Leena:
Let’s begin. Today we will interview Pamela Morgan, it’s a pleasure to have you. Can you please introduce yourself?
Pamela:
I’m . I’m an attorney, educator, entrepreneur, and an author. I’ve been working full-time in the and Open space since early 2014.
Leena:
Okay, so if you are working on anything new could you give us a few details about it?
Pamela:
Sure, so most recently I published a book called Crypto Asset Inheritance Planning and that book is all about teaching owners of crypto assets how to make sure that their families can inherit their crypto assets if something happens to them but not steal it before. It’s a book that empowers people and teaches them tools on security as well as how to hire a lawyer, how to fire a lawyer, how to find a lawyer and basically teaches all about the two perspectives. One is creating an access plan because the question is how will your family actually be able to access your crypto assets and then the other side of it is creating a legal plan, which is how can we make sure that what you want to have happen and will happen. Following up on my book which I said is for owners. So following up on the book for owners, I’m currently in the process of writing two other short books. One of them is for lawyers specifically, so teaching inheritance planning lawyers what they need to know about crypto assets so that they can better serve their clients. Then I’m also working on a book for heirs which is for people who think that a loved one had or crypto assets and walking them through how to find those crypto assets.
Leena:
That’s incredible. Apart from what you do and more towards the topic of . Do you think is here to stay?
Pamela:
So when you say I need to add a modifier because has now, at least in my world, become a meaningless term. When we talked about open public blockchains basically , , and a few others the answer to your question is very different if we’re talking about those versus if we are talking about permissioned or a DLT technology. I think that open public blockchains are definitely here to stay. I think the reason they’re here to stay is because they provide a trusted platform that we’ve never had before because we are able to decentralize or disintermediate rather third parties and traditional players of who kind of controlled the systems. I think that open public decentralized blockchains provide an opportunity for us to create new systems where we don’t have the same old traditional players in roles of power. But rather we can play with different governance models and in different business models quite frankly. I think that the invention of and the open public blockchains that arise from it are definitely here to stay and I do think that they will have a major impact on our future both, in the United States and all around the world.
Leena:
Can you name one challenge that you’ve had in the space and how did you overcome it?
Pamela:
Well, I think I think the perpetual challenge in this industry is to stay up on everything that’s happening. I don’t know if you experience this as well but before I started working in this industry, I was working in entrepreneurship and I thought that was fast but that is nothing compared to our industry. This industry is growing so fast, there’s so many new people that are getting involved in it, and there’s so many new projects. I mean every day there’s project, upon project, upon project that are new and different and so I think keeping up is probably the biggest challenge. How I “overcome it”, I don’t know if I actually do overcome it, but what I try to do is really focus on open public , open decentralized, open source, open participate type of things because I believe that that is where the most value is. By limiting what I look at to only those sorts of projects that helps reduce the amount of information that I have to keep up with.
Leena:
That’s great advice for other people in the space, Pamela. Do you have any ideas for how someone or yourself could improve the space in terms of diversity?
Pamela:
Absolutely. I think that many of us who are speakers in the industry are so grateful to have been asked to be a speaker, that we don’t often stand up for additional diversity in conferences, projects, and all those sorts of things. I think it’s actually incumbent on anyone who has “made a name for themselves” or is able to have some influence with conference organizers, projects, and those sorts of things to ask the people “uncomfortable questions”. I don’t think they are uncomfortable but some people do. You gave an example of including students and I think we should always be asking “Do you guys have a student discount?”, “ How are you supporting people who might not be able to afford to come to this event?”, “What about in terms of diversity, what about your panels?” I am really so tired of seeing conferences that are all middle-aged white men, especially in 2019. I think that we can do better and I think we should do better as an industry and I think one of the ways that we can do better is to not be a jerk about it but to ask open and honest questions like “Hey, do you need an introduction to other people in the industry?”, “Hey, this is what some other conferences are doing maybe there scholarships for students or speakers”. A lot of time speakers can’t actually afford to go to these events and so the only speakers that you see are people who are backed by corporate interests. I think it’s really important to get voices out there that aren’t always backed by corporate interest.
Leena:
Oh, I agree completely with you. When W4B has our panels during our Hackathons we make sure that our panels are diversified. It wasn’t just the middle-aged white man. We had women, we had people of different races, we had the younger generations.
Pamela:
Exactly, and it is not hard you just have to go out of your Twitter circle for a second.
Leena:
I love the panels. I love having different types of people because they have so many different ideas which makes the panel more interesting and overall more of an educational experience rather than a company advertisement.
Pamela:
Absolutely. I’ll tell you I’m not a big fan of panels. Mostly because I find that they don’t really give a ton of value to the audience. A lot of times people have an agenda that they want to talk about and often it’s about their company. I’m always excited when I actually get to see a panel that teaches me something and has a bunch of different points of view and things like that. I always feel like that’s a big success and I do think diversity is a big part of that.
Leena:
If you were asked to speak at another conference would you aim more towards a solo speaking position rather than being on a panel?
Pamela:
I usually speak solo but I’m happy to be part of a panel, don’t get me wrong, as long as the purpose of the panel is to provide value to the audience. It also must have a really strong moderator in order to do that. I think you have to have really important and and well thought-out questions and they can be directly from the audience which is useful. It seems like a lot of times panels are put together with people that are sponsoring the event. They just go “Hey, you should all be on a panel together”, and it ends up being a weird infomercial and it just becomes uncomfortable for everyone. I do prefer to speak solo but I don’t mind participating in fact I enjoy talking with other speakers. I love to learn and I love being wrong because that is really the only way you learn. I love to hear other people’s points of view and that type of thing.
Leena:
For my final question what has been your favorite conference this far and why?
Pamela:
So I have a bit of an unorthodox answer because it’s so hard to say.
Leena:
There’s so many to choose from so it is hard.
Pamela:
It’s hard being they are my favorite in different ways. I’ll have to give you two. One is the Latin American Conference and it is generally held in South America, though it has been held in Mexico City and I try to go every year. I try to participate every year. It’s amazing. Especially for people in the US or people who aren’t really too familiar with Central and South American issues, especially as they relate to . It’s a real eye-opener. It’s a fantastic experience because the conference is so well run and I can’t recommend it enough. The second one is very different from LABitconf, but, it’s called Hackers’ Congress and that event is in Prague every year. It is exactly what it sounds like. It’s hacker’s Congress, which means that it’s not solely a or conference, but it’s all about society. It’s about looking at these technologies and thinking about how we can improve our society. You hear talks about privacy, using drones, and all sorts of really new and innovative things that I think are some of the most exciting things are happening in our industry.
Leena:
Thank you so much for speaking with us today this concludes our interview and we wish you luck on your future endeavours.
You can find Pamela Morgans’ book Crypto Asset Inheritance Planning
W4B is dedicated to building and empowering pioneers in the world of blockchain technology. Founded by , COO of , in 2018 we promote blockchain education with the use educational interviews, hackathons, and learning hubs.
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Published at Tue, 07 May 2019 15:14:19 +0000
