Speaker 1 00:00:07 Hi folks. Welcome to another episode of why it matters. The name of this episode is breaking into blockchain decrypting crypto. Hi Tim.
Speaker 2 00:00:19 Hi Tracy. And welcome to everybody. We are so excited that you are tuned in. If you've wondered why blockchain is a big deal or how it matters to the impact economy. This podcast is going to answer every single question you've ever had. You'll be able to go from this, this episode and go get your own wallet to know you want, but we are, we are gonna actually just get to the, the very top surface because the, the, the, the blockchain well is so deep, but it is a great intro conversation. And here's what happened with it a couple of weeks ago on, uh, LinkedIn there's this thread, and in the middle of that thread, a friend of ours, Justin Edelstein was the co-founder of AR a nonprofit consulting firm, uh, replied to something that we were talking about and said, oh yeah, I've written this article about it.
Speaker 2 00:01:10 And it was about how you could think about structuring memberships with NFTs. And it was amazing. And so I'm, I am so excited to have him just come and talk a little bit about what that's, what that looks like. It's really exciting to have him here. And also just one other thing to add as a white male founder CEO, that cares about equality. I'm always looking for leaders who are more than performative. Justin is one of those leaders. Uh, we've been friends for a while. We've worked together in pep up tech. Um, he is still working with that organization. And so I'm glad that he's here both to break down the technology of blockchain. Um, and I'm guessing we won't even talk about cryptocurrency. That might even be the last time, hear that word in this episode, but we also are gonna hear a little bit about pep tech, uh, which is an organization that Justin has a long history with. We're really excited to have him join us. All right.
Speaker 1 00:02:12 Great. I'm so used to jumping into these things and being like welcome everyone to another episode of why it matters with
Speaker 2 00:02:19 Not just say that, and then we'll go with it. That's
Speaker 1 00:02:21 Fine. Yeah. So let's do that for we're experimenting with a new episode format, which you're going to start seeing matriculate through our stuff. So while we get our bearings, this is gonna be super fun for us all there. We always have our guests introduce themselves. See <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:02:42 Right. There you go.
Speaker 1 00:02:43 Uh, so Justin, why don't you tell us who you are and, and what you're doing, and just say hello to our listeners.
Speaker 3 00:02:51 Hello listeners. <laugh> I'm Justin Stein. Hi everybody.
Speaker 1 00:02:55 Hi, Gracie.
Speaker 3 00:02:57 I'm one of the co-founders of AR uh, Salesforce partner been in business for about, oh boy, 12 years now. Um, I guess I'm mostly known or I guess, known so to speak from my work in the Salesforce community. Uh, been part of the, part of the Ahan, so to speak for about 15, 16 years now, looking back. Oh my goodness. And I'm just having a blast still running AR and, um, you know, lately we've been doing some really interesting, um, research and, uh, and research in some development, in some different areas of the technology that we think are in intriguing for the, uh, for the world and for the nonprofit space as a whole moving forward,
Speaker 2 00:03:45 That I didn't realize that you were, um, that you had started ARCA near, uh, around the same time that I started now at matters. So what, what year was that? Was that 2008, 2009?
Speaker 3 00:04:00 It was late 2009. Okay. Or early, early 2010. Yeah, it was, yes. It was like about a full like year, year and a half after like financial crisis. It was very much a reaction to that.
Speaker 2 00:04:15 Gotcha. Yeah, no. So now it matters, started in January of 2010. So man, that's, for some, you you've always just seemed like a bastion, like it's AIS. So, uh, I, I didn't realize that we, our businesses were about the same age, so
Speaker 3 00:04:32 Yeah. Yeah. There you
Speaker 2 00:04:33 Go. Cool. Yeah. Over a decade, which is just crazy. Um, but yeah. Um, and so just to say it, thank you for the years of work in this space. And, uh, I think it would be easy for people to just not re not realize how much, uh, quality community partnering work came out of the early Salesforce era. You know, like know even pre like pre NPS P when it was just all, like, I remember for the half a minute, it was like nonprofit force and, you know, all, all of that. Um, and you were, you were part of that. That was, uh, really making that happen and shaping it. Um, I remember
Speaker 3 00:05:20 That Google group that Google was, uh, was a life save <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:05:25 It was, yeah. Right.
