Running alongside the London Blockchain Conference 2024, the exclusive Women in Blockchain panel event, hosted in partnership with the London Blockchain Conference and Women in Blockchain Talks, took place at the classy AllBright Mayfair Members Club. The organizers welcomed roughly 50 female blockchain and future tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs, as well as a mixture of London Blockchain Conference attendees, speakers and locals.
Lavinia Osbourne, founder of the Women in Blockchain Talks (also known as the “Oprah of Blockchain”), was present on the night and graciously moderated the evening’s blockchain-themed panel, including Christine Leong of nChain, Lauren Ingram of Women of Web3, and Divya Prashanth of JurnyOn.
“I was honored to be asked to be a partner for tonight’s London Blockchain Conference Women in Blockchain Talks. It’s very important to have these conversations,” Osbourne shared with CoinGeek at the event.
“As I stated on the panel, it’s not just about diversity and inclusion; it’s about highlighting the diversity of talent. We are, first and foremost, talented individuals. But yes, we are women, and representation matters,” she said.
When asked how we are doing with welcoming more talented women in the blockchain space, Osbourne said we are doing ok, but we could be doing better.
After running Women in Blockchain Talks for nearly five years, she said she noticed a lot more women entering the space when non-fungible tokens (NFTs) were at their peak.
“It was all about creativity with NFTs. When you’re looking at the technical element of blockchain, unfortunately, many women are just not interested,” Osbourne said.
“But for a number of women, they were incentivized to come into the space because they saw that they could get rid of the middlemen and start making money from their art…so NFTs incentivized them to come into the space. And it was amazing to see,” she recounted.
Now that the NFT buzz has died down a bit, Osbourne indicated some of those women have since left, and there is a lack of interest in entering the blockchain space because they mistakenly think “tech is not for me.”
“It’s very important that women and people from diverse groups don’t just think about blockchain as something that’s not for them, but something that is an opportunity to add that value in order to create, lead and serve,” Osbourne tells CoinGeek Backstage.
In addition to examining diversity in the blockchain space and how to grow it, the panel covered an array of hot topics within the blockchain space in general. As we look into the future of blockchain’s growth, Osbourne believes the most exciting area lies in tokenization and fractionalization of assets.
“Splitting an asset, DAO, using a smart contract so that many people can be involved or can purchase that asset and create generational wealth. We saw it with crypto, and we will see it with tokenization of real-world assets. So that’s something I’m very excited to see,” she said.
Watch Women in Blockchain Panel: Highlighting need for more diversity in blockchain space
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