Blockchain technologies including decentralized finance (DeFi), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and Web 3.0 offer unique opportunities to both serve and create opportunities for populations that are now underserved because of conscious and unconscious bias, according to the panel of industry experts who spoke during the session “Creating Diversity in the Metaverse” at the SoCal Women’s Leadership Summit 2022 on Nov. 4 in Los Angeles.
The Summit was co-located with the Infinity Festival Hollywood event, and held as both a live, in-person event and online via the MESAverse virtual platform.
During the session, the panel discussed how avatars and other identity tools within the metaverse can be used to make members feel represented and welcome.
They also talked about how the various blockchain-based technologies can be used to bank the unbanked or underbanked, create merit-based opportunities for young techs who may not have degrees from prestigious institutions and how these technologies may be among the best tools to manage income inequality in the future.
Although those opportunities exist, we have to be careful to safeguard the tech from the same kinds of unconscious bias we see creeping into other new technologies including artificial intelligence and machine learning (coded bias).
The panel also provided suggestions on how to safeguard the opportunities of blockchain from the same sorts of biases.
New Tech Creates New ‘Pathways’
“I am a professional tech explainer and I explain technology to people who know nothing about technology, and I help people who know a lot about technology learn to speak to people who don’t,” moderator Jeanette DePatie, lead writer and analyst at Propellerhead, told attendees.
“I’ve been writing about blockchain for about eight years now so I guess that makes me fairly early in the space,” she said. “But I’m very excited to speak with you about this because one of the things that I’ve seen is how new technologies create new pathways.”
To underscore just how significant of a market the metaverse is expected to become, she pointed to a statistic from McKinsey & Company predicting the market is “likely to be worth $5 trillion by 2030.”
So it is a rapidly growing market and “so there’s a lot of opportunities to talk about,” she added.
A Huge ‘Wealth Transfer’
“This is the largest wealth transfer in our lifetime and hopefully some of it will transfer to [the] female population in a bigger way than it has,” according to Mariana Danilovic, managing director at Web 3.0 accelerator Infiom. She noted that others she’d worked with in the past in the metaverse sector were mostly male.
“Within Infiom, we started from day one looking for opportunities for untapped communities to get access to resources and capital because that’s what it’s going to take,” she said.
She went on to offer some advice: “You really should build something if you can in [the] metaverse because this is the time to do that.”
‘Many Opportunities’ For Women
Already, “there’s so many opportunities for women to get involved, I would say,” in this market, according to Heidi Pease, head of investment products at Wave Financial
“If someone’s looking for a career transition, the ecosystem has grown up in many ways,” she said, explaining: “When I started in 2016, I could have said I was an expert in blockchain and now I can’t. It’s evolved so much that” whatever field you’re an expert in currently, “we need it in the blockchain or Web 3.0 ecosystem.”
She added: “If you’re a designer, if you are an engineer, if you are a community manager, if you’re in compliance; we need all of that. And we’re still such a newer ecosystem that even if you don’t have the Web 3.0 experience on your resume, companies are looking for those that are experts in that particular field.”
She also agreed with Danilovic that there is a “tremendous opportunity for a startup.” Pease added: “In fact, some of the world’s largest protocols, the CEOs of them are women…. [but] I think this is a great opportunity for women all around.”
Years of Experience Not Needed (Or Possible)
Christina Trampota, managing director at Innovate Grow Scale, noted she came from a product management background.
Regarding “anyone who tries to say you have to have a lot of years of experience in this space,” it is important to keep in mind that this sector “has only been around so long and it’s evolving so quickly,” said Trampota.
Besides, she explained: “What was relevant two to four years ago might not be working today. Things are evolving” so quickly.
Her prior experience was in Web 2.0 and she worked at both Facebook and Twitter before, “so I’ve seen it from that world and although people say this is Web 3.0 [and] it’s different, in order to scale, in order to reach people, you still might need to connect to other ecosystems, other sorts of communities [and] ways of reaching people around the world – both those that are already connected as well as those who are disconnected, or should we say not as connected yet.”
And that, she said, is “what excites me; it’s a great opportunity and so many areas for innovation and new ecosystems to create from there.”
The SoCal Women’s Leadership Summit was presented by Ateliere with sponsorship by Amazon Studios, Softtek, Fortinet, Prime Video, SHI, Amazon Web Services, PacketFabric and Presidio.
To learn more about MESA’s events, contact [email protected].