Lighthouse Partners, in collaboration with Massing PR, introduced its Lighthouse Partners’ The Blockchain Conference series in February 2016, just as the business world was beginning to explore how blockchain technology and digital assets (as we call them now) might be leveraged. Since then, the series has hosted several educational and community events with focused programs that attracted senior business and technology leaders in enterprise IT, capital markets and healthcare.
The Blockchain Conference Series - Strengthening Business Communities Via Events
Drawing on 20 years of producing fintech events – such as the ‘on Wall Street and Low-Latency Summit series – it felt the right time to establish an event series with professional business ideals – for a professional audience. Previously, most blockchain events lacked a curated speaker faculty, attendee quality control, and even any food at lunchtime! Our thinking was that if business was going to adopt this transformational technology, it deserved a quality-first forum to convene, learn and collaborate.
Fortunately, a number of blockchain leaders (and future leaders) agreed, and were eager to join that first program at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, which was focused on emerging business applications as well as future trends.
IBM was getting ready to offer a commercial blockchain platform based on the Hyperledger Fabric code that it had developed and then open sourced to the Linux Foundation. So it made sense for John Wolpert, IBM’s first Global Blockchain Offering Manager, to keynote the event during which he declared that IBM was “All In on Blockchain.”
Ensuring the day combined practical reality with future vision, the IBM keynote was prefaced by a video featuring MultiChain’s Gideon Greenspan on the subject of “Avoiding the Pointless Blockchain Project.” It contained lessons as applicable today as they were back in 2016.
The day also featured other C-suite newcomers who were set to become industry leaders. One was Sergey Nazarov from SmartContract.com who was there to talk about making smart contracts useful by combining them with data from the non-blockchain world. He since renamed the company to Chainlink Labs, the defacto leader in the decentralized oracle world.
Bruce Pon was also there to showcase his new blockchain-centric database, BigchainDB. Since then, he established Ocean protocol to manage decentralized data, with an eye on how it can fuel artificial intelligence. Also presenting was Kieren James-Lubin from BlockApps, his new enterprise blockchain spinout from ConsenSys, which would later be a co-founder of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. Overall, the day brought together around 250 early blockchain pioneers and investors.
Later in 2016, and again in 2017, Lighthouse Partners’ The Blockchain convened in New York City to produce and host the Blockchain for Wall Street gathering. Hosted at the New York Law School, and with a theme of “Insights and Perspectives on the Distributed Ledger Age in the Financial Markets,” the events were both sell outs with more than 300 delegates eager to learn from education program that ran alongside a technology showcase area. Both years, the education program combined TradFI financial institutions that were exploring blockchain technology (including Credit Suisse, State Street and DTCC), established IT vendors (including IBM, Microsoft, and Capgemini) and startups (including ConsenSys, Alphapoint and BlockApps). Also presenting were experts in legal and regulatory affairs, as well as academia and investors (ARK Invest, Polsinelli, Cornell Tech). This combination of skills and backgrounds offered a comprehensive range of experiences and opinions that scored high marks for their authority and depth. “Today I went to a blockchain conference where just about everyone knew what they were talking about,” said renowned technology lawyer Preston J. Byrne. In 2000, Lighthouse Partners’ The Blockchain Conference focused on the healthcare space for the Blockchain and Digital Transformation in Health symposium. Held in Austin, TX in collaboration with UT Austin’s Dell Medical School, the event was heavily slanted towards Web3 issues, such a personal health data ownership, privacy and monetization. The program brought together presenters from both industry and academia (including keynotes from IBM and UC San Diego) and featured several startups, including the debut of ConsenSys Health, Encrypgen and Rymedi. With an eye on the future not just with its Web3 content, the symposium also explored how blockchain, big data and artificial intelligence might be combined to improve health outcomes. Speaking of the future, 2026 – ten years since the series began – is not far away so we’re beginning to plan for an anniversary event. Expect it to look beyond blockchain technology itself, to include topics including tokenization and DecentraTech. Want to be a part of it? Then get in touch!
Later in 2016, and again in 2017, Lighthouse Partners’ The Blockchain convened in New York City to produce and host the Blockchain for Wall Street gathering. Hosted at the New York Law School, and with a theme of “Insights and Perspectives on the Distributed Ledger Age in the Financial Markets,” the events were both sell outs with more than 300 delegates eager to learn from education program that ran alongside a technology showcase area.
Both years, the education program combined TradFI financial institutions that were exploring blockchain technology (including Credit Suisse, State Street and DTCC), established IT vendors (including IBM, Microsoft, and Capgemini) and startups (including ConsenSys, Alphapoint and BlockApps).
Also presenting were experts in legal and regulatory affairs, as well as academia and investors (ARK Invest, Polsinelli, Cornell Tech). This combination of skills and backgrounds offered a comprehensive range of experiences and opinions that scored high marks for their authority and depth.
“Today I went to a blockchain conference where just about everyone knew what they were talking about,” said renowned technology lawyer Preston J. Byrne.
In 2020, Lighthouse Partners’ The Blockchain Conference focused on the healthcare space for the Blockchain and Digital Transformation in Health symposium. Held in Austin, TX in collaboration with UT Austin’s Dell Medical School, the event was heavily slanted towards Web3 issues, such a personal health data ownership, privacy and monetization.
The program brought together presenters from both industry and academia (including keynotes from IBM and UC San Diego) and featured several startups, including the debut of ConsenSys Health, Encrypgen and Rymedi.
With an eye on the future not just with its Web3 content, the symposium also explored how blockchain, big data and artificial intelligence might be combined to improve health outcomes.
Speaking of the future, 2026 – ten years since the series began – is not far away so we’re beginning to plan for an anniversary event. Expect it to look beyond blockchain technology itself, to include topics including tokenization and DecentraTech. Want to be a part of it? Then get in touch!