Adam Dorfman – Founder | If When Then – The Future of Work: Going Beyond Blockchain

• 85 percent of students go to university to get a job and 50 percent of industries are going to be different in a decade or so
• 30 percent decline in higher education enrollment in the US is really due to the fact that 66 percent of them think they’re learning the wrong skills – they would pay to go to school if they thought they were learning the right thing
• There’s a global skills gap – a lot of people are trying to solve it in the traditional educational system but we think the solution is in the non-traditional educational ecosystem
• We have an open platform for job seekers to acquire skills in a community environment
• In Central Eastern Europe there’s the highest amount of talent and we want to connect people here with global employers – we have about 80 partners in the CEE region
• From profits to purpose: the future of jobs
• The problem – WWF says 65 percent of students in elementary schools will end up working in jobs that don’t exist now
• The most important skill for the future: how to deal with emergence, with things changes and how to make informed decisions about what to study – that’s what’s missing from the current educations system.
• Platform business models have already changed markets – 5 of 5 of America’s largest companies are platforms.
• Jack Ma estimates 90 percent of all businesses will be conducted through platform models
• Why are platforms so dominant? They are a more efficient marketplace, there’s a reputation mechanism, removes gatekeepers, digitizes interactions, changing the local maximum
• Don’t expect current leaders to lead; the innovator’s dilemma – history has shown that traditional companies have the innovation – Blockbuster  had an opportunity to buy Netflix in 2004, but they said no because they were busy optimizing their business – they are not the right people to ask about innovation
• Blockchain companies forget that a platform is about integrating networks, partnerships, collaboration, cooperation
• Profit rake follow network effects: who will pay? Many will sell personal data to third parties
• Platform innovations are going to change a lot of things – smart home: recipe creators will build a reputation; smart factories, 3D printing: finding the right designs and templates will be done through a platform, with reputations; Smart cities – how are robots going to interact: through a platform, a standard protocol for interaction
• When you think of the future of jobs, you have to think like an astronaut, think of things you haven’t thought of before, not just improving things that already exist
• The intermediation of the data has been decentralized through blockchain – meaning people could technically analyze it –
• Three advantages to blockchain:
  • a global funding mechanism – decentralizing venture capital – of the USD 9 billion raised recently, most of it went to developing areas that didn’t have access to funding before; the other two benefits are access and learning – this technology is not ready yet, but it will emerge
• Tokens have nothing to do with profits, they’re about purpose

Like the internet enabled everyone to become a journalist, the global token marketplace will enable anyone to become an investor 

Lucian Opris, Senior Associate Office Agency | Colliers International Romania : The Future of Real Estate: Improving Trust and Transparency

• We will become obsolete if we don’t offer nee value to our clients
• In real estate, peer to peer transactions would cut our the middlemen: banks, brokers like me, and escrow company holders. While for a private individual things would improve if he buys a flat, So far, you cannot negotiate through smart contracts. A broker needs to do that and know that the landlord can secure the next loan from the bank. The broker knows that and can negotiate it for the tenant. I wouldn’t sign a lease agreement, not even a smart contract without a lawyer. This we consider added value and at this moment specifically will not be able to be replaced by a machine.
• Tokenisation is very simple. You can own a piece of whatever real estate you like. You can have a small part of a skyscraper in London or own a little bit of the local mall.
• In real estate we check the deeds . If it is a distributed ledger I think it’s far faster to take a decision and say I will buy or not buy this. The immutability is in the land registry. There are countries that have done well here. Not rich countries in fact. The best example is Honduras and lots of people bought property here. Georgia is also there and Estonia is a pioneer in everything connected to blockchain.
• There’s a lot of property in Bucharest with no owner. Then nobody invests in it, because of that.
•  I don’t have a problem with becoming obsolete if raising Africa from poverty, sending money to the Philippines with 2 pct fee, clean and democratic elections, transparent government purchases becomes a reality.
• As far as I’m concerned, blockchain is an instrument of trust.