Berlin Blockchain Week: The Birth of an AKASHA Hub

On Thursday 22 August 2019, during Berlin Blockchain Week, AKASHA hosted the inaugural event for the AKASHA Hub Berlin. This event took place from 6:30-8:30pm in the Blockchain Embassy which is located at Manteuffelstraße 77. A big thanks to the hosts for having us! 🙏

The Blockchain Embassy is the initial physical location that will be frequently returned to in order to facilitate Hub events; however, in contrast to other hubs in Barcelona or Dublin, where events always take place in the same established spaces, the Embassy is just the seed point for a community brought together by common values, goals, interests etc. without the need for a fixed, common space. 👨‍🚀💥👩‍🚀

As AKASHA Founder, Mihai Alisie, wrote in the op-ed which announced his departure from the post of editor-in-chief of Bitcoin Magazine (a cached version is the only one available at the time of writing):

Holons are ... highly innovative and agile hubs synced across the globe, with the mission of enabling people to develop world changing tools – transparency, openness, inclusiveness, fairness and purposefulness being the defining traits of this new model.

A hub is defined as the effective center of an activity, region, or network. It seems obvious to us that the center of an AKASHA Hub is the community that forms to meet, debate, present, drink, talk, and laugh together. To this end, the AKASHA Hub Berlin seeks to facilitate coming together around people, ideas, and events, rather than bricks, chairs, and projectors. This being said, all of these things, and more, were present for the first-ever event. 🚀

Lorenzo Patuzzo welcomes individuals to AKASHA Hub Berlin 🙌

The first ever AKASHA Hub Berlin event kicked off with a talk by AKASHA Hub Barcelona creator, Lorenzo Patuzzo, who presented on the theme of hubs, drawing upon his experience of creating and operating one. The 280m² Hub in Barcelona that Lorenzo operates includes desk workspaces, a hardware hacklab, a meeting room, a chilling zone, and a multipurpose social area for gatherings and meetups.

Dr David Bovill presents an engaging session on collaboration and governance 🗳️

David Bovill followed Lorenzo, expanding upon this theme, and putting across his ideas on how collaboration and governance could work through the Hub Network.

PD Dr Soenke Bartling talks Blockchain for Science and AKASHA 🧪

Soenke Bartling, creator of AKASHA Hub Berlin, rounded off the discussion by talking about Blockchain for Science, a group looking to fix the problems of reproducibility and incentivize true innovation within the scientific community by utilizing blockchain technologies. Soenke finished the presentation off by explaining why he had decided to get involved in the AKASHA Hub Network, and talking about creating novel incentive structures beyond “likes” around ideas and innovation sharing - for which blockchain technology is uniquely suited.

After the talks, a slice of interested individuals continued to hang around for another 2 hours, debating subjects such as the Hub Network and intra-network coordination, under the guidance of David Bovill. Conversations on these subjects continued at dinner later that evening, and throughout the days that followed...

Once again, the Hub Network has expanded that little bit more, adding an extra node that will seek to expand collective minds at local, regional, and global scales. If you're interested in getting involved with the AKASHA Hub Berlin specifically, you can join their community on meetup.com.

If this article has started to get your creative juices flowing, and made you think why is there no AKASHA Hub in my town/city/county/state/country? 🤔 Why not get in touch, and get further information on how you could help the Hub Network become better, bigger, and brighter. ✨