Rui: 0:00

A lot of people are not, including myself, are not realizing the sources of value that AI will generate. I think we're not. We don't have that. Let's call it periscope view to say, okay, this is going to dramatically change so much that it's going to end poverty, it can end war, it can end all these let's call it these challenges of mankind and society.

Joeri: 0:26

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Juri Bilast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm excited to be joined by Rui Hi. Rui Boatert how?

Rui: 0:39

are you Boatert Joeri? I'm doing great and you?

Joeri: 0:44

Yeah, I think, like you, a busy day, Rui. I know you have a lot of meetings to prepare the conference the CODA conference in Porto. I also had a few. I'm giving AI workshops next week in Belgium and need to prepare for that, but we took some time for our episode. Now, guys, if you're wondering who is Rui, Rui Serapicos he has a lot of activities, but just if I can name two, he's an advisory board member at the Genius Insights and also he's the president of the Portuguese Blockchain Alliance that I'm now collaborating with Web3CMO Stories. Welcome, Rui. Anything you want to add to my introduction.

Rui: 1:26

No, I think I think it's more the person than the the. How do you say the roles? I'm sure you've heard the story that it's called Outside. So a lot of people have fantasy and lots of roles, but once they they no longer have the roles. It becomes void for some people. So I'd rather go with a person which is just Rui than with the roles. But I'm so. You did a great presentation and I'm not going to add any more roles that I have.

Joeri: 1:54

Yeah, people, they can find everything about you. So, guys, rui, he's deeply involved in ecosystem building. So, Rui, my question for you is yeah, because you have a building to Portuguese Blockchain Alliance, what does it take to build a thriving Web3 community? And, yeah, and maybe some of the lessons you want to share?

Rui: 2:15

My experience with building communities started way before the Web3 community building, so I'm just going to share some of the experiences that relate to community building, not just Web3. So, apart from having your own groups and building your own communities, back in 2012 to 2013, I started a community of technology decision makers and in Portugal you may not know this, but it's very set up a community just because people are not as gregarious professionally as they are personally. So people like to gather around a lot with friends and family and groups of friends and so on. But once you're getting into professional communities, it's much more challenging to ask people just to join in. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, the very busy people would in Portugal would rather be with their friends and family than just network professionally, and there's, I would say that there's this cultural thing that people like to be on their own with their I don't want to say comfort zone, but on the zone that they've built with their friends and their families. Building that. I actually had a lot of pushbacks from originally 2012 to 2013. People were saying, no, this is going to be very hard. The Portuguese culture is not that gregarious professionally speaking. So we went from zero to 500 in five years. That community was grew very much.

Rui: 3:54

So we had to have some strategies for community building. My, our initial strategy was let's build an advisory board First and foremost. Just let's sit down with people that understand the community, that understand the problems. Let's I don't want to call it brain picking, but let's just understand what they think and then with that we will build the values and the benefits around that, around those needs. So that's how we started. So we built a very simple advisory board of seven people. We had some supports originally because this was also involved with another international network. We had support from those from the international team and basically from those seven. We went up to a split advisory board of about 25 in Lisbon and Porto.

Rui: 4:51

So the first year was we set up goals. So every year we would set up the 100 goals. So the first year set up 100 members, next year 200 and so on. So we started by building this network of connections through personal connections, through personal invitations rather than mass mail or just to do a lot of activities. That. So we really did it in a concentric way. So the core team would invite other people and so on.

Rui: 5:28

Now, about after 200 members, the critical mass, first and foremost because it's mostly about in those days it was mostly about the technology decision makers. They're always on the move, they're always changing to new jobs and so on. So there's a massive work of community management and there's a massive work of actually updating where they are and what they're doing, what are their challenges or what are their needs and so on. So I would say, after a critical mass of 200, if you don't automate the community and if you don't build the mechanisms and the tools for the community to self update and self manage, it's going to be very challenging. I don't know if I answered your question about that community building, but it was the. It was a good, challenging, great learning lessons.

