How AI & Web3 are Shaping the Global Work Force

Speaker A: M welcome to Digital Transformers, the show that connects you with what you need to build, manage and operate your digital supply chain. Join your host in a timely discussion on new and future business models with industry leading executives. The show will reveal global customer expectations, real world deployment challenges and the value of advanced business technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain and robotic process engineering. And now we bring you Digital Transformers.

Speaker B: Hello, good morning everyone. Kevin Jackson here with Emerging Govtech and Gerard. That's. Hey, hey Gerard. How are you doing man?

Speaker C: Kevin, I am doing phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. I can't wait, can't wait to get dive into this show. We got some incredible things to talk about. So super excited to get started today.

Speaker B: Yeah, I heard you got some new technology to help you out. You know what, I think you do look a little better.

Speaker C: Yeah, well look, I had a tech upgrade, not plastic surgery. I just wanted to make sure that's clear.

Speaker B: Well good. We have a uh, great show lined up. We're going to talk about the new workforce, the future of work and the web3 worker, how to prepare to become a web3 worker, what you have to do, what you have to learn. And we're going to have some, some insight from experience, some will experience this here with the, you, uh, know, major layoffs in the U.S. federal government. You know, the government used to be a safe place to work. Gerard, uh, what happened?

Speaker C: That's right. Good government job. Right, good government job. But I just want to let folks know kind of why we're doing this. We actually had another topic scheduled for this month originally. But when we saw what was happening in the US Federal government and the impact that it's having on jobs and the rise of AI and the impact that it's having globally, uh, on the workforce, we thought that this was just way too m important of a topic not to be addressed. So Kevin, why don't you share with us uh, some of the things that are going on in the news and sort of set the table for our conversation.

Speaker B: Absolutely. One of the first things was an article talking about the decentralized workforce and the future of work. Basically there's a change happening, right? You're no longer going into the office. You're actually an uh, independent worker, so to speak. And there's no centralized work. So this decentralized workforce sort of operates through blockchain based platforms and smart contracts. And you need to really learn about digital currency. So this is, this allows people to work remotely and collaborate globally in brand new ways. A key part of uh, a web3work is a decentralized autonomous organization. And in fact GBA and National Digit Foundry are actually doing a lot of work via uh, DAOs. And a web three powered workforce offers new ways to work beyond traditional jobs. Right. It's, it's remote and it's borderless. No matter where you are, you use smart contracts for payments. So when you actually negotiate your job and what you're going to do, that has to be reflected in a smart contract. And you, not only you will get tokens, you may get tokens as incentives as part of your job. So it'll be important for you to understand the value of that token. It may be in ways other than currency and. But you do have greater autonomy. But there are a lot of challenges when you're, when you're doing this regulatory uncertainty, you know, you may have seen a lot of volatility in your actual income. There aren't many protections for a Web3 worker. The law, as is typical, is behind the changes in our society. There's also some challenges with respect to the scalability of um, this model. Any comments there, Gerard, before I go to the next.

Speaker C: Yeah, Kevin, I think there's so many things here that are so important for people to be able to understand and unpack. Right. You know, you mentioned regulatory challenges as an example. You know, there was a case not too long ago, uh, where, and I'm not going to go into the details of it, but, but where developers were essentially fined and faced criminal prosecution because they were involved in creating a dao and decentralized exchanges which essentially according to some, violated, uh, some laws. And so this concept of regulatory uncertainty means that if you don't really understand it, you know, you could be in a heap of trouble. The other thing that I think is really, uh, interesting aspect of, uh, what you talked about is this really goes back to philosophy, right. When Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin and he wanted to sort of like disintermediate these central powers of control. There's a lot of people, especially young people in the workforce, they want to be free, right? They don't want to be bound. They don't want to be sitting at a desk from 9 to 5 and they don't want to be, you know, have some company or boss hovering over them. There is really this propensity to want to be free. And the whole concept of peer to peer transactions, right. And decentralizing financial institutions is really part of a philosophical cultural movement. I think so, yeah. There's just a lot, there's a lot of things about how the world is changing and that cryptocurrency, digital assets and smart contracts are really empowering a cultural movement that is just sort of like, you know, at the brink of bursting through. So I think it's really a fascinating topic.

