0 to Web3 Mastery with SheFi | SheFi Summit Brussels 2024

Transcript

[Music] thank you so much for coming today what positive energy in this room with shifi thank you so much for being here thank you to the sponsors and I'm so excited to host this panel today with an amazing group of women so we have Ornella bries and Gemma here with me today so I'd like you ladies to quickly introduce yourselves and tell everyone how long have you been in web 3 oh web 3 it's about three years well everything changed in the pandemic times as for many people so I'm part of that club um I do web3 education through bankless Academy it's a application that teaches

you about web3 from the very beginning like for your friends and family if they ever ask you like what do you work in you can send them the app to learn uh so yeah but focus on that education and um marketing cool so I'm riches I'm co-founder of Ean Mexico and I'm pretty involved in optimism governance I'm delegate batch holder governor and this season I will serve on the gr Council too so I'm pretty invol on governance and I joined with threee in November 2021 thanks to scholarships like shifi scholarship and other kind of scholarship that allow me to attend this

kind of events and change my life hi I'm Jemma I work at the Stellar development foundation on the ecosystem growth team I manage the Stellar Community Fund which is our open application Awards program and I have been in web 3 for less than a year at SDF great so I'm Victoria and I've been in web 3 since 2018 I used to work with Maggie and others in this room at consensus I'm part of shehai shifi cohort 7 so very proud to be here today so let's start or what challenges did you face when first transitioning to web 3 and how did you overcome them wow a lot of challenges I guess um well a little bit of a context

I'm from Chile so English is not my first language um I currently live in Italy which is also not my language so kind of um the first challenge that I saw in web 3 was actually the the language barrier uh because if you want everyone to participate and be part part of you know decentralized uh internet that we're building is that we have to pay attention at the language barrier so I know English since I was a child but actually trying to learn crypto and web 3 in English it was like a whole it's like a fourth language the slang and you know the jargon the technical difficulties was very very very difficult uh but with patience

consistency as the girls said before it was also helpful to kind of overcome that um other challenges I saw at the beginning now I'm more used to it but it was the amazing yeah number yeah the high number of tools that we have to use to kind of coordinate between ourselves Discord notion a lot of things that I have never heard about before in my life and they were very new so tools and I would say the other challenge was um yeah having meetings and crazy times because you end up you know collaborating and working worldwide with people from like Australia Argentina you know Nigeria New York San Francisco so for someone that's like you know I'm in

C time zone right having um yeah meetings amazing meetings but a very different time zones was very challenging um so yeah I guess that through the web tree Journey you also learn kind of organize yourself to kind of or overcome those difficulties thank you Brees can you tell us how you got into web 3 yes thank you so I used to work for restaurant business and I stopped doing that because the last thing that I had to do was offering a job uh 14 hours for $7 per day so I was like I don't want to continue being part

of this [ __ ] and I got unemployeed and a friend asked me like what is your dream job and I say like something related with finances because I study accounting so finances are pretty interesting but the people that I know in finances they are all day at bank or like in this kind of Corporations and I was like I I'm a mother so for me like having a good like balance between life and work is really important so my second thing was like it's important for me to finish my day of work and enjoy my life enjoy my son like so this was really important for me and he decided to teach me what he knows about

shitcoins and nfts and that's the worst thing that you can do with someone that doesn't have a metam mask don't do that like if it's a woman recommend shifi please like don't put someone new in mem kinds so thanks to that I discover like the cool things about crypto the centralization privacy but freedom and all this cool stuff and I fall in love and I decided to be full-time in crypto right now like I find my PO like the exact thing that I want to do that pay me well I enjoy it I feel appreciated so I think that is success and I desire that for everyone thank

you so Gemma how has the shifi community made a difference for you in your web three Journey yeah so like I said this is all very new to me I met Maggie and found chifi at eth Denver in February of this year um missed the summit because of travel delays but then joined cohort 10 season 10 and just completed that um and I mean it was so incredibly helpful to be on boarding with shifi while I was on boarding at SDF um and from the time I started I was really struck I think by this discrepancy where at the stellar development foundation we're such a gender diverse organization like our CEO is This brilliant woman named denell so