Joeri: 6:19

No, absolutely what you mentioned, and I can recognize this because I moved from Belgium to Portugal and Portuguese people are very friendly but they like to be with their family. It's not so easy to make these connections, but then I feel like in the Web3 community, people that are in there maybe they are Portuguese, maybe they come from other countries, but now they live here like expats, so like they just, like me, moved here. It's a bit more easier to meet people, to network and to build community. Do you see a difference with the blockchain, the Portuguese Blockchain Alliance, with this community and other communities that you built?

Rui: 6:57

Yes, I see, yes, I see I see a lot of differences and you've mentioned a couple of them which are really relevant. One of them is that when abroad, you tend to be more open to connecting with other people and just getting out of your let's call it I don't want to call it secure base, but your natural base. When you're home, just have your natural base with your friends and your family and even some new acquaintances. But when you're abroad, you just tend to expand more and to interact more and probably more frequently. And that is the case of Web3 and blockchain communities, because they tend to be digital nomads. They tend to find ways to interact, find ways to discover new places to to hang out, discover. So it's much easier.

Rui: 7:50

The way I see it, it's much easier to build a space and that doesn't have to be a physical, it could be a virtual space but build and fill a physical slash virtual space where people would connect and where people would share their experiences.

Rui: 8:06

So that's one thing. It's the nature of the ecosystem and the nature of the theme that leads people to just gather around a lot, just because they want to learn from each other, they want to interconnect, and the other aspect which I think, is really much stronger than the aspect of functional meetings or functional networking like marketing networkers, t-networkers, procurement networkers. It's just that blockchain and the Web3 values. They're about decentralization, they're about a level of independence, a level of a level of even of thinking outside of the box, which leads as well to that attitude of getting to know different projects, different people, different ways of thinking. So that is a different cultural setting where you'd say, yeah, I would definitely see that the Web3 blockchain crowd is way much more outgoing and way much more experimenting than let's call it the functional crowd. Is this your experience? I think you've had some cmo experience as well, so probably we can relate to that as well yeah, absolutely no.

Joeri: 9:24

I can really relate with what you're saying and for me actually I'm most people they don't really like to network. I like to network, I like to network. I am also organizing here in Sintra, where I live now, the Sintra Synergist Retreat, which is different, like a conference. On a conference you can meet a lot of people if you want, or you can just listening or watching presentations, but people meet a lot of people and it can be taking a lot of energy. Now I am doing this retreat where people come together and they have 10, 15, 20 people really make close connections, close networking.

Joeri: 9:56

But then for people to register for such an event, it can be a bit, they can be a bit afraid. Oh, I will be with people that I never met before. So therefore I want to make a kind of preparation time that they get to know each other. And then, by the way you are organizing or you are helping to organize, the coda event in porto will be a good way to meet people there. Can you maybe explain a bit more what is the coda event about, what is the mission behind the event and, and, yeah, what is going on there?

Rui: 10:28

yeah sure, coda is an event on on digital assets. This event, by its nature, is mostly about I don't want to call it enterprise blockchain, because obviously there are digital assets that are not let's call it enterprise, but that there's somewhat a focus on real world, real life experiences on blockchain and R3.

Rui: 10:53

So the focus of this partnership between the Portuguese Blockchain Alliance and the Coda team was let's find all the Web3 slash blockchain projects that we can get our hands on that are applied experiences in real world. So in some cases, just connecting Web2 to F3 or just connecting not even web two, it's just like supply chain technologies or certain technologies that require new ways of approaching the world, and one good example of this is AI and blockchain and vice versa the use of the use of blockchain to support the risks of AI and the use of AI to support the development of blockchain. So that's essentially a very, I would say, pragmatic approach to the content of the conference, and the set of invitees and the set of participants slash speakers are great because they will come and present these real world experiences and they will get back with some value. Also, we are preparing, with some potential sponsors, hackathons on that exactly, on how do we apply blockchain slash AI to real world problems, to world challenges, and so I think it's going to be a great experience on the 7th and 8th of May. We have a great lineup.

Rui: 12:24

The website of the event is called CODAevents, so C-O-D-A? Dot events it's a great time to do an event Porto. It's a great. It's a great town to do an event Porto, Even though a lot of people do events in Lisbon. I think Porto is a great place to be in the environment, the culture, the people. They're great, they welcome you with their arms open, so I think it's going to be a great event in May.