Speaker B: Oh yeah, absolutely. And it is a, a significant change. Now, our second article, I know we were mentioning that one reason that we decided to do this because of the major layoffs that are occurring across the US Federal government. But now, now this may be a great rehiring here. Over 26,000, 26,000 people that were fired by Doge are, um, likely to return. So now the question is, if I get fired, do I go find another job or do I wait to get rehired? The Department of Energy, 551 people will probably be rehired. Problem of Commerce 791. Health and Human Services, 3248. Interior Department, over 1700 people that were fired or probably would be rehired. And the Department of Treasury, get this, 7,613 people will probably be rehired. And I know you probably heard about the fact that some of our, um, government workers that are tasked with with protecting our nuclear secrets were actually laid off and then there was a big scramble to get them back. Okay, are these mistakes? What, what does this, what does this say about this, this process? Gerard?

Speaker C: Well, I, I think it's important to put things into scale, right? I think the number of jobs that were eliminated were close to 40,000 jobs across the whole government workspace. And clearly I think that when you do that kind of broad brush, uh, cut, you're definitely going to make some mistakes. And I think that this process of rehiring is somewhat of a function of kind of rebalancing. But one of the things that's really interesting is to figure out how those jobs will change coming back. If you look at the impact that AI has had on the workforce, Microsoft, Google, all these folks, they've laid off thousands of people because what they've identified is that they're calling them low, low production or low performance employees, but they're really not low performance employees. What they really are is low compared to large language models, right? Because we've got, and I can tell you from personal experience with even within, um, our community, we've got people that are writing software, using ChatGPT and doing a phenomenal job. So you've got all these software engineers, you've got all these people that have been doing work in a traditional way now finding the technology is essentially doing it faster and better. So these jobs coming back, they're going to focus on creativity compared to skill. AI cannot be creative. It's really fantastic at essentially doing mundane tasks, but by itself it's not going to do it. So we really need people in the future. The workforce of the future needs to understand these emerging technologies because there are jobs that are going to come back, but they're going to go to the people that really understand, I think, primarily three technologies. Right. It's going to be AI, Web3 and IoT.

Speaker B: Right, right.

Speaker C: And people that understand those three things, I think they're going to be able to compete. And the folks that are saying, no, I'm going to, you know, that's the way my, my grandma did it, that's the way my mom did it, that's the way I'm doing it. That kind of mentality is not going to work. Right. And fortunately, through the work that Brian Nielsen is doing and the GBA and stuff like that, we're going to be able to give people resources that they'll be able to find and get to help sharpen those skills and make them competitive.

Speaker B: So I guess that the, uh, key here is that Web3 isn't about really getting new jobs. It may be really about keeping the job you have. Because if you can't leverage these skills and improve, I guess, your productivity by leveraging things like AI and blockchain and, and knowing these, uh, different technologies, then you will be replaced by someone that does. And it would be another human.

Speaker C: Yeah, well, I, I heard somebody say they were talking, they were talking to somebody who was, who was afraid or didn't want to use, you know, chatgpt. And the comment that I heard that really stuck in my mind was like, your job won't be replaced by ChatGPT, but it will be replaced by somebody who knows how to use ChatGPT. And I think that's really a huge point. And as we start moving more and more into this decentralized web3 economy, that's going to create specific skills and capabilities that everybody should have some AI and some Web3 on, uh, their resume to the degree that they can.

Speaker B: And that leads us right into the third article, which I think is critical. Right. If you're exploring the Web3 job market, what do you need to know? And, you know, I guess it's don't be afraid of the robot. Just be afraid of the humans that are smarter than you because they know how to use the robot. Learn the basics of blockchain and cryptocurrency. Have a niche, have a skill skill that blends the use of these advanced technologies with you know that £7 you have up in your head. Build a portfolio that demonstrates your skills and capabilities and present that portfolio over social media channels like LinkedIn Network within the Web3 community so people know that you have this knowledge and those skill sets and reframe or rewrite your resume. You, you will need to think about translating your like if you're in the government, your government sector, uh, work into Web3 language. For instance, if you were a policy analyst in the government, maybe you can become a dial governance specialist. If you were an IT or cybersecurity professional, maybe now you need to build a niche in smart contract as a smart contract auditor or maybe a DEFI security expert and think about public affairs or communications that could be a community manager, a Web3 community manager or a uh, DAO communication lead. You need to reskill using these Web3 learning platforms like the Blockchain Academy and the Web3 certification board where we'll learn more about that later. You need to be able to prove your skills and your capabilities by collecting on chain badges that are verifiable and immutable. Leveraging the uh, blockchain technology that gives you what's being called proof of skill. Proof of skill. And this is something that employers are going to be looking for, for moving forward.

