Interview: ETHDenver 2020 BUIDLx & Mentor Steward – Taylor Kendal
ETHDenver 2020 · 19 Apr 2020 · 5:03
Taylor Kendal, a steward at ETHDenver 2020, describes the BUIDLx mentor desk as a collection of people with expertise in development, design and business who help teams as they build projects. Kendal notes that demand was ramping up on the second day and that mentors came from Scandinavia, Germany, the Caribbean and Colorado. Drawn in by the buzz of crypto and then by an opportunity to affect higher education, Kendal wants to change the education system within a few years and argues that web3 offers a new mental lens, centred on the collective rather than centralized organizations or individuals, which education should teach.
Speakers
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From ETHDenver 2020, hosted by ETH Denver.
Transcript
hi I'm Taylor Kendal steward here for youth Denver 2020 and I helped organize and coordinate the bid Alexa mentor desk so this is a sort of collection of folks that have expertise across any number of areas whether that's blockchain development sort of back-end or front-end design biz dev you name it and we offer a sort of support mechanism for the event at large so folks can can get help as they're building out projects to change the world this space definitely sort of has a fluctuation and when it's utilized but that's just based on where folks are at in the development cycle of what they're what boundaries they're
working towards but yeah it's it's definitely ramping up on day two it's Saturday people are like we've got to get crankin away so they're leveraging obviously expertise a lot today and probably into into the night being a global event it's been cool to be part of just organizing and getting to know a lot of folks that are in in town so we've got we've got Scandinavia covered we've got folks helping out that are based in in Germany and in Europe we've got some folks that are in town from some of the island nations of the Caribbean and then I'll obviously some local folks helping out that are based in the US and in Colorado so it's a really like a collected collection of folks that both span a lot of expertise
areas across across web 3 and blockchain but also geographically are spread across a lot of regions so it's a it's a cool collection of people so I got sort of introduced and fell down the rabbit hole as they say about four years ago initially just with the sort of buzz of crypto but then also I saw an opportunity to affect some of what I know really well which is the system of higher education and ultimately sort of the system of education to work and so saw a lot of opportunity in the way web 3 and blockchain ultimately influenced a system that has a lot of issues with legacy and so have been working towards building out
projects around the sort of education to web 3 convergence and and it's actually why I'm really excited about this year's event we had folks from the governor's office converging with with metallic and Joe Lubin and some of these luminaries in the space and we're at this cool inflection point I think in Colorado and globally where where we can start to like really merge sort of traditional systems traditional systems of both government and you know economic systems with with the world of web 3 and aetherium and and defy and a lot of these things so yeah it's exciting to be it's happy to be in the space and I want to I want to change the education system in the next few years I think I think we're on the verge of something cool
there's an interest in like what what do we ultimately translate and teach whether it's young kids or and another really interesting we had this moment of kids actually coming up on stage and being part of the if Denver 2020 process which I thought is amazing and like what are we instill in in kids as well as professional adults that are in some sort of formal education experience and I think it's it's teaching modes of thought and sort of new mental maps which which come in the form of you know how can I rethink what's possible given the fact that we sort of come from a tradition of understanding a singular means of sort of interpreting the world and I think what what web 3 and
blockchain has the potential to do and what it's done for me is is just offer a new mental lens as to how we can actually affect change and effect a very different world whether that happens in our lifetime or those you know those that come past us like we're at we're at a point where we can actually start teaching ways of looking at the world in an entirely new way that ultimately is going to benefit the collective as opposed to singular centralized either organizations or corporations or even centralized individuals like this is about community that's entire event is is about the collective so there's no single individual that feels like they're at the top of what's happening and and I think those sorts of modes of
thought of what is what I think is powerful and what we can instill in kids and and those that are moving through the education system so mashing this whole world into the traditional education system I don't think I don't think it's an option I think it has to have [Music] you [Music]