Meet-up Recap: Enterprise Blockchain, Latest STRATO Features, Panel Discussion
On March 6th, BlockApps hosted our Monthly Meetup, a monthly event packed with talks, interactive demonstrations, and lively panels. This month, the event was hosted by Red Hat at the Red Hat office in Manhattan’s Financial District. The event drew an audience of developers, entrepreneurs, and technologists, all eager to learn more about blockchain tech.
Richard Feldmann, Global Director of Financial Services at Red Hat, kicked the evening off by presenting Red Hat’s enterprise blockchain solutions and services. Next, Kelly LeValley-Hunt, BlockApps Global head of Sales, discussed several scenarios where Fortune 500 Companies are using blockchain technology.
It wouldn’t be a BlockApps Meet-up without an interactive demonstration. This time, Eli Mernit and Victor Wong demonstrated a revamped onboarding process that makes it even easier for developers to start building apps on BlockApps STRATO. The improvements include a simpler user interface for registering with STRATO and a developer-friendly CLI Tool to make deploying apps blindingly fast. After a short demonstration, the audience was invited to work along with Eli as he completed the process and deployed an app to the Blockchain. You can try it out here.
And finally, the evening was capped off with a lively panel discussion on what steps a developer needs to take to become a blockchain developer. The panelists discussed the challenges and opportunities of starting a career in blockchain development, why they picked blockchain vs. other interesting trends in software (ie. AI, Machine Learning), and how beginners can prepare for the leap.
These three takeaways summed up the discussion:
- There’s lots to do at every level of the stack (protocol, app layer, UI, etc.). Get involved in a project, and you will ramp up quickly.
- There are great tools out there that make learning possible, some examples are Truffle, BlockApps STRATO, Infura, Metamask, and uPort.
- Even with the tools, it’s still not the easiest thing to do, but don’t give up; just keep at it!
