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This transcript has not been edited — please listen to the podcast to confirm any statements made by speakers.
Alex Ford-Carther, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder of Sprinter:
What's up guys back at the future work podcast here with Brian. Alex on the mic, I just kind of want to touch on the end of conference season, we, you know, post COVID, and everybody's kind of back meet and meeting and mingling again. You went to, I guess three big conferences this summer Permissionless, Consensus and NFT.NYC, I joined you at Consensus, and we'll talk about that. Also NFT.NYC, why don't you kind of give listeners kind of a rundown on kind of the three, three different conferences kind of the differences between the two, or the three and kind of maybe talk a little bit about Permissionless. And we can talk more about the others?
Brian Shields, CEO & Co-Founder of Sprinter:
Sure, yeah. No, I mean, they were all great. And you know, at the end of the day, like you said, after COVID like everyone kind of retreated to you know, being online only in virtual for so long, like getting everyone back in person was great. I think all the conferences have significantly grown in size from the previous iteration. So, Permissionless in West Palm was awesome. It is like a great location because the weather was awesome. A lot of really good energy, it was kind of like a nice, like, well-contained space conference, like it wasn't too far. Like you could, you know, kind of jump from one event to the other ones and catch all the panels. Really, really cool stuff, you know, a lot of stuff focused on, you know, theory and, and, and kind of, you know, doubts and everything like that, and some good metaphors content as well. And then wrapped everything up for like a blog concert, which is awesome for everyone to follow that from my clubhouse to through Royal. It was cool to actually see his performance come through. And like that was a great way to kind of wrap everything up for Permissionless. So
Ford-Carther:
you were there, right? Kind of right, as the market kind of, was on a downturn or had it already? I think it was, I think it was.
Shields:
I think it was already down. Like, I think that we were joking that it was like, oh, a lot of these would probably be a little bit more fun whenever it had just like last, like, you know, taking a haircut at
Ford-Carther:
80% of their net worth. Yeah, what was it? What was the vibe, like, like,
Shields:
It was great. I mean, like, I think that at the end of the day, a lot of the people that are attending these things are actually builders like I think that they're the people that are contributing in this space. I think that you've seen the evolution from these crypto conferences from you know, where it was like the software engineers or like the kind of like, you know, crypto pirates to you know, the bankers and now you're seeing a little bit more of almost kind of like traditional software, trade show environment, you kind of pop it up a little bit more, less. So Permissionless, but a little bit more Consensus were like kind of the exhibition halls were much more developed, you're seeing a lot more kind of investment, the creativity of the spaces. But you got some of the bigger players in the space industry who would have, you know, pretty well-developed spaces and exhibition halls where you like, you know, people were getting a lot of business done. So, it was pretty cool to watch.
Ford-Carther:
The permissions have any notable speakers or anything that you were able to attend or not so much.
Shields:
I was able to attend like a whole bunch of different speakers. Like I said, a couple on the regulatory side was really interesting. A couple of Ethereum developers talking about the upcoming merge was fascinating. And like, definitely dropped some alpha in that one. So that was a good one to entertain. But yeah, and then you know, we're able to connect with some of the guys from Switzerland, some of our friends from you know, Austria and like around Europe that we're all coming in because it's like they're not going to turn down a reason to go to Miami. Exactly. Or go to Palm Beach or a conference. So overall, that was pretty good. And then Consensus over in Austin was great, but it was hot. It was hot down there.
Ford-Carther:
Yeah. So, let's talk about Consensus. So, you and I both were supposed to attend Consensus. And I think we both flew out. Was it Monday or Tuesday? I forget which day was probably more about getting in there before the conference started.
Shields:
So it was the night before I got in late because I had, you know, travel delays.
Ford-Carther:
So, all the time our planes where you got to tell the story, though. It was. So, my flight got in, I landed. I get a text from Brian, or he's on the plane and sending messages to me like, “Hey, like my plane is delayed.” I was like, okay, no big deal. “It's like, it's missing a part.”