Speaker C: Yeah, and if I could just sort of tag on that. One of the great resources that we have within the GBA is if you go to the GBA Global and on the, on the main menu you see where it says association, there's a drop down. Go to working groups. And the GBA has over 50 working groups. We have probably more than 200 groups in total, but over 50 working groups that are filled with professionals in virtually every industry. Right from land titling, healthcare, identity management, elections, supply chain, uh, sustainability, aviation. Right. Space. Uh, in fact Kevin, you, you do a lot with the, with, with the blockchain in, in space, legal groups, accounting groups. And so regardless of what your expertise is, you can connect with other professionals to connect, communicate and collaborate, learn from one another, participate in projects and build your resume. Even if it's volunteer work. Right. To make you essentially that more attractive in the job market. So anyone that essentially wants to get in this space, I would really encourage them to look at those working groups and then just get to know and work with and volunteer for and collaborate on these projects. It's a great way to network, to develop your skill set and then to find those Doors that you can now walk through. So that's just one of the comments I've got on that.

Speaker B: Just by joining and participating organizations like the National Digi Foundry and Government Blockchain association, you can actually build your Web3 network. You can get the skills that you need to be viable in this new community, this new age.

Speaker C: Yeah. And let me put in a plugin for National Digi Foundry, the organization that Kevin leads. So we actually have a package program where you can essentially join both organizations for a fraction of what it would cost you. And the nice thing about Kevin's organization, the National Digi Foundry, is it allows you to create sandboxes. Right. Where you can actually play with and explore building different technologies and stuff like that. So the Government Blockchain association is a great place for you to network with people in all kinds of different industries. And the Natural Digi Foundry is just a phenomenal place to create sandboxes and learn and experiment to get to, uh, MVPs. Kevin, did I get that right?

Speaker B: Pretty much, yeah, absolutely. So we have an infrastructure where you can actually not only learn the skills, but practice the skills and to build your Web3 portfolio. So this is a great one, two punch for being a strong and valuable member in the future of work. So thank you. That was perfect. That's perfect.

Speaker C: That's good. You can send me the $5 in crypto.

Speaker B: I shall. So with that, I think it's probably time to bring our guests into the conversation. They have a lot more expertise in this area than either of us do.

Speaker C: I gotta tell you something, I. I am phenomenally excited about our guests. So let me just tell you about these together. You've probably seen it on the promos and stuff like that. I want to start with Brian Nielsen. So I first started the GBA 2017. I knew that I needed a board that was going to basically have oversight of the gba. And to tell you the truth, I was very nervous, uh, about that. If you look across the industry, a lot of charlatans, there's a lot of folks that I thought could take over this organization and do a lot of bad things. So it took me two years to really put the board together that I trusted with this entire enterprise. And the only guy that initially stood out to me was Bryant Nielsen. So Bryant Nielsen, uh, became a very, very close advocate of us. He was hosting a radio show. Incredibly brilliant on the subject of blockchain and web3. He had created this thing called the Blockchain Academy. So he was involved in training people. He has A very, very strong sort of financial banking background. But he had taken on this effort of educating people in the space through his podcast through the Blockchain Academy and then his support for the gba. I mean he hosted our technology, he was instrumental. GBA would not exist today if it wasn't for the support of Ryan Nielsen and um, his close personal friendship throughout the years. We've had uptimes and down times and I remember going to him when times were tough and his personal encouragement. So he's brilliant on the subject but his integrity is without question and he's just probably one of the most decent human beings um, I could ever promote. So I was thrilled to ask him. He also, while he turned out of the chairman position at the gba, he still is the emcee for all of our events, events that we've done at the US Capitol, the National Press Club. So uh, I feel proud to put him in front of foreign dignitaries and very high profile people that have been part of our organization. Bryant has represented us incredibly well and so you're going to hear from him. He's just got an incredible amount of wisdom. I'll let him share that. Uh, Omri Gross, uh, I haven't known for as long but I uh, was incredibly impressed with Henri Omri was uh, over at uh, uh, I believe it was HUD, right. The U.S. housing and Urban Development and is an expert in his field, all aspects of housing and housing I believe is one sixth of the national economy. Very interested in blockchain. He's been doing blockchain projects for the government. Just incredibly knowledgeable guy. And then he had an opportunity to experience this federal force reduction. He had an opportunity to take the buyout he did and then he, we put him in charge of our housing uh, working group and in no time at all has just risen to the occasion and has blown me away in his knowledge and understanding of Web3 and how to apply specifically to his industry. So he comes to us from the, from the perspective of having gone through this federal reduction in forces and taking the knowledge and for everything that we're talking about today. He's essentially done that, used that to take his skills, to augment it and essentially to start a new chapter in his life. So this is going to be an absolutely bodacious talk and I can't wait to hear from, from Brian and Omri. That was dramatic.

