TLDR; New MoU agreements were signed with Bitdegree, the Saintgits Group of Institutions and the Thoresen Thai Agencies PCL. New Zealand hosted a nationwide tour, new developer educational courses launched, Ricardo Medrano was named a top Hong Kong influencer, and PundiX announced the first Hong Kong retail partnership.

“One of the many ways NEM continues global expansion is by providing developers with a variety of educational tools and training. This week we’re pleased to share new developer workshops and global NEM 101 meetups, as well as partnerships through Craftain, the NEMsp program, and Devslopes. Supporting developers remains a key strategy for the NEM Foundation and in the coming months, we will share more details on NEM’s comprehensive certification program that will be offered from the NEM Centre of Excellence.” - Kristof Van de Reck, Interim President

Ongoing Planning Efforts:

The Council continues to review new partnership proposals and expansion plans. Results will be shared in forthcoming communications.

Global Expansion, New Hires, Notable Events

Argentina

NEM blockchain developer, Pablo Romero, led a meetup at Rosario City on July 18th to educate attendees on the technical aspects of NEM. This was followed by a meeting with the Rosario municipality on how NEM’s blockchain technology can improve transparency with elections.

The Argentina team is discussing opportunities to have XEM added to the Qubit exchange.

Australia & New Zealand

Origins, a Wellington-based startup that verifies the origins of apparel in the garment industry, recently received $1.2M from the NEM Community Fund. Founder Samantha Jones has become the second New Zealand venture and first woman globally to have a project funded via the NEM Community Fund.

NEM New Zealand hosted a nationwide tour across four cities led by Dalaney Davis in partnership with Cryptolaunchpad and BlueBlock. Jason Lee presented in Melbourne on the first Crypto Australia gathering, Jian Chan presented at the Darwin Innovation Hub, and Amanda Au at the Blockchain Centre Melbourne.

Brasil

This week NEM Brasil met with Felipe Fonteles, to explore ICO opportunities.

Conversations continue with Mr. Fo Beng, the CEO of Coinbene in Brazil, about having XEM added in the future.

The first SP Meetup will happen on Aug 8th.

Chile

NEM continues to expand across Chile with new meetups happening in Santiago de Chile and also with Andrès Bello University to present the NEM alliance at Concepción.

Colombia

Ambassador Rafael Torres attended an event organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology called "The Future of the Fintech Industry in Colombia.”

Europe

The NEM EU team has signed a MoU with Bitdegree, an online training platform. This will expand learning opportunities to train developers on the ease of building and deploying on the NEM blockchain.

ICYMI, here is the live stream Facebook video with NEM’s own Paul Rieger at Pillar’s UnConference event at the Blockchain Centre Vilnius.

Ecuador

We’ve announced a new meetup at the ‘Universidad Politécnica Salesiana’ thanks to the International Electric and Electronic Engineering Students branch - IEEE.

We also are working with capitalika.com, the first formal wallet and exchange on Ecuador, to bring more value to our market.

Germany

After recently announcing a partnership with Untitled Inc. and the Blockchain-Research-Accelerator, Julian Richter and István Deák from NEM Europe participated in the Blockchain-Research-Accelerator Day in Berlin. The event hosted industry and blockchain experts from DB Digital, Luvent-Consulting, Untitled INC as well as other leading European university professors. The NEM Foundation presented on the benefits of using NEM, advised researchers on their thesis, issued certificates for participation, and notarized these certificates using Apostille. (Article)

Hong Kong

Regional Head, Stephen Chia together with NEM lead Ricardo Medrano, attended RISE 2018, the largest startup event in Asia by WebSummit of Dublin. Stephen shared that, "I wanted to attend RISE to understand the environment in Hong Kong and was surprised by nearly 20+ startup companies looking for blockchain platform for their solutions. I think NEM will good opportunities to grow here”. At RISE, he managed to establish contacts with two NEM powered projects, Pundi-X (Indonesia) and Empleos (Georgia) and Fintrux (London), a successful crowdfunding platform which is considering porting over to NEM blockchain.

Ricardo was named as one of the top Fintech Industry influencers to watch by LATTICE80, the Global Fintech Hub, in The Last Report.

PundiX announced their first retail partnership in Hong Kong and held an event to show the ease of using crypto as a payment option. PundiX plans to roll out 5,500 POS units in Hong Kong by the end of August.

Italy

István Deák from the NEM Center of Excellence finished recording a comprehensive Catapult developer onboarding course together with Craftain, Inc. The course covers basic blockchain concepts as well as more advanced coding tutorials on how to build a decentralized app on NEM. The content will be available for free on their platform in September. (Article)

Indonesia

Yafi Muhammad (previously our Foundation administrator) who recently got married and moved home to Jakarta, was reassigned to be part of Indonesian team. He is joined by two other new Indonesian staff and has signed on 2 new Systems Integration partners to be trained. Part of that expansion is signing of MOUs with the Indoensian Blockchain Assosciation (IBA) and Indonesian Blockchain Network (IBN).