Speaker 1 00:05:26 Please search before posting that's my, that was the most frequent, you know, email I got
Speaker 2 00:05:33 From that. And if you didn't,
Speaker 1 00:05:35 Oh man,
Speaker 2 00:05:36 You didn't like the Judy uh, whoever would come, would come after you. Right. And it was like, okay, well, we're gonna, yeah. Oh man, that takes me back. That takes me back,
Speaker 3 00:05:46 You know, I bet I bet you, you can still learn something from reading through those
Speaker 2 00:05:50 Threads. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:05:54 I'll say my own. Thanks there. And say, you know, when it comes to Salesforce, that is where my sort of career in technology for cloud stuff began. I was Muning around with server racks and, you know, VPNs and hardware deployments for the preceding five to seven years. Um, <affirmative> yeah, Tim's right. Like that early era was the first time I ever saw business partners working together in new and innovative ways. Certainly you and Jason and Larry have all been friends and mentors to me at times, uh, along with the other folks who were, are there at the start, like I think of REM Hoffman, I think of Rob Jordan, I think of Keith and Jeffrey over at Heller. Um, you know, all of whom now sort of, you know, comprise those of us who I think are what people look back on and say is the old guard. Um, and you know, it's nice having been through that because what it told me was there's a career here. Um, and you know, we're all in different places now, and that's really also cool to see,
Speaker 3 00:07:12 You know, it's interesting how you mentioned that about the career thing, because now, um, it, it's a big, you know, it is a big focus of, of Salesforces messaging and their marketing and, and that is more recent in the last couple years, maybe the last five or so. Um, and it it's, I was just having this conversation today with a nonprofit leader and they are, are, um, they're just about to like, make their decision to kind of make this big technology change. And they're having that typical kind of conversation internally about like, well, how are we gonna do this? Or how are we gonna like this exact precise thing that works exactly like this? And it's like, wow, this is that same conversation. I was having 15 to 17 years ago about cloud and like servers and like, how am I gonna, I, my job, my job.
Speaker 3 00:08:14 And that's what it sounded like to me. And I was like, man, this is the same conversation. And like, to don't you want a new car? Like, don't you just want a new car and do you really need to know that the new car is gonna do all the things that the old car does? Like, does it need to do it exactly the same? Does the radio have to work exactly the same or can it work better? And what if it works differently? Are you just gonna not use the radio in your new car? Like where are you gonna like, figure out how to use the radio? I don't know. I'm pretty sure you're gonna figure out out. So like, come on, like, let's go, let's get over this. You really
Speaker 2 00:08:48 Need to user guy for how to use the radio. Right?
Speaker 1 00:08:51 Like when I bought my new car, which is now five years old, so it's like still new, although the smell is gone, right. That nice, like new car smell. When I bought my new car, I was adamant that it have a CD player in it adamant. I was like years
Speaker 2 00:09:08 Ago,
Speaker 1 00:09:09 Shut up. Oh my gosh, shut up. <laugh>
Speaker 3 00:09:12 How, how many times, how many CDs have gone in the CD player? Zero. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:09:17 Zero. Absolutely. Zero. It lights up though. When I turn it on and I look at my badge, I'm like, here's my CD player, man. Someday I'm gonna use it.
Speaker 3 00:09:27 <laugh> you know what that feature is? Um, Tracy, that that's, that features called comfort <laugh> yeah.
Speaker 1 00:09:34 Well, it's also called something to occupy the otherwise unoccupied mind because now I'm like, wait a minute. I think the operating system in here is derived from some fork of either Linux or Android, which means that if I pull that thing out, I could ostensibly replace it with a DVD player and then I could hack it to play movies while I drive. And I'm like this, just
Speaker 2 00:09:57 Buy a parrot. It's already like, please search Amazon before you do that. But anyway. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:10:04 Well, I mean,
Speaker 2 00:10:06 That's, that's great, Justin. The other thing that comes up when you're talking about that, and I've been saying this around, you know, our work on digital transformation recently is comparing it to cars as well. And saying there, like the real issue here is, do you even know how to drive? And we need driving schools and to make a partition between you need a new car and that won't help if you don't know how to drive. And so you have to start asking both questions and by the way, like don't expect Toyota to tell you that you need to know how to drive, expect Toyota, to tell you this car is so easy, it'll drive itself. Right. So it's just really, um, it is, is really interesting to, to continue to play with that idea. And it is so true. Um, and there is a lot around it. I mean, it's like, it brings it so many memories of like really the cloud's safer than the closet that your janitor's working in every day. Like I swear it is safer there. So yeah.
Speaker 1 00:11:07 So hurricane Sandy, I can't say more than, oh yeah. Like hurricane Sandy cost the business. I was working with a half million dollar deal because the business I was working with was going to take what was on a server rack in a basement and put it into the cloud. And after hurricane Sandy, the basement was flooded and the organization called us up and they were like, we have nothing. We have, it is all gone. We have nothing, there is no project here because the server room flooded and everything shorted out and died.
Speaker 2 00:11:46 That is that's crazy. Okay. So, um, great memories. Thanks for
Speaker 1 00:11:51 Indulging memory
Speaker 2 00:11:52 Lane. I know. Yeah, it's great. Um,
Speaker 1 00:11:55 I'm sure our listeners are like five
Speaker 2 00:11:57 Other, like there's other
Speaker 3 00:11:58 Things they're still here. There's a few of them still around.