Speaker B: Welcome, welcome guys. So this is going to be a great show and I think we want to start off with Omri. Tell us a little more uh, about yourself and your history.

Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Kevin. Hi, everyone. First off, I just want to thank Gerard, Kevin Bryant, and everyone listening for having me on to share my perspective on this important topic. I really appreciate everything you're all doing for this space, so I just wanted to make that clear and thank you guys for everything you're doing. Okay, so a little bit of background about me. My name is Omri Gross, and I'm an outgoing senior clearance officer and policy Advisor for the U.S. department of Housing and Urban Development. I've been working in regulatory compliance and policy for the last 15 years and my most recent role involved working with HUD.

Speaker B: Huh?

Speaker D: Leadership, Congress and the Office of General Counsel to engineer regulatory compliance frameworks for new HUD programs, including the recently revived congressionally directed spending program, formerly known as Earmarks. You may, you may have recognized that name, Earmarks. And so this, this program has been recently revived and that's kind of what I've been working on for the last couple years, is developing regulatory complian compliance frameworks for that program with Congress. Now, I've worked for the federal government, local governments, non profits, as well as in the private sector. And as Gerard mentioned, in February, I took the federal buyout offered by the Trump administration. It's also known as deferred resignation or the fork in the road, as the DOGE team refers to it as. And so I took the federal buyout offered by the Trump administration along with around 75,000 other federal employees. Employees. And now this buyout was in addition to broad layoffs of probationary employees across all agencies. And there are still additional reductions in force planned in the coming months across the board. So no agency was spared here. Every agency was affected and it was a, uh, pretty broad effort to reduce the force. Now, taking the buyout was a tough choice for me. I spent the time that we were allowed to considering this choice, talking over the family and whatnot. But it ended up being the right one for me as I was already on my way out. But more importantly, it has also given me the opportunity to focus on my long planned transition to Web3, an industry I've been passionate about and involved in for over a decade now. Now, to that end, I recently launched my own consulting firm called OG Consulting, focused on helping clients navigate complex regulatory landscapes and implement emerging technology solutions, including blockchain and AI. And I'm beyond thrilled at the level of support and interest I've received from colleagues. And I'm already in discussions and working with multiple clients and solution providers in the space. So if you're interested in learning more about our services, please feel free to reach out to me directly via LinkedIn and we can have a chat. Now, I've also had the pleasure of being a member and contributor for the Government blockchain association since 2020. And I thank Gerard for all his work there. And you, uh, know, there, uh, being a federal employee, there are certain things, limitations. You can be a little hamstrung in the way that you can contribute and participate due to certain ethics considerations. And so I'm kind of thrilled that now I have the opportunity to, uh, be much more involved and contribute on a much higher level. And so. And as Gerard mentioned, I recently became the housing work group lead for the Government Blockchain association, where I've been working on building out our Web three Solutions directory for housing and developing the housing supplement to the Blockchain Maturity Model, which is a comprehensive framework for assessing and improving the maturity, trustworthiness and readiness of blockchain solutions. Now I'm also working with the, uh, gba, the Government Blockchain association, to become a certified Blockchain Maturity Model Assessor so that I can lead comprehensive evaluations for organizations looking to improve their blockchain solutions. And again, if you're interested in learning more about the Blockchain Maturity Model and contributing to its development, you can find more information on GBA's website or by reaching out to myself or Gerard directly.

Speaker C: This is a great way for people to, who want to essentially develop an income, uh, in the blockchain space. Right? If you don't know where to start going through the Blockchain Maturity Model, trading actually credentials, you can credential you as a consultant. Right now you're going to need some experience, right? You can't take some guy to high school, run him through the training and do that. But the working groups are a place where people can, uh, volunteer and gain experience. And when you have enough experience, then the Blockchain Maturity Model is an excellent credentialing certification which you can get through the Web3 Academy. So all of these pieces kind of fit together in order to really help you arm yourself, equip yourself to be able to generate an income in this space. So thank you, thank you.