Joeri: 13:58

Yeah, I'm looking forward actually, because I'm now in central Lisbon, might be into the south Algarve, but not yet to Porto, so it's a really good reason to combine visiting Porto with an amazing event. You mentioned AI, so yeah, actually I will also be there. Guys, if you're not listening, I will be moderating the panel around blockchain and then converging with AI, Because for me probably for you, Ruri you just can give me your opinion, but AI is also part of the Web3 definition, umbrella term, as I call it. Web3 consists of blockchain, but also AI, metaverse, crypto and so on. That is actually my definition, DeFi, but I'm curious to hear from you. You mentioned already AI. There are promises, there are risks involved.

Rui: 14:51

Yeah, I think AI is. A lot of people compare AI with electricity. So the way that electricity did change the world, it obviously it's an enabler not just an enabler, but it's an accelerator for multiple things. And so that comparison makes sense. But I don't see, I don't see as limited as electricity. Obviously, now you look back and people, when they didn't have electricity, they couldn't stay up at night. You can't even operate anything without electricity. But the question is the multiple level of change that AI will bring. It's just not comparable One.

Rui: 15:38

In comparing a form of energy and there are many forms of energy with a computational system that is not just a computational system, because some people say we're at the golden days of AI, we're just on the brink of finding the potential, the same with the electricity. We're just on the brink of finding the potential, the same with the electricity, when people, okay, you can automate a lot of things, but the moment with electricity, but the moment we started playing with electricity, we could see that it's just not mechanization or the use of replacing the physical components of society, of replacing the physical components of society, but also the ability to generate new sources of value. And if we transpose this concept back to AI, a lot of people are not, including myself, are not realizing the sources of value that AI will generate. I think we don't have that. Let's call it periscope view to say, okay, this is going to dramatically change so much that it's going to end poverty, it can end war, it can end all these, all these let's call it these challenges of mankind and society.

Rui: 16:56

Now, having said that, although there's, there's, obviously nowadays we cannot do anything without electricity, but we can get autonomous to get electricity. And during the comparison with in the future, we may get into a situation that we will not do anything without AI. And the question is how do we get autonomous? How do we build our own AI, that it's an autonomous power cell that can generate power in a remote place in the world?

Joeri: 17:32

And I love your comparison, Rui. Actually, AI is there. We cannot live without our smartphones, with the internet. Even I use chat, GPT and so forth so many things that if it's not there for a moment, it can be a problem. Same as with social media like LinkedIn, for instance, that we are used to have and then it's not there. Now another interesting panel, and the name on the panel is really exciting for me. It's really making me curious. It's about Mika and, yeah, I'm wondering. You can say the name of the panel if you, and I'm curious. But yeah, what do you expect from that?

Rui: 18:08

from that, I actually coined with the team, obviously where we were in discussions and the panel's called Mika, without falling asleep. Is that the panel that you're talking?

Joeri: 18:19

That's the panel I'm talking about.

Rui: 18:22

And the panel. The logic of the panel is just saying why, every time that I go to a blockchain slash Web3 conference, people fall asleep at Mika's panels or at Mika's presentations, because it's just bringing a lot of regulatory slash compliance not just terms, but over-engineering into something that we should reduce the complexity. What we try, what we're trying on this panel, is just thinking about the, thinking about the markets as something that, or the compliance and regulations is something that people should know how to use it, should know the rules, but they shouldn't know, they should not know all the details of the rule. A good example of this is a lot of people use electricity or AI and they don't even know the way that's supposed to function. And that's exactly the idea for this. The idea is for people to understand that the logic, the mechanics, what's in it for them, what protects them, and reducing the complexity, so that they get a bit of a ha-ha moment during those panels and those discussions.

Joeri: 19:49

Absolutely. Something I always like to ask people that go on my podcast is because the world of Web3 AI is evolving so fast Probably you, with what you're doing. Every day, new things come up. I'm now wondering, Rui, with all the things you're working on organizing, what are you the most excited about that is now happening in the world of Web3.ai or maybe in your daily work life?

Rui: 20:15

Let me start with what I'm not really excited about, which was something that I was extremely excited about pre-COVID.