Speaker 2 00:12:01 Yeah, right. Yeah. So, okay. Um, the reason that we're talking is because on LinkedIn, somebody put something up and then some other thing happened and then it got to what, how that works. And then yes. You know, like, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:12:15 I mean, we're talking cuz we're all catty bitches on LinkedIn. Is that what you're saying, Tim?
Speaker 2 00:12:21 Anyway, I, I know it's happening here and I'm gonna move on anyway. So we're like, you, you, you sent this article about, um, using NFTs for membership and it was like an amazing breath of fresh air because I've, I am so tired of blockchain being FinTech. And just thinking about like this in terms of stocks instead of really seeing past like, yes. Okay. It's really amazing what you can do with decentralized cryptocurrency. Yes. That's interest thing, but can we get past that and look at the technology? And I think like two days before you sent that, we had talked with Sheila Warren, um, and, and uh, you know, had made the case like this is actually your work Sheila in helping society understand, you know, blockchain past the FinTech, um, is really important and nonprofits who a good place to look at that. And then I saw your article and I was like, that is just incredible. So, um, can, and we'll put the article in the show notes, but could you just summarize for like put into plain English, which I always failed to do on blockchain and crypto? Like what you were talking about on that end? What, what you see possibility?
Speaker 3 00:13:36 I will do my best to put it into plain English as well, because sometimes it is difficult. Um, so what I was trying to convey was how, um, I feel as though membership organizations are a little stale with the way that they, um, engage with their constituency and what I have observed over the last year and a half or so, is that in the digital, I'm gonna just call it digital files world. Um, there is a difference between a person who owns their digital file and understands what it means to own that digital file and someone who rents or uses a digital file on the internet. And I have found that what people, people resonate with things they own and they care about them and they want them to grow and they want them to succeed and move forward and their passionate about those things.
Speaker 3 00:14:49 Um, typically if you're just like using something it's free to you, it almost doesn't have much value. And you, you, there's a weird thing there that flips on and off, um, that I feel if you are responsible and, and that's the key word there, like you own this thing and it's yours are the custodian of this digital file. And it is, it is literally going to denote who you are. So it's really important to you because who you are on the internet and digitally is really important and you should have the most control over that, um, out of anybody on the planet. So that's where this was born from. That's kind of like a big hypothetical sort of theoretical conversation that I'm hoping that maybe we can, maybe you can ask me some questions and I can, I can break that down a little bit.
Speaker 2 00:15:47 I mean, one, one thing I think right away on that is, um, what you were taught about there is in membership organizations today, a membership coordinator, um, stewards, membership data, and which is already, uh, an arduous task or whatever. So you're talking about reversing that and saying members, you get to manage your own data and um, you get to figure out how that's distributed. Um, and that could be well good.
Speaker 3 00:16:19 And, and, and that's important. See, because we want that to happen today. As technologists, as managers of programs as volunteer ordinate, we want, we, we believe if we build this cool place, they will log in and they will tell us if they change their phone number, they will tell us if they've changed their email address. Now, my query is why do they need to tell us that we don't need to know those things? We don't need to have them on our information systems because those are liabilities. I don't want your email address. I actually don't. I just want to email you. Ah, that's different. I just want to email you. I don't want your email address though. I really don't. I don't want your phone number. I wanna be able to call you though. I don't want your address, but I do wanna send you stuff when you need eat it.
Speaker 3 00:17:16 And that is so different. And when you put it that way to people, and when you say you're a member of this club, you're a member of this organization and you're also a member of this other organization. And because you're a member of both, you get to reap the rewards of being a member of both, but they, those membership organizations do not get to exploit that fact. They just get to know that you're working within the ecosystem and you're moving between one or the other or both. And you're adding value to the community by providing information, whatever it is. And in return, you know, you get a really nice experience. <laugh> however, you don't get emailed. You don't get spamed, you don't get, um, you know, um, built as though you are a product, so to speak, right? So it's in my mind, um, to sort of take it to a marketing term.