Japan

Hiroki Kaga, Japan Lead, visited NEM Australia in Melbourne from July 10 to 16 to share key learnings and discuss business opportunities between the teams. Jian Chan, NEM Australia lead, shared a variety of project ideas such as a NEM Ecosystem for building a community in business/social areas.

Engate has launched a unique project for a new live video entertainment platform for sports that is powered by the NEM Blockchain.

LATAM

The NEM Columbia team met with AOS to discuss collaboration opportunities with banks, universities, and Government.

They are in talks with the CEO of Camel Hub, a coworking space in the city of Medellin that aspires to build a foundation for blockchain entrepreneurship.

An alliance with Entrepreneur Incubator lamaleta.co, one of the most important of Del Valle del Cauca in Colombia, was reached. One outcome is the integration of our NEM community in Cali, at the offices of lamaleta.co for future meetups. There are also plans to develop the NEMtrepreneurs program in conjunction with lamaleta.co for schools in Colombia.

New social networks in Spanish have been created including Facebook: @nemespanol , Twitter: @nemespanol and Instagram: @nemespanol .

Mexico

NEM Mexico is accelerating growth through new meetups around Mexico City, Queretaro, Villahermosa, Cancun, Guadalajara and Playa del Carmen.

NEM Mexico is working with universities in Playa del Carmen to help software engineering students learn more about NEM.

Middle East

Sernez (a project assisted by NEM Middle East) has signed a MoA with the Saintgits group of Institutions making it the first blockchain company in the world to implement a blockchain-based scholarship program in a live environment. (Article)

SE Asia lead trainer, ShinTatt Wong, will be spending the next 2 weeks in Dubai, UAE on an important assignment to train the Dubai government at the Ministry of Community Development (MOCD) which is doing a blockchain pilot program. This is part of the push for the Dubai Government in pushing to be the world’s first blockchain powered city by 2020.

While in Dubai, ShinTatt was also invited to train the team at BIXTOX Exchange, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange being built on the NEM blockchain. The NEM Middle East team also attended the gala night where NEM branding was visible all over the event.

North America

Philippines

Meetups continue in Lucena City and also the recent one in Quezon City in partner with CEstates, a real-estate platform under NEM.

A two-day Developer Workshop will happen on July 21-22 by the NEM PH team and Anthony Law of NEM Malaysia.

NEM PH is working on new partnerships including a project called Krypto Football, a crypto game based on collectible digital sports cards running on the NEM Blockchain platform. There will also be an announcement on several partnerships with universities that focus more on blockchain education and awareness.

Puerto Rico

The NEM Embassy in Puerto Rico is currently evaluating energy, academic, and humanitarian proposals. We are in the final phases of the Crypto Taxi Agreement.

The NEM San Juan Chapter meetup is hosting the NEM Foundation’s first event on the island at Interamerican University of Puerto Rico Metropolitan Campus the 31st of July 2018. The presentation will be followed by a small networking session.

Singapore

William Tan has been appointed as our Singapore country lead. With a background in corporate education and change management and strategy training, William is using his expertise to grow the NEM community in the Island City. At a recent meetup, he introduced two projects, Xarbon (from HongKong) and HIT Foundation (Switzerland / Vietnam) both powered by NEM blockchain. The Singapore team also supported the recent Nanyang Technological University (NTU) 1st blockchain hackathon, where 8 of the teams used NEM blockchain for their prototype.

Our SEA Regional Head, Stephen Chia and trainer Anthony Law were on hand for the two-day event which saw 20 teams competing. Next event will be a roundtable discussing regulatory issues in Singapore. Stephen also was invited to speak at the FintechHub 80RR by the Exchange Xtheta and at Lattice80 KAYA Network, another project powered by NEM.

Spain

NEM Developer, David Garcia, will host a NEM Developer Workshop at the Barcelona Blockchain Meetup where Miguel Caballero, the CEO of Tutellus, will be joining and share why the Tutellus team decided to move from ETH over to NEM.

Thailand

Laura Takenaka, Thailand Country Lead, along with SEA Regional Head Stephen Chia, has signed an MOU with Thoresen Thai Agencies PCL to establish a Blockchain Centre in Downtown Bangkok. This will help establish NEM in Thailand and forge strong relationships.

Laura Tanaka recently gave a talk at the Blockchain: Data Decentralization for Higher Transparency event highlighting various NEM enterprise use cases.

Uruguay

Meetings are being held for possible partnerships with meat traceability enterprises and NEM. NEM ambassador, Ignacio Varese, has a meeting with the entrepreneur Nicolás Roselli to analyze these issues and ways of coordinating and associating with NEM.

Discussions are underway with Globant, a multinational software company based in Uruguay, regarding a partnership alliance.

Venezuela