Global Countries 🌏 🚗 🔅#35

Global Countries 🌏 🚗 🔅#35

29 Aug, 2017

Welcome to the 35th edition of this email. Did you know you can read past editions right here?

Hoping this reaches you well and happy.

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My Last Two Weeks 

= Whales, Sydney Harbour, snow, friends, family and fascinating research into blockchain tech and the future.

One of the things I adored about Sydney was long, early morning Harbour walks with a close friend and finishing with a coffee at local cafes in Balmain village. Dogs, kids, professionals interact and stand around waiting for coffee, some look at their phones, most start a conversation. Many have been doing this routine for many, many years. Morning coffees are a great, easy way to get to be part of a local community. Maybe I’ll start going to Market Lane in Melbourne as it seems similar. 

My skiing mojo is ON and I’ve had a couple of weekdays skiing with two (retiree) friends who are (as Mark Shayler might say) “banging” skiers which heightens the challenge, the learning and of course there’s the usual fun conversations on chairlifts. My skiing ease and skill is improving quickly and there was 175cm’s of snow across a fortnight a week ago so Mt Hotham looks superb. This year I’ve seen so many large snowflakes drifting down which is always charming and entrancing.

Surfing hasn’t happened for a fortnight and I’m missing it though next week it’ll be ON!

What are you enjoying?

Global countries.

“‘Estonia has just 1.3 million residents, but what would happen if our country had 10 million digital residents too? …So then we wondered — why stop there? Our digital infrastructure can handle far more ‘users’ than the current population.”

Fascinating.

Interested in business?

I’m looking forward to reading these ~

“For almost four years, from Jan 2010 to late 2013, I would write a column every Monday called MBA Mondays where I tried to cover the basics of a business education…

There are roughly 200 posts in total that I wrote during the time this weekly series was active. You can see the entire MBA Mondays archive here. There is a lot of good stuff in there.” ~ Fred Wilson

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Blockchain tech

If you asked me where to start to learn about this topic, I’d send you these links:

  • Background reading on Blockchain – click this link + search for “Blockchain” and/or “Bitcoin”. It’s worth putting aside a few hours to enjoy spotting opportunities relevant to you.
  • Want to understand Bitcoin, Ethereum and other coins? This YouTube channel has fast and clear introductory videos.
  • coinmarketcap.com has the market cap and prices of all coins and upcoming ICO’s / new tokens are listed here.
  • “bringing the internet closer to the benefits we experience in everyday life” (“building out the next version of the internet”)
  • “…the crypto sector is much more than Bitcoin, fintech, trading and crypto currencies — it’s about building a better, decentralized, (digital) world. By using the term “decentralization” I refer to a process of redistributing functions, people, powers or things away from a central authority. The problem with centralized systems is that they lack transparency, allow for single points of failure, censorship, abuse of power and inefficiencies.” Enjoy the map.

 

Favourite reads & listens

For your CEO and senior leaders

  • “The most promising use cases [of blockchain technology] to date are: store of value, payments, crowdfunding, file storage, identity management and authentication, prediction markets, escrow, title chains, notary chains, provenance, and supply chains.” David Sacks

Great online presence

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Thanks for your insights, questions, comments and thanks via replies and tweets. Much appreciated. Hey Ali x

Have a fantastic week!

~ Sam