Speaker D: Um, that's absolutely right. And so to just kind of get back to the topic of the day, which is, you know, Web3's impact on the future of our workforce and position yourself for a career in this space, you know, whether it's because of DOGE Blockchain or AI, the workforce is certainly undergoing A significant rebalancing which is resulting in challenges and pain points. But it's also revealing tremendous opportunity for those willing to take the leap and reposition themselves for a career in Web3. And Web3 really is poised to transform nearly every industry, including almost every important function in the housing sector, which I've been heavily involved in. Anything from streamlining the application and eligibility verification process, improving payments, leasing and home equity services, and automating regulatory reports supporting compliance. And in fact, I actually cover these and other use cases, challenges and opportunities in detail in an article I just finished writing on blockchain's importance for housing that should be published in a couple newsletters next week, including in the GBA newsletter. So really excited to see that. Okay, so how do you reposition yourself for a career in Web3? So I've put together a few tips that have and continue to make all the difference for me throughout my journey that I really want to share with this group. So first off, read, study, learn and get certified. Be the sponge. Educate yourself about blockchain and AI using the wealth of free and paid books, courses, videos and certification programs. Even just understanding the basics of blockchain, crypto and AI will put you in a better position than the vast majority, majority of the traditional workforce. But even if you're uh, interested in the more technical side of things, learning a blockchain smart contract language like Solidity will not only give you a deeper understanding of how the tech works, but can also help you build your own products, solutions and even lead to technical career opportunities as well. I know all three of our panelists are doing great work in the emerging technology education and certification space, which is an excellent place to start. The next tip I had was test and use everything. One of the best ways to get hands on experience is to test and use everything you can, whether it's new on chain products like DeFi NFTs, games or identity solutions or AIs like uh, large language learning models or generative models, testing new products and tech build and tech builds a level of understanding and insight that's extremely valuable and otherwise very hard to come by. You know, you can teach traditional industry type, you know, education because we have so many resources for that. Um, but you know, gaining that hands on experience is, is much harder to come by. The next tip I had is attend conferences, boot camps and hackathons. There are so many different conferences every year, each with their own scope and focused content. And these are kind of new age conferences. I mean these I've been to a lot of conferences in the housing space and the federal government space. I mean these blockchain conferences are much more engaging, really do kind of involve you and are uh, extremely interesting and even fun right. To participate in. So highly recommend that you. And also you don't need to be a programmer to participate in boot camps and hackathons. That's a common misconception. And in fact they're always looking for non technical roles like product managers, researchers, designers and even marketing. So you know, don't be, don't uh, be afraid of, you know the terms hackathons or boot camps. Right. You know, this really is something that is open to more than just the coders and programmers. And also it's just super fun and a great way to meet motivated people in the space. I just have a couple other tips here. So the next one is create content. Write articles, blog posts and make educational videos. Creating content is an excellent way to learn, gain experience and get your voice out there while building your portfolio. And as I mentioned, I just finished writing an article that will be published in a couple newsletters next week on blockchain's importance for housing. And I personally learned a lot researching the challenges and existing housing blockchain solutions that are already out there. So even for experts, you know the practice of writing articles, researching and writing articles can lead to tremendous gains in your education and knowledge. The next one is contribute to existing and ongoing web3.3 efforts in your industry, network and community. So things like helping establish a blockchain community of practice at your organization and agency, which I've been working on at HUD, or joining an industry specific Web3 working group, going to local meetups and contributing to community driven web3 initiatives and efforts that you're passionate about are extremely satisfying ways to get involved, network and meet people and show off your skills. And that kind of leads into the next one which is build useful products. Learning by doing is extremely effective. And if you have an idea for how Web3 can improve or resolve an existing problem, diving Headfirst into building is perhaps one of the best opportunities to learn and meet the people interested in helping make your vision a, uh, reality. This is something m I'm very passionate about because I recently started developing a project I'm calling Open Escrow which will be a free open source smart contract standard to manage the rental security deposit process between a tenant and a landlord. The security deposit is a major source of contention in rental housing that often leads to disputes and legal battles for both tenants and landlords. And this is mainly due to you know, the lack of transparency, mismanagement of funds and disagreements over deductions. And by leveraging blockchain open escrow will utilize smart contracts to replace the role of a neutral third party escrow agent, providing landlords and tenants a uh, trust minimized system that benefits both parties. And if this is something that you're interested in, you know, please feel free to reach out to me as this is a pet project of mine that I'm very passionate about. So I'd love to, you know, uh, talk to and collaborate with anybody interested in working on something like this.