Speaker 3 00:18:15 Um, I feel as though when you start to connect the dots around, um, NFTs and ownership of these digital files and your identity, you start to put those things together. Um, you can start to see how, uh, the world of cookies in, in marketing goes away. And all of a sudden you are the person who is logging in, in a way that is super controlled by you and you own your identity at its core and lending sort of some of that to the service that just to prove you can get in, right. It's kinda like walking into the bar. I had this conversation with a college student, uh, a few weeks ago and asked her, how old are you? She said 22. I said, cool. When you go to the bar, what do they do? She said, well, they asked me for my ID, say cool. Why? He says, so I could get in the bar. I said, no, why? He said, so I can go in the bar. I said, no, they need to know you're 21. Right? She said, right. I said, that's true or false. You are either 21, or you're not like you're greater than, or less than one or the other. They do not need to know your name, honestly. And that's like a very, like, I know that's a very like libertarian, maybe point of view on the world and like a very
Speaker 1 00:19:38 Like, no, God's bless you for that. I have so many follow ups, but Tim, I think claimed that chain of questioning first
Speaker 3 00:19:45 That's okay. But like, that's that, that's what I was kind of getting at with her in that conversation. And, and when you bring that to like, all right, I'm a member of an organization and these organizations are sort of partners, but I don't really them like moving my data around. Cause I don't trust them in that way. But I do wanna move within these ecosystems and gain the value of that partnership. That's where this is a winner.
Speaker 2 00:20:11 I mean, it is a win on so many levels, but I, I think we need to go back because I'm imagining people being like, you can't email someone if you don't have their email. And so I think we gotta, like, we need to bridge this gap right there. That is that remind like this conversation reminds me of trying to explain Google docs, like back in, you know, in, in 2013 and, and just being like, no, you don't have the file. They're not gonna email you the file. They'll email, email you a link. Oh. So I download the file, dear God do not download the file. You're gonna log into the file. What do you mean log into the file? You know? And just like, it just reversed the polarity so much. And now it's just like, people don't even think about that. But as someone that tried for months to explain this to a team that had no idea how to accept it, it, it just, it sounds like you're saying, you know, up is down and downs up. So can you, can you like, how is it possible to email someone if you don't know their email?
Speaker 3 00:21:14 So if I, the person receiving the email says to you person who wants to send me an email, I agree it is cool for you to send me an email. And there is this place, this magical, wonderful place called the blockchain that is global distributed imutable meaning no one can censor it or edit it on their own and is in a way read only for everybody, unless you have the permission, write certain columns, just like Excel or Salesforce could be. Right. Um, well then I can say, well, Justin gave me permission to email him. I can therefore retrieve his email address for these purposes and email, but I do not own that email address on my server. It's on this thing called the blockchain that I can go use. It's a, it's, it's an API that I can go use to see all the information in the world, maybe who knows. Right. But like, that's, that's the promise. And, and, you know, you talk about FinTech, it's just the first use case of it, where it just solves a handful of problems that were just like, oh, okay, okay. This works now, what, what else can be sort of digital tokenized, if you feel to just, you know, it's just a ledger, right? It's just a, a, you know, we have to balance this side with this side and that's it. So it's a transit action between two people.
Speaker 2 00:22:53 And the part that I, the part that I think people are gonna really start and I'm sorry, Tracy. I promise, no, I, I do have a follow up that you can on said, and I finally found someone that can say it. Uh, and so I'm like gonna say, but, um, the, the thing there that will make everybody nervous after I say it. And so we're gonna like deal with the fear in a minute, but everyone can see it like this perfectly transparent to everyone. And that idea just blows my, like, that sounds like you're introducing enormous privacy risk and, and you're actually not. And that is the upside down world that is just crazy. And the first use case is the only use case that matters, because I will say this, like if it didn't work, Warren buffet and bank of America would not be putting billions into it.
Speaker 2 00:23:47 Right? Like the, the use case of transactional finance as the first use case is unheard of that, the way like, that's always, the last thing you do is you put the money in last, you know, because it's the most important. So in some ways I wanna say the reason we all know it works is because if it didn't, there's no way that smart developers, you know, that understand the technology in and out would be making millions on it. And the fact that they are means that there's now a world in which everything is transparent and anonymous, which is it just real me really CRA crazy. So can you tie and not, can you connect those two so that people can, like, how, like, why are you not afraid of why are you less afraid of a perfectly transparent world where everybody can see this and extensively say, you know, grab your email address, which is what it sounds like you're saying and why that is not what you're concerned about at this point.
