Indicio recently participated in the Hyperledger Global Forum September 12-14 of this year, in this article we will touch on some of the reasons we attended and why we would highly recommend it to anyone in the community.
By Tim Spring
Some background on the event
The Hyperledger Global Forum is a once-yearly, three-day “mega event” put on by the Hyperledger Foundation to bring members of the open source, enterprise blockchain community together to discuss the state of the technology, the business environment, accomplishments, and future projects.
An open source project of the Linux Foundation, The Hyperledger Foundation houses premier blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) toolboxes, repositories, and libraries. It’s widely known as a place for people who are interested in blockchain to come and contribute to open source projects and participate in the community.
This year’s Global Forum was the first time since the pandemic to be held in-person, and people were particularly excited to attend this one in Dublin.
Why Indicio was there
Indicio was involved in a few sessions at the event, the highlights being Heather Dahl, CEO of Indicio on how to best solve market problems with open source verifiable credentials (with IdRamp CEO Mike Vesey), and the state of decentralized identity, where we are now and where we’re going with Kaliya Young, Marie Wallace, and Drummond Reed.
In addition to speaking engagements, Indicio has always been involved with and dedicated to giving back to the open source technology community, and Hyperledger Global Forum is a great event to share ideas and make connections. Some of the notable sessions include Jim St. Clair, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation Public Health discussing best practices for blockchain in healthcare, Liz Tanner, Secretary of Commerce for the state of Rhode Island talking about how Rhode Island is leading the way with digital identity, and a representative from the Government of British Columbia demonstrating the Hyperledger Aries Bifold digital wallet in action.
Why you should make it a priority to attend the next Global Forum
There are three important reasons why you should attend the next Global Forum — if you are on the fence about whether or not you should go.
There is so much more to the event than just sessions, this is a place for conversation with peers about similar goals. Those refreshment breaks offer the chance to have the kinds of discussion, planned and serendipitous, that just can’t happen in the same way online.
You’ll get to ask questions. It can be daunting to ask questions in a working group full of experts or you may feel like there simply isn’t the time to address them. At Global Forum, the Hyperledger Foundation does a great job fostering an atmosphere that is welcoming to all skill levels, and most people are happy to talk at length about their experiences.
We can’t stress this last point enough: you’ll get to be a part of the community. The open source community working on decentralization technology is growing, but is still small enough where people can and do get recognized for their contributions. Being able to make face-to-face connections can give you the opportunity to learn about unfamiliar projects, how to join working groups, give you the chance to gain more experience, and, ultimately, make your own contributions.
For a taste of what some of the sessions are like we would encourage you to watch the panel discussion on the state of decentralized identity with Heather Dahl.
To learn more about the technology Indicio was presenting and talking about check out Proven, the complete Trusted Digital Ecosystem for verifiable credentials.