Shields:
So, like, we're sitting there, like, we're bored the whole flight. And so, it's me, it's February. It's a bunch of guys from Chicago all going down to Consensus. And like, we know that we see each other on the plane. So, we all board the whole plane and we're all sitting there waiting, and we're getting ready. You know, we're done, like taxying. “Hey, everybody, like we're going to have to get everyone off the plane. Like we're missing a part.” It's like, well, the wings are here. And they're like, “No, we got to make sure this parts here,” and it's like, well, first of all, like, I don't know how this plane got here. And like, I don't want to be this guy. But it's like this bird can fly. Right? Like this plane came here from somewhere else. This is fine. I don't want to say this is like a critical feather on this bird. But this bird can fly. So anyway, they get us all off. We have to just sit there, we're waiting. It's like an hour and a half go by like we're sitting in like we're just getting worked on like, yeah, we're all just sitting on our laptops and at the gate and then we're getting an announcement like, “Oh, we don't have any updates.” Now, all of a sudden, we see the pilots and the flight crew, I'll just leave and start walking down the terminal. Somebody got, and like, they're just not telling us. And then they're like, “We can't move the plane until this is figured out.” And so then like it was, you know, just everyone was a travel nightmare at that point. And so like, one guy couldn't make it at all, because he couldn't get there later. I didn't get there till like midnight, or whatever. So I gotta get into the hotel. It's after midnight. And just like I’m cool, like, wake up, like, I'll see in the morning, we'll have breakfast and like, we'll go hit this conference. Right, then you don't want to tell him what happens.
Ford-Carther:
Yeah, so…I was down there, I was, it was hot as hell down there. We were, you know, I was there Monday, checking out Austin, kind of getting set up for the conference, and playing gets delayed. So, I'm just kind of bumming around with a little work done and trying to meet a few folks. But then he gets in late, late, same night. And then the next morning, well, I get a text message from my wife saying the kids are sick in the hospital. So needless to say, I had to fly right back from Consensus. I never even checked into the conference, I think I went to the conference with Brian and then straight to the airport and hopped the next flight back. So, I miss Consensus, I don't have any stories to tell from all the fun shenanigans that went down or just all the kind of conference schedule. So, I'll have to lean on you, Brian, and kind of give that recap. But can I guess just talk us through Consensus a little bit? And it's obviously one of the bigger ones that's been around for quite a few years. And one that we've known about, and, you know, obviously being pretty early in crypto, I guess 2016-2017. You know, maybe talk to what Consensus was like versus, you know, Permissionless?
Shields:
Yeah, it was definitely larger. Right. So just in general, Austin was definitely invaded by crypto pros. And like, it's not just crypto dudes on scooters. And like, Rainey Street was completely taken over. Like a lot of the local VCs were hosting events and like, they're like, you know, big old grant houses and stuff like that. And it was cool. But you know, it's a big exhibition hall. So, it's definitely on a larger scale, compared to Permissionless. I think that both programming was excellent. I think that Consensus was just, you know, it was physically more far-flung because of the size of the exhibition hall. So like, the exhibition hall itself was kind of like, you know, crypto science fair, as always, like, everyone's got cool stuff going on. And you're learning about all these interesting projects, like what people are doing. And that, you know, that's always great to see. But then, some of the stages that were, like, really, really interesting, speakers were all coming up. And they were like, kind of like at the opposite ends of this huge space. And so you'd actually kind of be like juggling, juggling a little bit of your schedule to try to catch them all, which was unfortunate. But I remember specifically, we saw this one guy sitting there, and he's talking about the Bahamas as like a place to build your businesses for you know, and how they're trying really hard to like, attract with business. And so they're talking to my friend, and I was like, Man, this guy's making a really good case for the Bahamas. Like, it's pretty cool. And then he ends up. So who is that guy? And it's like the Prime Minister of the Bahamas.
Shields:
Yeah, no, he was a very impressive guy. But yeah, that was just the type of thing like, you know, you're literally getting heads of state and you're getting guys talking about their, you know, their Metaverse game project with their fantasy tokens, and then you get, you know, heads of state, you know, principals from law firms, like, you know, financial luminaries, and big bankers. So, I think that the caliber of the groups of panelists and speakers at both those conferences were fascinating. And they just brought a lot of really, high-level intellect and thought leadership to the space
Ford-Carther:
Jumping to NFT.NYC because you know, different bear, I'll go on record, totally different vibe. You know, I think that I went in there with a kind of a different expectation, I probably should have done a little more research on my part. But, you know, New York is New York. And you know, we had to get there. Because, you know, definitely being in the space and kind of the NFT stuff that we're working on for Sprinter. It was a must, must-attend event for us. And, you know, a lot of cool stuff coming out of there. But definitely a different vibe than the other two conferences, you know, touch on that a little bit.
Shields:
Yeah, one of the things that we saw was a lot more of the kind of game-fi space and like the NFT in-game development, which was interesting. And so like, we were kind of talking about how we could see that the NFT space evolving into kind of like games, toys, collectibles, you know, fashion music sports. So, it was just kind of like a scavenger hunt of like, what are you going to do next? Like he had doodles and gutter cats and everybody under the sun was doing something. We ended up on this some, you know, like rooftop, like penthouse parties, and like Hell's Kitchen and bouncing around Midtown, like all over the place. But it was really cool. And I do think that you know, between the stuff we saw like Rockefeller, and we recorded or sorry, Radio City Music Hall and the Marriott that was like the main event, host space. There's some great stuff on here we saw Spike Lee talking about like NFTs and films. And that basically goes off on like a tangent about the last time.