much you know my team is entirely women so much of our team as women but then the folks in the community who are building on the Stellar chain it doesn't reflect that like it's almost entirely men the folks who we're putting these events on for and we're working with and are applying for the money that the program that I run is giving out are almost entirely men and I've been so I've always been so passionate about gender diversity and that was immediately something that really rang a bell for me but you know I didn't know where to start like this is a totally new industry for me and so to start okay so now how how do I how do I fix this problem this gender diversity problem on the Stellar chain how am I supposed to do that and so finding shifi and being able to do things like sponsor

this event and you know have our booth and tell more women about seller and get more women excited about the idea of building on seller it's just been monumental to have access to the Shi Community when it comes to our personal gender diversity goals at SDF amazing thank you so Ornella back to you what projects and leaders most inspire you in web 3 um what projects well I would say that once I started learning about public goods public goods ecosystem um open source all of the builders that are in the public goods ecosystem I really

really admire them a lot I'm happy to also be contributing to the public goods ecosystem through bank Academy um from the most diverse areas right like education um yeah events uh you know technical tools for developers as long as it's open source you know public good I'm like yeah let's go also um things that I also admire like in the space that have inspired me um I would say uh a few women in the space like different phases of my web free Journey have been very like marked by women the first one was being Camila Russo she's also Chilean she wrote a

book that is called the infant machine and that tells a story of the early days of ethereum so that was very inspiring also um another woman that inspires me a lot Amanda casset from the web three marketing site she also wrote a book so yeah very inspiring lady is the first marketer of ethereum now that's a role and she's here with us today awesome um and yeah on the education side U Maggie of course a great force of nature I would say it's amazing the waves that she makes through shifi and also on the public good side uh Matilda from getcoin uh these are like yeah women in projects

first is the people then the project projects uh that inspire me can I answer this one too I'm excited about this one yeah I mean I'm really lucky cuz I spend most of my time looking through submissions from developers who are applying to our program um and I'm just so inspired by so many of the builders in our ecosystem and like the women in particular we just funded a project called curay that's doing like they really Innovative things with crossb payments in Latin America and the Caribbean and the founder her name is Stephanie she's amazing she came to our New York office actually and we got to meet her recently and just to be a part of the Journey of Founders and to to get to for a lot of them this is the first

you know they haven't even started building yet when they come into to SCF and so to get to give them that first funding and then watch them grow from there is just really exciting and it's a really cool part of what I get to do great thank you so bries what tips and tricks can you share with other women and non-binary folks who who are either transitioning into web 3 or navigating their careers in web 3 okay so the first thing is strategy it is really important that you have cleared your goals at what you want with web tree if not you will be lost in the noise and with a lot of information and like scrolling a lot of hours in crypto Twitter like you need to have clear what you want in web tree for example in my

case is having a better quality of life for me and my family and that's why you won't see me being a delegate in 10,000 projects because my time is limitated and what I really want is this so like following other PS doesn't help that uh Second thing finding your place like my friend call it like the the childhood of web tree when you're experimenting and learning and like playing with Defi and checking nfts and d and after when you find something that you love do it and find a way to contribute and to add value to that and on the long term you will find like such good

opportunities uh third thing like I think invest in yourself like for me like I'm a Latin American so like six months ago I was living day by day I don't have any savings and I of course I didn't have any investment so I think one of the first things that I start doing after having better opportunities was like investing in myself investing in English classes because we have a huge career with English and we lost a lot of good opportunities because of that uh I start learning how to swim so I yeah I I can I can do something more than being sitting in a chair during all day um also like I did that for my son

my son goes to baseball goes to swimming like so that changed the life for us and it's good to to invest in yourself and get more opportunities with that um yeah I think I was really afraid to work in my personal brand and I think that is something that women something sometimes have like you don't want to uncomfort other people you want to pass disappears that no one cares about you and you can continue living your life happy but the truth is that if you show your impact if you show your work and what what you are doing you get better opportunities so it's really important to know what you

want to communicate how to how you want to communicate that and in which channels so I think everyone should be thinking about it and I think that's all for me thank you may I add to that point to Rich yeah I think our number one tip for me would to be to Showcase your work even if it you feel it's like beginner level and web 3 everyone is learning so I don't think anyone can say yeah I've been around for 20 years of experience in web3 no that's not happening so whatever ever level that you have of knowledge or maybe just share your journey um on yeah social media or with your friends or in the community that you you start contributing to if you do um yeah showcase your work the project