Speaker C: You put together this list of things that are really important for somebody that wants to get in the space. I think a lot of folks would really like to have this information maybe written, if you wouldn't mind sending that to me. Or let's write an article or a blog post on the GBA site about uh, hey, tips for entering the Web3 workspace. If anybody listening would like to get that information. If you send an email to eventsbaglobal.org right, we'll make sure to get that information to you once, once Omri provides it. Or you can subscribe to the GBA newsletter. So go to the gbaglobal.org website under News and Events. You should see, uh, a link there for, for newsletter you can subscribe. But uh, Omri, that's phenomenal content and I'd like to get that out to all the GBA members and folks attending this.

Speaker D: That would be excellent. I would love that. And then I just have the one last tip and I'll turn it back over and so, you know, uh, I've covered a lot of ground here and you might be thinking there, there's a lot here, right? And kind of to your point that it'd be great to kind of have this in writing for others and you might be wondering, you know, where, where do you start, right? You know, there's, there's a whole bunch of these things. Where do you actually start? You know, how, how do you navigate this emerging landscape effectively? And so that's, that's exactly where Web3 professional organizations come in. And that's, that's the last tip here is that uh, one of the most effective ways to get well rounded and comprehensive exposure to all of the activities we've been discussing is to join a Web3 professional organization or association like the Government Blockchain association, the Web3 Certification Board, and the National Digit Foundry, as well as the Blockchain Legal Institute, which I recently became a member of. Now these organizations are kind of like the ultimate hack for your transition to Web3. They guide members on their journey and provide access to vast educational resources, certifications, networks, and opportunities to contribute and build your Web3 portfolio. My personal experience as a member of the Government Blockchain association has been incredibly rewarding. It's not only accelerated my understanding of blockchain policy and governance, but also connected me with a diverse community of professionals who are shaping the future of public and private sector applications. So if you're feeling overwhelmed or unsure where to start, joining a Web3 professional organization isn't just a smart move. It's an incredibly strategic one too. So with that, I just want to say thanks again to Gerard, Kevin Bryant and everyone listening for inviting me to share my perspective on this important topic. Um, I really appreciate everything you all are doing to push this space forward. Thank you so much.

Speaker B: No, thank you. There's so much to unpack there, and I know, uh, Bryant is probably sitting on his hand before we learn more about how to actually prepare yourself. Brian, can you tell us a bit about your background? I mean, you were part of, uh, engaged in the founding of GBA, uh, the Blockchain Academy, uh, and the Web3 certification board. Uh, there must be more in your life.

Speaker E: There's a wife and two children, but yes. Thank you for inviting me, Kevin. Thank you. Gerard Omri. It's a pleasure to meet you. I have not had the pleasure of meeting you in person.

Speaker D: Likewise.

Speaker E: You know, the thing that people should take from this is this, is that you have Kevin Jackson from the National Digifoundry and Gerard Deshay from the Government Blockchain association actually collaborating in a way that is making this type of disruption. So, I mean, what we have here is this, is we have an impact on these federal layoffs and the broader workforce ecosystem. And both of these organizations, the NDF and the gba, have solutions in place to actually help you. So one of the things that you can do is you can go to the gbaglobal.org site and once you become a member, you have the opportunity to get free, uh, training. This is a training that was created by myself and the Blockchain Academy, and you can get that free training. If you also go to the National Digi Foundry, you can get that same training. So the, the most important aspect of it is, is that the courses that are available to you right now, uh, allows for you to do two things. One is, is not only to become more proficient in understanding what Web3 technologies are, including blockchain AI, you know, the Metaverse. All, all of these things are, are there. But the other thing is, is that it allows for you to get certifications. Both of these organizations allow you to get certifications from my company, which is the Web3 certification board. So you can get that. Essentially the training for, for no cost. But yeah, my background is, is I was in financial training. I owned a company that did training for tier one investment banks and hedge funds and wealth management firms. And it was actually Morgan Stanley asked me about blockchain, um, and said, do you have a course on that? And at the time, uh, I was barely, barely proficient in enough to know how to spell it, let alone anything about it. But yeah, uh, so I said, sure. And we delivered our first course in 2015. But then I had the pleasure of meeting Gerard. And so my background has always been in corporate training, but it was in the financial sector for a very, very long time. And then it's transitioned to the blockchain space and, uh, then more recently to the web3 space. When I say recently, since like 2021. But, you know, the thing that I think that we should be taking away from this is this, is that as we think about this talent displacement and the economic shock that people are undergoing, we need to realize that there's this workforce realignment. And the very first thing that Omri actually said, and Gerard actually said this, and that is you are not going to be replaced by AI, but you are going to be replaced by somebody who knows AI. And the beautiful thing about it, even though blockchain is, uh, an integral part, blockchain is the trust factor that is being introduced for this emerging technologies. It's going to be the thing that keeps everyone honest. It's going to keep the institutions honest, it's going to keep the government honest. So don't think of blockchain as something that is anything more than just an infrastructure. It's a road, but it's a road that leads to all the places that you want to go. The second thing that I would say, though, is that you don't have to be a coder. In fact, if you look at the number of development jobs since 2022, it has fallen off a cliff. 2022 was really that peak developer, learn to code, type, aspect. And since then, we're down probably, I don't know, 75, 80%. You know, you have Facebook announcing that now 25% of their code is generated by AI. If you thought of it this way, if you're not a developer, that is okay, because all of these things that Web3 technologies are introducing will allow you to still stay employed. But those of you who don't want to adopt uh, these new technologies, that's really going to be more problematic. I mean, Kevin knows firsthand it's not just AI, it's not just blockchain, it's quantum, um, computing. All of these things are emerging. I mean we really live in an interesting time where we have these emerging technologies arising and creating opportunities that have just never ever existed before. And it's going to be so impactful. So if you're a project manager, you're a creator, a content creator, I mean you could be in marketing anything that you've been doing up to this point in government and enterprise, private sector, you know, in NGOs, the, you know, those quasi, whatever they are, you have an opportunity to learn more. And the most, um, important thing that you should take away is this, is, is that GBA and uh, the National Digi Foundry are uh, both organizations that can help you move forward in that direction.

