NEM Foundation Update – September 9, 2018

TLDR; NEMsp adds Swisscon Blockchain as a client, NEM signs a MoU with Kind Heaven (the creative team behind the Star Wars, Avatar, and Lord of the Rings movies), NEM’s Center of Excellence maps out future dev support, New Zealand launches a University tour, NEM Dev Center is nominated for a DevPortal award, the Melbourne team relocates to a premiere Fintech hub, multiple regional leads spoke in Montevideo at the Blockchain Summit Uruguay and Japan hosted a talk show host for an upcoming American TV series.

Ongoing Planning Efforts

  • The Center of Excellence (CoE) team met to discuss the current state and road ahead. This proved to be very valuable and created a lot of clarity on how we can improve our development efforts and provide a clearer view of how to shape the CoE in the near future. More details will be forthcoming soon.
  • Check out the updated NEM job listings on https://nem.io/jobs/.

Global Expansion, New Hires, Notable Events

  • Australia and New Zealand
    • The NEM Melbourne Team has moved offices! We are now working out of Stone & Chalk, Australia’s premier Fintech hub.
    • Shin Tatt Wong, Technical Trainer, visited Melbourne to host a Developer Meetup.
    • We participated in Blockchain APAC and the Blockchain Philanthropy Event last week with NEM Expansion Director, Jason Lee, presenting our use cases and speaking on social impact in the blockchain space.
    • NEM Lead, Jian Chan, was invited to speak at RMIT University in front of the Student Blockchain Club.
    • Jian Chan & Thanh Le flew to Perth to host a meetup with Axonium at Ernst & Young in front of investors and guests from the education and health sector. Thanh Le presented a NEM101 while Axonium presented their NEM Catapult project.
    • The NEM New Zealand University takeover has begun with NZ Lead, Shaun Belcher, giving a guest lecture to students and tutors at Waikato Institute of Technology while NZ Lead, Dalaney Davis, gave a lecture at Victoria University as part of the Blockchain Entrepreneur Boot Camp.
    • We now have 19 Ecosystem Member profiles up on our Medium page.
  • Brasil
    • New partnerships are emerging with the government sector and local enterprises. More details forthcoming.
    • Ambassador Lyra participated in a recent Cryptos and Blockchain event in Curtibia. He’ll follow up on Sept 14th with another presentation for students at the Federal University of Paraná.
    • Technical Ambassador, Alex Braz, continues to support the 88Insurtech project and NEM’s full node has already been installed and the first transaction has been carried out on the project.
  • Colombia
    • A NEM 101 event happened at two main universities in Colombia, the Escuela de Ingenieria Colombiana, and Julio Garavito.
    • Rafael Torres, NEM Ambassador for Colombia, spoke on blockchain basics and led a NEM 101 to the engineering students at an event called Disruptive Technologies Related to the 4th Industrial Revolution,
  • Europe
    • The NEM Service Partner network trial is going well with our first fully Certified NEM Service Partner now active. The NEMsp is set to launch a polished product by end-Oct. The cost to NEM is minimal, keeps NEM resources to a minimum, yet will allow for scalable, repeatable, cost-effective and rapid expansion of both the NEMsp network and the NEM ecosystem as a whole.
      • NEMsp profiles:
        • Cryptodus recently produced a working on chain use case that passed the NEM’s Solutions Architects criteria. This is a positive sign for the program.
        • New companies are signing up including Swisscom Blockchain which now has a formal agreement.
    • The NEM Developer Center has been nominated for Best Community Spotlight and Outreach at DevPortal Awards 2018.
  • Hong Kong
    • Token News, a blockchain media, organized a Blockchain & Smart Cities event. They invited Ricardo Medrano (Nem Hong Kong) and other speakers to share different approaches using blockchain for Smart Cities where Ricardo was interviewed by Kanae Fujita and Cheryl Francis from Asia Blockchain Review.
  • Japan
    • Elsa Ramon, who previously served as a broadcaster for 21 years at CBS in LA, came to Japan to interview the NEM team and partners for a new cryptocurrency TV series. She interviewed “Koharu Kamikawa” of Crypto-Currency Girls, a cryptocurrency-themed Japanese masked pop group. The group aims to promote right knowledge about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. LINK
    • On August 30th, “NEM-MOKU” was held at Dentsu Office in Nagoya where the open event included NEM training and a workshop with the focus of creating “mosaics”, practicing API programming, and learning the NEM basics. Dentsu Inc is the largest advertising agency in Japan. They provide their space in Nagoya to NEM community to encourage developer activities.
  • LATAM
    • Regional Head of LATAM, Pedro Gutierrez, attended the Blockchain Summit Uruguay, to support the work of Ambassador Ignacio Varese.