Speaker 3 00:24:47 Well, they can't, I have to allow them to. Right. And, and that's sort of the big key. And then there's, you know, there's other like jargon that I can use to sort of throw out there around like something called zero knowledge proof, which is essentially to say like, you don't know the entire truth, but you know, enough to prove to me that you will a hundred times out of a hundred, be correct. Meaning I'm giving you enough information to be able to solve the puzzle in a way that you're always gonna be able to solve the puzzle, but you never know the answer. And I'm comfortable enough that, you know, the answer and you're comfortable enough that what I'm providing to you is the truth. So there's transactional, like algorithmic, very complicated math that makes this happen. Um, there's really good YouTube videos out there. You know, they'll like explain this to five different levels. Those are awesome to watch for these because you get to go from like the kindergartener to the like, you know, professional or the grad student or all the way up to like, you know, the doctor. Um, I think those are brilliant if you're really interested in like going deeper, then this conversation, um, because those really get into like, right, what show me how zero knowledge and they'll like, show you like here, I'm explaining to a five year old and look you, it works. <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:26:18 Well, it's almost like you take the, um, ID thing. This is my last one. And then I'm off. Yeah. If you take the ID question of the 20, I'm
Speaker 1 00:26:26 Used to Tim on a tear, by the way, I just noticed stay out way until the sound and the fury started gay
Speaker 2 00:26:30 I'm is so rude. I feel bad, but I just like almost ready to laugh. This. Imagine there being like a dynamic tattoo on your 21 year old friend that says their age so that you don't need an ID card to know that they are who they are. And instead you can just look at that single piece of information that is somehow changing, like that movie timeless, or time, or out of time or whatever like that. It's, it's like that, like they, you know who they are and you don't need to know beyond that. They are who they say they are and, you know, whatever permit, whatever information they let you know, and if's the information you need, then you've got it. Um, I just, I love the bar carding analogy. That's great. Thank you, Justin. Um, Tracy, please
Speaker 1 00:27:17 Have no, I, I have two follow up one actually is. So as I will take it personal for a moment as somebody who is personally a very sort of libertarian oriented person, like I look at the world through layers of what do I get to own that is unique to me and why am my giving it to other people ostensibly for free? Um, this is the crux of why I pay a certain amount of money every month for LinkedIn. And I have completely removed myself from all other forms of social media, because I am to them a product, not getting a service in return, right? So the libertarian in me loves this idea because if you extend this to its natural conclusion, this is what began in Europe, around my ability to own my own data and tell you when you get to use my data, right, that is the fundamental premise of GDPR, but where this goes further is those structures to me, every single time you try and build a structure around it.
Speaker 1 00:28:39 What you've actually managed to do is exclude somebody. You, you, it's just the nature of buildings, buildings, and houses and things you're always going to have by virtue of putting up walls and a ceiling people who are inside it and outside of it. So also speaking very personally, as someone who, you know, let's dial this back 5, 6, 10, million years ago, whenever August 27 to was, um, you know, I went into the desert really, truly. I went into the desert in August, 2017 to go see the eclipse, which happened to hap happened to occur on my birthday. And I took one question in my mind, out into that desert landscape. And I walked like 15 miles in painted, uh, painted, uh, what is it called? It's called painted, uh, yeah, painted Hills, uh, and the Clarno units and all of this stuff up in the desert of, of Oregon.
Speaker 1 00:29:39 And I was like, why after all of these years of fighting for who I am and what I needed to be in sort of the L G B T world, why do I still feel uncomfortable? You know? So after running outta water around like mile 12 and realizing I had about three more miles to go and walking in 107 degree heat, because somebody didn't pack enough water. Um, I was like, oh, I get it. I get it now. Like I needed to have this perfect clarity and realize, wait, the reason why I've never been comfortable with anything I do is because I'm non-binary. And I immediately came back and I was like, all right, my gender pronouns, are they them? There you go. Now it has been. And I thank God's apple labels, this podcast as explicit because it has been a fucking ordeal to get that piece of my identity recognized, ostensibly, even inside of places that had a structure around recognizing it, right, because you create a pocket for information, but you never access it.
Speaker 1 00:30:52 And after a while that informed my thinking of like, well, why do you even need to know me at all? Right? And that's the hook to what you're talking about, Justin. And that is you don't need to know me. I need to know you. And it reverses the power dynamic. It reverses the agency that someone has over claiming their own identity. And if my identity is accessible to you, I get to give you as much or as little as I trust you with. And I think that is not only a step forward for grizzly old libertarians like myself, but it is also a step forward for all of the things that we want in terms of creating a more equal and democratic participatory society. Um, because when I own the rights, me and not you, that makes the power dynamic a lot more balanced. So I love that.
Speaker 1 00:31:52 And thank you. Now, the question I have is, as you're talking about this, I will quote star wars and say, I hear the voices of a thousand major donor officers crying out and suddenly being silenced. So if you have an ecosystem of nonprofits that are built around the idea that the more they know about me, the more personal they are, the more they're able to buy, download access link, the better their work will be. How do we change that thinking and that world towards something that creates those trustful structures. That gives me as an individual more agency.
Speaker 3 00:32:37 That's a big one, right? Um, I think there's two things to just touch on with what you I'll. I'll get to your question here in second. Sure. Um, I think about like, you know, what you mentioned in LinkedIn, I think that's important that you made a decision, right? You decided I no longer want to participate in this. I've decided I'm no longer participating in this ecosystem called social media.
Speaker 1 00:33:08 Right. Very old Brenner. So let it be written. So let it be done.