Speaker C: Hey Brian, can I throw something in here? Because I think it's really relevant. So I, I used to say that the characteristics of people in our organization, they really meant people have met M3 characterizations. The first one is they're out of the box thinkers. The second one is that they're willing to take a risk. And the third is that they're interested in things bigger than themselves. Right. But I need to, I need to mitigate or change that first one that out of the box thinkers, because, and I'm going to circle back to this, I'm going to sideline for a second, but circle right back. If you look at AI, everybody's talking about AI, AI, AI, but what's the problem that they're talking about? It can't be trusted. It hallucinates. Right. And you mentioned this just a minute ago, right? That blockchain is the trust foundation that AI needs in order to be trusted. Right. And it reminds me of when we started thinking about this. While everybody was running towards AI, we started thinking about, but what they're really going to need is they're going to need a blockchain to secure the trustworthiness of AI. And it reminded me of the, the old story about the, the people who generated a lot of wealth during the gold rush, not by digging for gold, but by selling shovels. Right. Blockchain are the shovels to the gold, the AI gold. But then what allowed that person to, to come up with it, uh, with that, that concept is they were just thinking out of the box. They were looking for a whole new box. And while AI is replacing skills, what we really need people to do is to think creatively. It is the creativity, not the skills. The training gives you perspective. And I think that as we move forward, we don't need to learn how to code, we need to learn about how to problem solve. And that's what I would say. What Omri did with his decentralized escrow account, he looked at a problem and he said, hm, how can this technology solve a problem that nobody else has thought about? And again, going back to it's important to communicate and coordinate and to develop relationships with other people is so that you can whiteboard, you can be creative, right? And then you can bring the people and the resources together to make that happen.

Speaker D: Gerard, if I could, if I could just build off of that. So I was recently, I recently attended ETH Denver, Ethereum Denver and the hackathon there. And prior to the hackathon there was a four day bootcamp where they're kind of teaching you solidity and just different concepts to kind of prepare you for the hackathon. One of the big things that they taught us was that, you know, building a product, you know, the coding is the last thing you do, right? The actual development of the code and the programming of the smart contracts, right. First you really need to, you know, really refine your solution, your idea and kind of spec it out in almost a visual way, right. We used a web app called Figma, which is a, just kind of a whiteboarding tool just like you mentioned, right. To whiteboard, you know, all of the functionalities, right? You know exactly what your product is going to be doing. And that's really the major part of, you know, planning, you know, and building your product is figuring out what problem it solves and how it's going to function. And that all is way more important than the actual coding side like I mentioned before, right. You know, programmers, coders, right? You know, there are many of those. That's a huge industry, right? That's something that know can be taught fairly easily. But the uh, the creativity and the problem solving, putting everything in place, that's really where the main skill set is that we need more of.

Speaker C: Brian, a real quick question then Kevin, then I'll throw it back over to you, Brian. You guys have a whole bunch of training, right? And a lot of the training has to do with like domain and helping people understand context, right? What kind of training do you have available or you would recommend people take so that they could understand the broad overview that would facilitate them to be able to identify problems that this technology could solve.

