Welcome Lauren. Happy to have you here! Before we get into a bit more about you, each ChainChat guest leaves a question for the next guest. For you, it’s this one: Is Bitcoin better than gold?

That is a hard one to start with. It’s tricky because it’s about how we ascribe value to physical or digital things. We all believe gold to be holding value. It could have been copper that we decided was the shiny, most valuable metal. Then if that’s backing real and digital currencies, it’s about what we as humans decide is valuable. I would probably keep Bitcoin over gold, but I also don’t keep any gold in my cupboards! But for me, yes, I’m more a fan of crypto than physical assets.

Tell me a bit about you and what you’re doing here.

My background is in marketing in digital agencies and tech startups, and later I ended up at Meta back when it was Facebook. I was a contractor there, then there were budget cuts, so I didn’t manage to go permanent, but I also found out that I was expecting a baby, so it was good news and bad news in a short space of time. I needed a new plan. I wasn’t sure what that looked like at the time. I wanted to stay in marketing for big tech. But it was a particularly brutal period of the pandemic when there was hardly anything out there. It was a really competitive market, and I was probably giving off desperate vibes because I was pregnant. I came around to thinking: How can I upskill to get me back into big tech, or what is my next move? I started learning about Web3. I didn’t know it was called that at the time. I was just researching NFTs and the Metaverse because, being from a creative background, that’s what spoke to me. Then I realized a lot of it was underpinned by blockchain, and suddenly it was starting to seem more interesting. Years ago, when I was working with tech startups, I had a couple of blockchain startups and couldn’t really get under the skin of it. The founders were telling me it was really revolutionary technology, and I believed them, but I couldn’t grasp it. It wasn’t until 2021 I saw how it could be of value in my own life, and it started to make sense. However, I saw a lack of women in this area and decided to take what I learned at Facebook, which was scaling and training these programs aimed at women, and apply that in an area that needed it even more. That’s when I started Women of Web3, which I’ve been running for about a year and a half.

Tell me more about Women of Web3.

We are a community and a consultancy. On the community side, we’ve got jobs, resources, and connections. We have a jobs platform, a list of vacancies but also a talent collective that women can apply to be part of. Learning resources — we have a weekly Women of Web3 podcast which we’re about to launch a second season of. All sorts of educational resources and the idea is that it remains free, so we do brand partnerships in order to fund making cool stuff for free for the community. And finally, connections, we do in-person events in London and a few online events as well.

That’s amazing because one of the things that I’ve often thought is missing is a directory of talent and especially one that’s more open and inclusive. Do you have a website?

Of course! The website is womenofweb3.co, and our handles are @womenofweb3co

Great place for women to start. What challenges have you found along the way to where you are now?

I think impostor syndrome has been getting in the way. I worry about not being technical enough to work in blockchain or the space in a broader sense because I'm not a developer, and I still don’t fully understand the nuts and bolts of blockchain. I’m always waiting to be caught out. Someone will ask me a question, and it will trip me up. But I know enough to get by, and so I’m teaching other beginners. I don’t need deep, technical knowledge to teach this level. Particularly for what we are running and scaling at Women of Web3. Sometimes, I need to get out of my own way. 

It’s always the way. We feel like we have to be at the top of the staircase, but if there’s one person on every step bringing up the person from the step below, then that’s enough! Fairly relevant for a lot of women, the old impostor syndrome. What has been your greatest resource for learning more?

A couple of resources. One was Twitter Spaces. I know some people had a similar experience on Clubhouse. Just listening to people talking about this stuff. You can start reading, but for me, I find the more you read, the less it makes sense. You get deep into the jargon. I needed to hear people talking out loud. Someone said to me that I needed to be on Twitter for this stuff, and for this topic in particular, it was a different vibe from what I was used to. It’s a good place to sit and absorb information before asking or answering questions. 

Yes, a little base knowledge gives you the confidence to ask questions. Even if people say There are no stupid questions, it doesn’t always feel like that. 

Exactly!

You said you’re not necessarily technical, but the space is lacking a bridge between the tech, which is still immature, and the average user. We need the marketing, we need the soft skills, the interface, and UX, which is even less mature than the tech itself. It’s a case of sponging it all together. Where would you recommend somebody to start?

