Devcon5 is upon us and coincides with Japan Blockchain Week — happening now! We’re sad not to be attending, but for those of you in Osaka for the annual Ethereum gathering, here is a curated list of events, talks and workshops that we would love to attend if we were there. There’s a great mix of programming for developers, researchers, infrastructure operators and more. As a UX Designer I was excited to see several product design and user experience-oriented talks.

Dan Shields is one of the most enthusiastic blockchain advocates and community builders we've met; in addition to co-founding and organizing Denver's popular weekly blockchain meetup, being an instrumental organizer of ETHDenver and ETHBoston, Dan has been an active builder of the Denver and global blockchain communities for the last two years. His popular meetup fosters creative thought and insight reminiscent of the Homebrew Computer Club and his startup Aproflow aims to revolutionize the way bright young students enter the workforce.

Blockchain technology has been on your radar for some time. You’ve done your research, read the case studies and now you’re convinced that transitioning to a distributed ledger data management system is the right decision for your business. And you may be right! The current systems in place for managing business data are fragmented, vulnerable to fraud, and slow to detect falsification, whereas blockchain, a form of distributed ledger technology, can provide increased security, accountability, higher efficiencies and often times lower cost. 

Blockchain is becoming mainstream. For many in the crypto community, this acceptance is long overdue. However, as with any new emerging technology or industry (e.g. artificial intelligence or marijuana legalization) there remains a fair share of skeptics; those who are comfortable with the status quo and are quick to point out flaws in the system, opportunities for misuse, and the potential for the already disenfranchised to be further taken advantage of. For those of you who are cautiously optimistic and want to learn more about blockchain, we want to debunk some of the popular myths for you.

Interested in emerging technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence? What about environment-focused technologies related to recycling or reducing carbon emissions? If so, the MIT Enterprise Forum Startup Spotlight is happening next week in Boston and you won’t want to miss it. We’re excited Esprezzo has been selected to participate! Here’s what to expect.

By now, you’d be hard pressed to name an industry that hasn’t begun exploring the potential of blockchain technology. Increased transparency, reduced transaction costs, faster settlements, user control over data and true network decentralization — the benefits could revolutionize many industries. With cryptocurrency being the most mainstream application of blockchain technology, it may not come as a surprise that the banking and finance industry seems to be leading the way in adoption.

This past Tuesday evening we held our latest blockchain education event, The Disruptive Power of Blockchain in Business, at General Assembly’s Boston campus. While our previous events covered introductory topics such as Blockchain 101 and An Introduction to Crypto Trading, this panel discussion focused on the real world business applications of blockchain technology that are impacting traditional business processes today. Not tomorrow, not five years from now, but today.

One of our primary goals at Esprezzo is to create tools that make it less complex and time-consuming to create and manage modern web and decentralized apps. For developers, this often means getting common boilerplate code and services out of the way by relying on tested and proven implementations of things like authentication, user accounts, application structure, compiler/transpiler pipelines etc. There are tools attempting to solve these problems to various degrees by offering web frameworks with plugins, or completely serverless backend solutions that replace the database and server-side app layer with a REST API.

Our next General Assembly event is only two weeks away! Join us for The Disruptive Power of Blockchain in Business, where you'll hear industry experts in healthcare, supply chain, banking and IT talk about how blockchain technology is already transforming their businesses and what they expect to happen next.

This is Part 2 of a series on the blockchain developer job market.

In Part 1, we presented high level findings from our research on blockchain developer jobs as a result of surveying major U.S. recruiting sites. We were inspired to conduct our own research after seeing “Blockchain Developer” listed as the number one emerging occupation in LinkedIn’s 2018 U.S. Emerging Jobs Report. Quite a few people responded to Part 1 with insights and experience, and we’re excited to share insights from one of them here.

David Gadd consults with organizations regarding talent acquisition — specifically, helping them grow their in-house Blockchain teams. David didn’t agree with all our conclusions (it wouldn’t be very interesting if he did) so we reached out to have a conversation around what he’s been seeing, and are excited to report back to you with another perspective from an industry insider with their ear to the street.