Rui: 20:23

So it was something like in 2019 or something, and by then there were still some fake news, but not at the level of fakeness let's call it that we had nowadays, or the level of perfection that some fake news can reach.

Rui: 20:41

And in those days, we had this ideal that blockchain would be a great tool to support media obviously, regulators, media regulators to determine if news are fake or not, to determine if news are fake or not, because you would set up a set of activities that would connect publishers, regulators, audiences or representative of audiences, authors, journalists, as well as channels let's put it this way and they would reach an agreement where they would recognize that fake news are essentially very nefarious to the world and we need to find ways and actually the technology is there find ways just to prevent that, and one way of doing that is just having, again, as we use electricity, people don't need to understand that when you're publishing something, you're doing a digital signature that is being recognized and it's immutable, and that it's being placed in a ledger that you will be the sole owner of that let's call it contents that you'll be the sole author if you're the sole writer, now, with that said sole author, if you're a sole writer, now, with that said, ai really complicated things because you can generate a lot of content automatically and who would be the let's call it the author of AI generated content?

Rui: 22:10

But, at the same time, it would help a lot in the area of fake news. So that is something that and answering your question from the upside down perspective that's something that I had lots of hopes and that I had lots of expectations that blockchain would change the fake news landscape, and it has not. What I think blockchain can do is this is where I think that it's most I'm mostly excited about is on new ways of building business and new ways of building governance and building activities that are community-based revenue community-based that are really changing the balance and changing the way people see not just value generation but also value sharing and value distribution. So this is something that we're not at the present moment. We're not experiencing this because I think there has been a lot of overtake from AI into the let's call it the podium of blockchain, but I still believe that there's a lot of, especially in Web3 communities and DAO communities or distributed autonomous organization communities, that this will be the future, and it's a very exciting future.

Joeri: 23:34

Well, it's a really exciting end of this podcast episode. We always try to keep it like in about 30 minutes we are coming at the end, but of course, people now they're on our listening room. They are curious about blockchain alliance, curious about Kodak, curious maybe everything else that you're doing. Where would you like me to send all those people?

Rui: 23:56

Send all those people to all2bc, that's allcardinal2bcsblockchaincom, which is the website of the Portuguese Blockchain Alliance. So, whatever, there are many interviews. Rodrigo has been very active and he's been great on finding all these talents and if they want to be somewhat interviewed or getting involved with the Portuguese Blockchain Alliance, we're very happy to get them involved. Also, visit codaevents, which will be a fantastic event, and, at the same time, if you want to get in contact with me, please contact me on LinkedIn or on Medium. I'm just starting a publication on Medium, so I'm more than happy to reply to all your followership and to just to engage, which is why we're here.

Joeri: 24:47

Absolutely Amazing. And you didn't even mention Rui, because we recorded the podcast together in your tiny car. You have a YouTube channel. I will maybe mention the YouTube channel also in the show notes. What is the name of the channel?

Rui: 25:03

It's the Genius Inside, and thank you for remembering that. That's another great channel, because this is about finding. This is not about saying we're all geniuses or I'm the genius and you're the genius, and so on. This is about finding geniality and finding the genius in some parts of our lives and sharing that with others and sharing that with the world. That's basically it, and the interviews are mostly about finding the genius on what makes someone from Belgium coming to Sintra, for instance, and how did you pivot from one experience to another? Which you have to find let's call it nuggets of geniuses in people's lives, and that's the purpose of the genius inside.

Joeri: 25:49

Yes, I loved your questions by the way that you asked me, so I'm curious to see the final results, Maybe at the moment that this podcast will go live. It will be there, we will see.

Rui: 26:03

Rui, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show. Same here. Great pleasure to be here and hope to see you very soon, even before the korea event.

Joeri: 26:09

Yes, I hope so too, guys. This was again a really cool episode with rui. If you want to meet both of us, come to Porto. The links will be in the show notes. If you think that these episodes on Portuguese Blockchain Alliance or the Coda event is useful for people around you, be sure to share this episode with them. If you're not yet following my podcast, this is a really good moment to subscribe. And yeah, if you haven't given me those five stars as a review yet, this would really help me to reach an even bigger audience and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care, thank you.