the most prestigious place in Music-Blockchain worldwide currently. Myself and Ken Foster were focused on relationships and opportunities outside of music with a concerted effort to push into different verticals while we were there and solid conversations were also had in fashion, veterinary, e-commerce and sport.

We successfully trialled a working proof of concept (codename Wingtip) to show a real world application built on our blockchain infrastructure.

The app allowed fans to send Audiocoin to artists in a live environment and also made use of geo-location technology to encourage attendance at sxsw music events.

In other news, we have joined the IBM global entrepreneur programme to promote blockchain technology and industry partnerships and we were also working in partnership with the UK Governments department of industry and trade.

Blockpool’s pipeline is crammed full of interesting projects across multiple verticals and the challenge we face is to ensure that we scale efficiently to meet the growing demand for our services.