Speaker 3 00:33:11 Exactly. And, and, you know, what's interesting about that is that, you know, and like this, I think about going back to like 30 something years, like the web and anything about what was being built and it was protocols and like, you know, the build the way to get things onto the internet, like how would people interact with the internet so that you could read websites and you go to a domain name, right? You weren't gonna go to 1 9, 2 dot, whatever dot, whatever. Right. You were gonna go to like, aring.com and Google could index these pages cuz they were human readable and you had, you know, language. And then there were other ways to securely connect so that you knew that you were actually okay, communicating over these flyers. And then you had to sort of be a specialist though, right? If you wanted to do this, if you wanted to put up a website, you had to know how to build a website. You had to really have specialized skills. You might even need to own a server back in the day. You might need to buy something, a big investment just to do a tinker toy, right. For a website, all of tracks
Speaker 1 00:34:26 In my experience. Exactly. Yep.
Speaker 3 00:34:28 But if I wanna take money, that'd be harder. Well, right. And now you got forward to like the age of what we are talking about, like 2005 to 15, where you get caught in the, well, I want to very easily participate in the internet society and they've made it, they have made it really simple for me to click a handful of buttons and have a website live in like 10 minutes, almost 15 minutes. Incredible. It's literally incredible something that you needed to buy a computer that cost thousands of dollars and power and sit in your air conditioned server room. Now you can do with a handful of click of the button and like Salesforce brought that too right. To, to, to, to, um, to, to the bringing business software, to people who like myself who could, you know, just configure something as opposed to needing to know how to write Java or you know, know how to maintain a server.
Speaker 3 00:35:35 Um, so now I, I, so thinking about that, Tracy, right, and taking it to where what you were just asking about with the nonprofit is to say, well, what's next. We went from the place where it was really hard to participate in this thing called the internet. However, it was Tru truly rewarding if you did, it was true. Rewarding. Real communities were built real, um, relationships and partnerships were built and incredible innovation spawn from that. And then in the second wave, certainly the same thing kind of happened, but it flipped where for the ease of use that X provided me to put this information out there on the cloud, as opposed to my server, I had to give up a lot of information about myself in order for that to work from a business perspective. I'd like to think that we can take ownership back over that as the folks who are running the rails, we can create a platform that allows for people to interact with others in a way that they want to, and without having to give up, as we said, all their data. But if you are pro a rewarding experience for these people, they will participate. And if you participate in some of the sure, greater the internet at large and allow them to move in and out, then they more, more likely to move in and out, like you said, you know, Tracy, you're not gonna go on Facebook and go on the Facebook group and participate in that way. Even if it's a really awesome organization that you have a tie to their cause you're just not gonna do it.
Speaker 1 00:37:32 That's right. And
Speaker 3 00:37:33 I don't
Speaker 1 00:37:34 Trust the underpinning of how they're engaging in that community. That's right. That's that's right.
Speaker 3 00:37:39 So, so when you start to not have to trust the underlying platform, cuz it in and of itself is trustless. Then you have an environment that you feel kind of comfortable moving around and being yourself, cuz you don't even have to like say who you are. You can really be yourself. And I think that that lend self to some really interesting like experiments I guess. And, and I think that that will, um, there will be incredible business models and opportunities, um, born out of it and there will be new models of philanthropy and um, and, and, and um, how people cultivate those gifts and what they're kind of building. And that's, I think that that's probably where it ends up is to say, but you're now participating in this service a little bit more to the point where, um, it means more and the people who are receiving the service are also participating it in a way where they're giving back to you feeling good about it. And that is super intriguing because oftentimes when you working with nonprofit organizations, um, yeah, the goal in the mission is to lift somebody out of poverty perhaps, but often it's good enough to like maintain, right? So this is incremental. Um, in my opinion,
Speaker 1 00:39:12 Is that then therefore pointing to, you know, and I will give credit where credit is due. Tim stuck this in my ear the other day is that then therefore pointing to less of the, you own my data by virtue of the fact that, you know, you've created a platform for community and more towards nonprofits thinking of themselves as a series of DAOs, for example, distributed autonomous organizations for the purposes of creating that cultivation.
Speaker 3 00:39:48 No idea. It is super interesting to watch these Dows form. Yeah, it is. And it is wildly fascinating as someone who has watched nonprofits and understood and watched governance and watched how like people manage that kind of stuff over the years, it's been super intriguing to watch how these organizations have formed and how they're trying to create these structures, right? Voting structures, treasury structures. So that they're like a business like any other organization, but they're completely decentralized to the point where they're headless or, you know, you, you own these, you know, I, these tokens, you know, these NFTs they're tokens, non fungible token and the token itself, um, <affirmative> people say, why are they worth anything? All right. Well, they might not be, or they're worth something cuz I'm using them to vote on how this organization moves forward. And to me that vote is important. So it's worth something cuz it's my voice in this cause. And that could be the answer. That's a plenty good answer for some people, others. Like why is that worth a million dollars? Cause someone said it, yeah, someone's willing to buy it for a million dollars. I don't know what else to tell you.