that I participate nowadays uh that has been a great addition uh to like yeah understanding what things really interest me in life was which is education uh I was able to get there because I showcased my work and the team kind of saw it in the da bankle da at that time and yeah it was amazing they invited me to the project so shout out to did there who's recording that's the lead developer of Banks Academy um it was very beautiful if I hadn't taking the confidence right to Showcase my work maybe that wouldn't have happened so web3 provides a space to do so so just go go go showcase your work share the knowledge and you will

see things come to you that's very inspiring thank you Ornella so Gemma in addition to shifi courses this space moves so fast there's so much Innovation so many changes what other resources and tools can you recommend in addition to shifi to help others gain confidence and knowledge in web 3 yeah I mean I'd say what I'm doing right now is I'm just trying to surround myself with people who know more than me and like whenever possible be the person in the room who knows the Le least amount which I often am and that's great um yeah I think that I I'll pass this one I think YouTube probably will have stronger answers for this and what ter again what resources

can you recommend for others in addition to shifi that can help them navigate through the complexity I'm totally biased on this one yeah Banks Academy okay but um yeah I guess um there's like different phases right so for me in the beginning it was a lot of podcasts I remember listening to the podcast of Chase Chapman Where She interviewed I remember Koopa Troopa I come from the music industry um so that was was like kind of my rabbit hole first it was podcasts about web3 there's amazing creators sharing stories of different areas of web3 you know there's like even even legal podcasts about web3 uh you know about Community about developers so that

there's like a whole Spectrum there um then besides chi I would say the colonel Community is also really amazing once you're kind of more deep into your own Rabbit Hole um I think it's a great place to um yeah start your own personal project the girls before in the panel spoke about you know building your brand and growing part of that journey is also maybe at some point creating something of your own and the colonel Community is a great addition to continue your journey after shii for me shii was like an oasis in the desert um and it kind of uh propelled me to the next phase of of what I'm working on today and who I am

now so yeah thanks Magie um yeah go for it great one final question for the three of you today so what's next on your agenda what exciting goals and projects do you have this year okay I can answer that I just joined the last cohort of Kel so we were starting this week I'm excited I don't know what to expect like I will work or what I want to study are the collective the archives that is like content that the governance lead of Optimus create so I want to read like all the stuff that she did also I will be serving at the GRS Council that is my first time so I'm pretty sure I will learn a lot because

they are great and I think I will be focusing more in governance I really I'm really in love with optimism governance so I will be there then next six months like anything you need about optimism governance like send me a message like I'm always there yeah I'm you know excited about what's going on in the Stellar Community Fund right now we've this year so far distributed almost $9 million worth of xlm in funding to some number of projects that I don't have off the top of my head right now but we're on track for this to be the biggest year ever for SCF funding um overall we've we've uh fun funded 500 plus projects with3 million plus dollars

worth of xlm and that's just getting bigger um so if you're a builder if you're interested if you want to learn more about SCF please come talk to us we also run a startup Camp um if you still need to find tune your idea build your MVP um yeah but really exciting things happening over there can I add something else sorry sorry I'm the worst co-founder ever like I'm organizing itum Mexico 2024 at merid yukatan September 13 and 14 so everyone is invited to attend please come to Merida yukatan is beautiful you will have great time uh yeah thank you sorry about that in Mexico in

Mexico all right so yeah well Focus this year the next and hopefully for many more building Bank Academy taking that experience from the digital aspect to the IRS well to you know with people there on the streets in the communities in the universities um and yeah part of that is actually yeah I'm happy to share this news that I got accepted a submission I did to the major of the city where I live in in Italy it's very small town called Doma Lake orta it has 15K people and I spoke with the major I I told them that I wanted to contribute to the

community you know we're we're all good at contributing communities and digital communities but this was like IRL in another country and another language and I said I wanted to do a blockchain course for everyone uh yeah in the city and he accepted so I'm super excited to share that and yeah just like you know follow your passions follow your your drive you know what ignites you seeing people learn and grow thanks to you know on a personal level and also like financially you know thanks to blockchain technology it's just like it's unmatched so let's keep building excellent thank you so much very inspiring what a great way to kick

off ECC week at chifi Summit Brussels thank you thank you thank you