    • A Notarization POC has been developed for the government sector and will be presented in the coming days.
    • The LATAM team is planning for the upcoming visit of NEM Dev Trainer, Shin Tatt, for his multi-country workshop happening between Oct and Nov.
  • Mexico
    • NEM Ambassador, Laura Angel, is working with new partners including a digital identity project based on NEM. She met with the Blockchain Academy team to discuss providing educational services and support for blockchain development.
    • NEM Mexico will be a sponsor of the MXHacks Hackathon on September 9th.
  • Malaysia
    • Stephen Chia, Head for NEM Southeast Asia, was interviewed by Channel W, a Malaysian based broadcast business channel, on the growth of blockchain technology. The channel is broadcast via the Hypp TV network throughout Malaysia. Watch HERE.
    • Stephen was also invited to give a presentation on the NEM Blockchain at ASEAN Decentralized 2.0, a conference organized by the Global Blockchain Foundation.
  • North America
    • NEM has signed a MoU with Kind Heaven, a groundbreaking destination and revolutionary movement combining cutting-edge technology with Hollywood style storytelling to transport audiences to a new world where they will experience the best of Southeast Asian culture, art, music, food, and fashion. NEM North America Lead, Alexandra Tinsman and CEO of Immersive Artistry/Kind Heaven, Cary Granat, will see NEM and the Kind Heaven team collaborate on on-boarding the Kind Heaven project onto the NEM blockchain platform (alongside the support of NEM Thailand and NEM Vietnam.)
    • Alexandra gave a presentation on Blockchain Trends at the Blockchain Matters event in Southern California alongside Sean Goodwin, Kurt Kumar from BlockCon, and Justin Newton from Netki.
    • Recent Media: Sassy Mohen for an upcoming blockchain documentary and Virginia Reyna Dunne from Crypto Cafe.
    • NEM Advisor, Jeff McDonald, spoke at the Blockchain Summit Uruguay on September 5th.
    • Discussions are underway for a new NEM blockchain hub in SF at the TechLab Innovation Center.
  • Puerto Rico
    • The team is preparing for two upcoming crypto conferences and is pursuing speaking opportunities and opportunities to sponsor hackathons during the conferences.
  • Singapore
    • The Singapore team held a NEM Talk at BitTemple on August 27. Patrick Palacios, the CEO of LoyalCoin, visited and spoke to an audience on the lessons they learned when they launched their loyalty program and what the future holds.
    • On September 1st, the NEM team (at Bcoin.sg along with Forsesight Labs) gave a talk about the common challenges that blockchain has and how NEM solves these issues.
  • Thailand
    • The week of Aug 27th – Aug 31st was a busy one for NEM Thailand! Country Lead, Laura Takenaka, spoke at the following events:
      • Aug 27th: GBG (Google Business Group) Women Will initiative which included attendees from Thailand’s SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), Bank of Thailand, plus many other industries.
      • August 30th: The Liquid Meetup (alongside representatives from Quione and Zilliqua.) Laura spoke about Thailand Regulations and the regulatory space around blockchain and crypto.
      • August 31st: BlockHedge Thailand event which brought together many different stakeholders from all over the world to talk about everything blockchain. NEM was a speaker about real-world use cases and how they affect the adoption of blockchain across sectors.
    • September 3rd welcomed a NEM Thailand staff member – K. Earn is joining the office as office admin, and we are very happy to have her and for her support.
    • September 4th saw NEM Thailand meet with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand to discuss the regulatory space and how NEM can assist with ongoing educational efforts for Government agencies.
    • NEM Thailand along with support from Tech Trainer, Anthony Law, held an enterprise NEM training for TTA in Bangkok. Laura gave a Blockchain 101 in the morning and Anthony did an in-depth tech training in the afternoon.
    • September 7th – 9th Laura will be a mentor at the Knowledge Exchange (KX) Smart Energy Hackathon that will pit teams against each other to come up with the best smart energy solutions
  • Ukraine
  • Uruguay
    • In Montevideo, the first Blockchain summit was celebrated in this country, organized by Ambassador Ignacio Varese and his partners. NEM Advisor, Jeff McDonald, and Regional Head of LATAM, Pedro Gutierrez, spoke at the event that had over 400 people in attendance.
  • Venezuela
    • In Venezuela, we have been working very hard on important educational alliances and upcoming projects. We continue to meet with partners and community in each city of Venezuela where we hope to expand NEM’s presence.

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