Speaker 1 00:41:09 I mean that's, I, I collect antique books and I collect first edition sci-fi stuff. And at the end, why would I pay $700 for, are a signed George R. Martin book? Because that's what somebody said it's worth. And if I want it, that's what the market bears. And if I don't want it, I don't pay it. Right. So I mean, if you take that premise and you extend it, what you're actually talking about is democratizing the reward for the actual constituency who is participating in the mission of an organization using new technology that allows them to also shape the very organization that is serving them. That's cool. Right? Because that's the goal of every nonprofit, right? Like the nonprofits that I have known that work in Absen from their communities, aren't the ones that stick around the longest. The ones that have figured out that engagement, uh, are the ones that stick around longest.
Speaker 1 00:42:13 And by the way, that also means that their programming is updated. Their mission occasionally gets Reed. And now we have a way of doing this. So, you know, Tim just chatted me over, said we're running a little short on time, but I have one other question for you on this. And that is if you know, this is the way the winds are blowing, right. What would you say? Because we, Tim and I are in a lot of conversations all the time. Uh, I'm not afraid to name, drop this one because she's amazing. We got connected to a woman named Sheila Warren who is now taking on the policy aspects of cryptocurrency, the United States and elsewhere. Uh, if you're listening to Shely, we really want to get you on the podcast I'm day to dive into this. Uh, but you know, one of the problems that is happening right now is this entire debate is being politicized much like everything in the United States. Uh, and what she sees is what you see is what we see. And that is, this is a democratizing and in fact, empowering community organizing tool. So how do you get an organization that is knee jerking and saying, no, this is some crazy right. Wing, conspiracy, see whatever stuff, how do you, what would you say to those organizations to change their mentality around? What is the potential of using this as an ecosystem to forward their missions?
Speaker 3 00:43:49 I, you know, I'm not certain I would even bother
Speaker 1 00:43:52 <laugh> that's fair. That's a very answer. Or by the way,
Speaker 3 00:43:57 I'm just quite frankly, I don't know if you're not, if you don't wanna hear it, I'm not necessarily gonna change your mind on this. Like if you feel as though this is a scam or if you feel that this is a sham or if you feel that this is a right, like you said, like just that any, any wing can conspiracy thing then, um, I I'm, I'm not gonna be able to help you, um, because odds are, you're not gonna be willing to listen. So I, I think that that is the way I, to you.
Speaker 1 00:44:33 Okay. If I were willing to listen, what would you tell me that <laugh>, what's your OK. That's like, yeah, no really. Cause I'm I wanna, I wanna, like, I want our listeners to know, because part of the folks we reach on this are people who are big thinkers at other places, and we need to give them a map to think about this. Right.
Speaker 3 00:44:51 I think that's fair. Um, you know, one of the things that, um, for me really opened my eyes was I had to just go participate.
Speaker 3 00:45:04 Hmm. And I think that that's what I would just recommend is to say, why don't you go participate and see what this means means to be a little bit self sovereign in a way of why don't you go set up a wallet and why don't you go see what that means to set up a wallet and actually experience it. And I think if you go through the process, it's a learning experience and then you will then make your decision. Right. And, and I, I think that if, um, after somebody goes through that experience and sets up a wallet and connects to more than one website and then sees what that means, um, if the light bulbs don't go off that's okay. Um, that's fine. But I think they oftentimes do most of the time when I've done that in front of people, like I've done a couple workshops at AR where, you know, at AR we have set up meta mass accounts together.
Speaker 3 00:46:10 Um, we have at AR we have, um, adopted, uh, a protocol called PO app P O a P, which is proof of attendance protocol. And we have just adopted it for our workshops and our like events just sort of toss it out there. And we feel like it's a very nice little like entree or a, an app, an on ramp because you can even sign up with an email address. So you don't even need a wallet, but we walk you through that. And people who get it, like they really get it. They love it. And they're like, wow, there's this like record of my participation in this meeting. And somebody like, so what, and I, so what, but what I do need to bring to the table is that thing that we were talking about earlier, which is to say, Hey, wouldn't it be interesting to know who attended Dreamforce and be able to market to those people, knowing that they actually attended dream and that they actually wanna hear from you.
Speaker 1 00:47:22 Those are two Def definitely interesting ven diagrams. I mean, having attended force a number the years. Um, but yeah, no, but you's
Speaker 3 00:47:31 Right. Really,
Speaker 1 00:47:32 But
Speaker 3 00:47:32 You're rights really interesting. Tracy is to say like, cool, you went to Dreamforce in 2017.