The first would be the Women of Web3 podcast, we try to make sure it’s accessible for beginners, starting with breaking down a piece of jargon before going down the rabbit hole. Aside from plugging my stuff, MyBFF has been a really good resource. They’re an NFT project, but they’re also a media organization as much as anything and all about trying to bring women and non-binary people into the Web3 space. For breaking down the jargon and what you said about there being no such thing as a stupid question, they make it feel like it’s OK to ask stupid questions and happily answer stupid questions. So it’s super accessible, and you find yourself scrolling around their website and having lightbulb moments. 

Why do you think diversity is important in this space?

A lot of reasons. One of them is that if we’re talking about technology that’s going to be used by more and more people — if it’s going to become dominant — the diversity of people making those products needs to better reflect the intended end-user. At the moment, there’s a lack of diversity in both, it’s monocultural in terms of who’s working on it and who is using it, and I would love to see that change. Technology should be in the hands of everybody. So whatever we can do to change that quickly needs to be done, as the advances like those in AI are coming about very quickly. Caffeine might make us do stupid things faster, AI could mean that we move on very quickly and skip over diversity. So the change needs to be now, or we risk a future that we don’t want. 

AI is a hot topic at the moment. What should somebody who is setting up say, an NFT project now do to make sure they are setting off on a diverse foot, so to speak?

A couple of ideas. Breaking down jargon again. If somebody new comes to your website, think about how much would they really understand? As well as the jargon, much of the content out there is deliberately enigmatic. There’s a little bit of gatekeeping, perhaps to keep things seemingly sexy and exciting and leaving out information as a way of making it mysterious and desirable. But we need to do the opposite. Lay the information out! Let people know what the human benefit is! Explain why people might want digital belongings or digital cash. Thinking about inclusion from the get-go because the hype doesn’t help things.

Have you seen a particularly interesting use case? Sorry about the background building work. You mentioned MyBFF and Women of Web3, any others?

I really like what Lavinia D. Osbourne is doing with Women in Blockchain Talks and her approach. She’s really thinking about diversity in every element of what they’re making. Her content has been translated into lots of different languages. It’s easy to be anglocentric, and we’re guilty of that in Women of Web3 just because of limited resources. However, making things accessible in other languages is incredibly important if we’re truly thinking about bringing everybody in on this journey.

What’s your next step?

The thing that stands out in my head at the moment is a TEDx Talk that I’m doing in a couple of months. I’m nervous but also excited. I see it as an opportunity to help people make sense of these technologies, and to explain why I care about them to people who don’t really care yet. The audience will have some interest in tech, there’ll be curiosity, but there might also be a lot of cynicism and I’d love to myth-bust and demystify to help people reconsider this area.

Where is it?

TEDx Winchester (UK) in June! I just handed in the first version of the script and it’s a rigorous process. 

Any other wisdom or insights? 

I think that curiosity to keep learning is especially valuable in this area because the deeper in blockchain you get, you can get a bit tangled if you aren’t super technical. Continuing to fuel curiosity with listening to your podcast, this is a great start. Absorbing as much information as possible and attempting to keep on top of the latest developments because speaking of use cases, it feels like there are new ideas appearing every day. When I open any social media you see things that make you think Oh! I didn’t realize you could decentralize this or that.

People also need to realize it’s time-consuming. I told you before I used to be a language teacher and people would sign up thinking they were going to learn in a week or so, without realizing it’s a long process of spending time sieving through YouTube videos, listening to stuff and searching for relevant information. Then finding level-appropriate resources to build upon. 

It’s funny you mention the language thing because I see that as parallel, learning about blockchain or any of this technology is like gaining fluency in another language and I also see similar benefits to learning another language in that it makes you a more well-rounded person. It doesn’t necessarily give you any guarantees in terms of career, but it puts you at an advantage. It’s definitely worth your time.

Yes, it’s another valuable skill! A question for our next guest? As an ice-breaker.

OK, How would you explain blockchain to an absolute beginner?

Great! Speak soon.