Ford-Carther:
Yeah, there's definitely some good stuff. I think my takeaway from NFT.NYC would be, you know, anybody listening that wants to go next year, it's like, you don't necessarily have to do the main conference, there's so many satellite events happening with, you know, various dials and communities. And then also, you know, just big, big organizations and investment groups, it's New York. So I think the one thing that, you know, I was in a little chat thread, and the running joke was NFT.NYC was figuring out where everyone else was at, and kind of if you're at the right or wrong party, or right or wrong event, so I think, you know, it was spread out everywhere, you know, you kind of could set your own schedule and go at your own pace. And, you know, I think, you know, based on whatever community you had, or whatever NFT you had, you're probably going to lean towards doing some of those events, we went to the billing style event, which was pretty awesome. And obviously, you know, other folks had big events like Bassy, and Doodles, and there was the Cool Cats exhibit, and I, everyone's partying. So, you know, if you're looking to kind of go there with the community, obviously jump in, in those discords, and maybe join the committee before you go next year. Or just, you know, check the list, and see if it's something that piques your interest to attend as far as events.
Shields:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I certainly think that you know, if you're already involved in some of these communities, you're gonna have a better time, like, at any of these conferences. Like because you know that these satellite events are happening, you have, like, you're already on the list, so to speak. But if you're new to this space, and you're not, you know, not actively engaged in some of those communities, like the, you're able to often attend them anyway, sometimes they're gonna be token gated, sometimes they won't be. So just because you're not an existing NFE holder, and not an existing member of some of those groups doesn't mean you can't go and check some of that stuff out, you might have a longer wait in line. And some of those would have a pretty big way, or you just won't make the cut. But that doesn't mean that they're necessarily always going to be closed events. So that is something to keep in mind. For people that might go in the
Ford-Carther:
Yeah, and maybe you can kind of jump in and talk about some of the link-style stuff, but I can kind of talked to one of the events that I went to. I'm in a little community a little, I guess, the air app, you know, Web2, 3, that they call it, you know, the project that Jordan, Jordan’s son, and whatnot are working on. And, you know, I jumped in that project at the man, you know, it's just obviously growing up in Chicago, you know, big fan, big fan of Jordan, and just kind of a basketball guy myself, and I thought it was a cool project, you know, to kind of see-through as far as you know, I like sports. And so, kind of seeing how that all worked out from like NF T's and sports and kind of how that works. So, it just so happened that the NBA draft was the same week as NFT.NYC, so we're already in New York. And by being a holder of the token, you know, they invited me to the NBA Draft. And, you know, obviously, me and some of the other folks that are in the community, so end up going to Barclays on Thursday night went to the draft and hung out, and met some people and they're all you know, that platform is built on Solana, allowed us a lot of folks work out of the same office that we work out of in Chicago. And so, I met some new people that I hadn't met before they were all Chicago based. And so it's a perfect example of in real life events that, you know, add a lot of benefit to me and add value to like a community holder of the token.
Shields:
Yeah, definitely. Like you said, we both went to the link-style event in Herald Square at the Five Iron so anyone who's listening who's not familiar, like, you know, Five Iron it's kind of like a golf simulator. And so, like this location, I like 2025 bays, maybe it was like probably four or 500 people at this event. It was great they rented the whole place out; you know, it was you know, we they had beer sponsors, there was food through the venue. Everyone's you know, meeting everyone, like everyone, for the most part, was from kind of across the country. And then obviously, there's a big east coast contingent because there are locals, but then links themselves like they've already gotten people you know, meeting up to like golf courses all across the country, they just did a link up in Chicago and like Philly, just the other day. And so, I do think you're right. Like, I think that a lot of people that are kind of outside of the crypto space that are kind of looking at these NF T's and looking at these, like, oh, no, it's about a community and they go, Well, what's that really mean? But they're like, these people are getting together in real life. Like, there are actually things that are happening. And it's like, this isn't like like, like future utopia or anything like that, like these are already, you know, digital communities that are like kind of getting together in real life.
Ford-Carther:
Yeah, both groups are, you know, examples that are not necessarily like full Metaverse, like, they've got real-world use cases. You know, and obviously, groups like BAYC. And some of the more popular doodles are some of the more popular kinds of groups. You know, we probably get some people on that kind of talk to those experiences. But, you know, generally speaking, if you're looking at conferences and are looking to get into web three, jumping into one of these groups, buying the NFT for those groups, whether it's at the man or on open sea, and then you know, attending some of these real-world events is a great way to kind of get your foot in the door and kind of get your feet wet as far as you know what a Web3 experience could be like for you.