Speaker 1 00:47:40 Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:47:42 Now I'm gonna give you something in 2022. Cause I felt like, and I thought about it in 2022. I didn't think about it in 2017. I had no idea I was gonna do something for five years later, but five years later I said, Darren, it's a five year anniversary of that event. I should do something special for those people. Yeah. I know who is there and guess who else can do something special for those people? My partners And,
Speaker 1 00:48:08 And the people themselves.
Speaker 2 00:48:10 They can, they can say, I don't like, I don't want to be part of that. And
Speaker 3 00:48:15 Yeah, I don't need that. That you
Speaker 2 00:48:16 Don't have to mm-hmm <affirmative> like marketers would love to be able to just say like, there's, there's no, there's no cold calling here because everybody that is on this list wants to be there. And that, that is just not the case. Like all of us just know, like, that is just not the case with the way that marketing cloud, um, marketing cloud, not Salesforce, but just in general. Uh, it's just not the way that it's set up. And
Speaker 1 00:48:42 So well, it's, it's, you know, to that point, like I follow a few guys who are marketers on LinkedIn, who I knew through my various iterations of my career and one of S always putting polls up and he's like, you know, like cold calling is the way objection handling is the way. And I'm like, you know what? Like if I wanna hear from you, I will let you know, like maybe I attended that event because I intend Tove attend it every year and I don't need, I don't need steady stream of whatever telling me to go to it. If I already know I'm gonna go again in a year or two years. Um, and you know, why this is important is because I, I, I just, for folks like me, and I think this is where a lot of the world is going for folks like me, you know, if I'm not hearing from you, it's because I don't want to hear from you, you know, and you know, you cold call me and I promise you, I will respond to you in one of three ways. I will either hang up, immediately respond in Russian, respond in, cling on, or cus you out out. So that was four ways.
Speaker 2 00:49:55 That was four ways.
Speaker 1 00:49:55 That was four ways. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3 00:49:57 I counted
Speaker 1 00:49:58 Four. All right, Tim, can you take us home with Justin? This is amazing,
Speaker 2 00:50:02 But I do wanna hear what that would sound like in ping on before the end of this podcast, but we can come back to that. So you can just kind of get prepped for that. Oh, we're not gonna do that, man.
Speaker 1 00:50:15 We're not gonna do that.
Speaker 2 00:50:16 No. Okay. All right. Um, Justin, thanks for your time here. This is incredible. Everything I was hoping for and more, um, you know, the, I wanna give you a couple of minutes to talk about a project of yours that I, I know because of our, our past interactions around pep tech mm-hmm <affirmative>. And, uh, I know that this is just important to you. I appreciate the work that you do around equality and inclusion in the space. Um, do you wanna take a minute and just talk about what pep tech is? Yeah. Uh, what you've been able to do with it and, um, and, and let our audience know.
Speaker 3 00:50:52 Sure. Yeah. Thanks Tim. I really appreciate you doing the space and time to, to talk about them. Um, so yeah, popup tech is, is a program that's been around say, now it's going on six years. Um, uh, that primarily focuses on the Salesforce ecosystem. I don't wanna say, um, uh, only, but, uh, their mission is to empower, um, people to help lift others up through technology. Uh, and, uh, we try to help, uh, bring underrepresented individuals and groups into the fold when it comes to, um, career paths with tech. Well, as it relates to technology, Salesforce is a really, really good, uh, entry way for that. Um, you know, with the, the admin, um, story, um, that is a, a, just a, a really great way for people to get started in their careers. Just looping back to kind of where we were talking earlier with the career thing. Um, it, it's always been a passion of mine to help people, you know, get involved. So, um, you know, I've just been helping out where I can over the last five or six years with popup tech, they've been growing immensely and helping to train and, and, and place people, uh, in jobs within, within technology industry. It's fantastic.
Speaker 2 00:52:16 Yeah. Uh, thanks for that work. Um, I know we've, we've had, uh, pep up tech employees here, and I know that you've done the same as well, and I just really appreciate, uh, the work that you're doing on that. And thank you so much for, uh, your long term commitment to this space, to nonprofits, to making the world a better place and for your time today on our podcast. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 00:52:41 Thank you both. I really appreciate you both too.
Speaker 1 00:52:44 Yeah. It's been really nice bringing this full circle and thank you. Yeah, truly. Thank you. No problem.
Speaker 2 00:52:53 I'm Tim Lockey.
Speaker 1 00:52:55 I'm Tracy Kran and you've been listening to why it matters.
Speaker 2 00:52:59 Why it matters is a thought leadership project of now it matters a strategic services firm offering advising and guiding to nonprofit and social impact organizations.
Speaker 1 00:53:08 If you like what you've heard, please subscribe, check out our playlists and visit
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