Speaker E: So you're right, a lot of the focus that we've had is very technology specific. It's segmented by, you know, sectors, industry sectors. But you know, the thing that you really need to take away from this is this, is that there are two skills that have been under trained and people have lost these skills, and that is critical thinking and design. Critical, uh, design thinking. Those are two different things. One is problem solving and one is, is creating a framework. The real key to a lot of the problems that we're facing with because we're undergoing such a rapid transformation, we have to learn how to actually understand and think. You know, unfortunately, we live in a time where our politics dominates us and we've given up the ability to think, you know, in too much of our lives. So the thing to that you should take away more than anything, uh, I mean, I would absolutely encourage you to go to the National Digi Foundry and go to the GBA to get your training. These are, uh, important things. And then you'll, that will lead you to get a certification with me. But the thing that you should take away more than anything is, is you need to work on and you can get these things from YouTube and every, I mean there's a lot of places critical thinking and critical design thinking. If you can start to master those two things, that will actually be quite a differentiator for you.

Speaker B: Yeah, this is awesome. I, I think the day's roundtable is just going to, uh, blow the doors off. There's so much that we have covered during this last few minutes. I mean, as we are sort of coming up to the close of this first segment, I just wanted to, I guess as ask, what have you learned from this powerful discussion that we've had here over the past hour or so?

Speaker C: You know, the funny thing is I knew you're gonna ask me that question and I'd made a mental note that I should write down things as we went so that I would be able to answer it. But, but I found the conversation so engaging, I didn't even touch my paper. What it really highlighted to me is that with problems there's opportunities. Right. And I, uh, can share this from my personal life. Right. When a door gets slammed in your face, a lot of times people stare at the door, they yell at the door, they say it's not fair, they try to open the door back up. And my perspective has always been to immediately turn around and go find A new door. Right. And so as we look at the experiences that Omri went through, he had an opportunity, right. While everybody else was kind of in panic mode. And I know this from conversations with him. He thought, okay, well, what kind of opportunity does this create for me? Right. And recognizing that, he took advantage of the things like the National Digi Foundry and GPA and the videos that are available and the, uh, relationships and the courses, there's a lot of pathways forward, right? And those pathways are exciting. But the most important part of those pathways is to sort of take a deep breath and rather than panic, look around and say, well, what are the problems that need to be solved? Right? And how can either I, or. Or how can I and a group of other people that are passionate about the same thing? How can we come together and solve those problems? And what tools and training do we need? But it's. It's an exciting thing if you look, if you look forward and just don't freak out about the. The door being shut.

Speaker B: Absolutely. I think I've taken away sort of two, uh, important ideas or thoughts that I think are really critical if you're in the midst of this change. The first is that domain experience is the most important skill that you have. It's not the tools. You can learn tools, but it's your experience and how to apply the tools to address the challenges of, uh, within your domain. All right? So it's all that experience you have that, uh, makes m you valuable in your industry. And you got to remember that it's not the tools, it's your experience. The second thing is that, you know, you see all these movies and they say robots are going to replace the humans, artificial intelligence are going to replace the humans. A robotic process engineering application is going to replace the humans. But, no, the humans are not going away in this equation. It's all about the humans that can best leverage the tools. The tools of blockchain, the tools of artificial intelligence, the tools of rpa. So it's about the humans learning the tools. And that's where things like the blockchain, um, academy, and the certification board and having one thing you didn't mention, Brian, is the Soul Bound credentials, so that you can actually prove on a blockchain that you have the skill set and also that portfolio that shows that you've actually applied these things successfully. So the humans aren't going away. You just got to make yourself the next version of yourself with these tools. Any final word there, Gerard?

Speaker C: No. Listen, I think. I think you summed it up beautifully with that. I want to thank everybody for, uh, being with us so much. Brian and and Omri, this was fantastic. Kevin, as always, enjoy your friendship. Listen, we're looking for sponsors for future events, so if you'd like to sponsor one of these or a group of these in the future, uh, please send an email to eventsbaglobaluh.org and we'd love to talk to you about sponsoring this and so that we can promote you through the National Digi Foundry and the gba.

Speaker B: Thank you very much.

Speaker D: Thanks, everyone.

Speaker A: Thank you for supporting Digital Transformers and for being a part of our global Supply Chain now community. Please check out all of our programming at Supply Chain Now. Make sure you subscribe to Digital Transformers anywhere you listen to or view the show and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. See you next time on Digital Transformers.