The Block Chain Conference to include key presentations concerning development, deployment of blockchain-based approaches by global businesses

The Block Chain Conference, taking place on Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at the Mission Bay Conference Center, located on the UCSF Mission Bay Campus, will include presentations related to the development and deployment of blockchain-based approaches by global businesses (“block chain” is commonly spelled without space: “blockchain”), offering a reality-driven program that cuts through the hype, according to a press release CoinReport received.

The conference is set to highlight blockchain use cases for several vertical industries, including securities, banking, payments, insurance, legal, accounting/audit, energy and healthcare, as well as approaches to identity, content ownership/digital rights management and supply chain processing, said the release.

The Block Chain Conference chair Peter Harris, who is principal at Lighthouse Partners, Inc.

“A key mission of The Block Chain Conference is to educate business innovators and technology architects from companies deploying enterprise IT on the potential benefits and challenges of leveraging block chains, distributed ledgers and smart contracts, with lots of reality and zero hype,” said Conference chair Peter Harris in the release.

IBM Global Blockchain Offering director John Wolpert.

The conference’s program will be anchored by a keynote presentation from IBM. Titled “How to Make Block Chain Real for Business,” the keynote will be delivered by the multinational technology and consulting corporation’s Global Blockchain Offering director John Wolpert. It will provide IBM’s point of view on the potential of blockchain technology, highlighting the company’s open source collaboration with The Linux Foundation.

The program for the conference, according to the release, will include these presentations as well:

Avoiding The Pointless Block Chain Project – a short video from blockchain pioneer Gideon Greenspan, founder & CEO of Coin Sciences, on why distributed ledgers are NOT the answer to every problem.

Six Valued Features and Five Disruptive Implications of Block Chain Technology – an assessment of how blockchain technology is enabling the Internet of Value and why nearly every enterprise needs a “block chain strategy.” It will be presented by Needham & Company’s Spencer Bogart, author of “The Blockchain Report: Welcome to the Internet of Value.”

The Evolution of Trust – the story of why Overstock.com set up a blockchain technology unit, and what it will be doing. This presentation will cover the emergence of crypto technologies for financial processes, using the example of Overstock.com’s t0 crypto-finance unit to demonstrate how to make the transition. It will be presented by: Alec Wilkins, chief architect of Overstock.com and CTO of t0.com.

An Ownership Layer for the Internet – managing and tracking digital IP for content creators and media companies. Presented by: Bruce Pon, founder & CEO of Ascribe, this presentation will explore how blockchain technology can help manage, track and even monetize digital IP for content creators and media companies.

Tendermint founder & CEO Jae Kwon,

Why Most Fortune 500 Companies Will Use Block Chains – a look at how open source blockchains might one day replace a ubiquitous proprietary transaction processing system, highlighting technology from Tendermint. It will be presented by Jae Kwon, founder & CEO of Tendermint; Dustin Byington, co-founder & president of Tendermint and Ethan Buchman, co-founder & blockchain engineer.

Smart Contracts for Delivery vs. Payment (DVP) – a plan to move to T+0 settlement of U.S. equities. This talk will explore the three different technical mechanisms in use in the blockchain space to enable DVP settlement of trades, including leveraging Ripple’s technology. It will be presented by Ryan Singer, founder & CEO of Blockchain Clearing Corp.

Symbiont founder & CEO Mark Smith.

Re-Inventing Wall Street on the Block Chain – assessing financial markets use cases for blockchains, including stock issuance and processing using Symbiont’s platform. Participants include Brad Bailey, research director at Capital Markets, Celent; Jesse McWaters, project lead – Disruptive Innovation in Financial Services, World Economic Forum; Ron Quaranta, chairman of Wall Street Blockchain Alliance; Patrick Salami, founder & CTO of HitFin and Mark Smith, founder & CEO of Symbiont.

Running Ethereum Financial Apps on Microsoft’s Azure Cloud – a real-life use case of the marriage of blockchain and smart contract functionality with cloud computing. It will be presented by James Slazas, CFO, Enterprise Capital Markets, ConsenSys.

Cheryl Gurz, SVP, Retail Operations, The Bancorp.

How Block Chain Technology is Disrupting Global Payments – a review of blockchain and bitcoin’s place in corporate and personal payment services. Panelists include Gil Luria, managing director, Research, Wedbush Securities; Olaf Carlson-Wee, head of risk, Coinbase; Cheryl Gurz, SVP, Retail Operations, The Bancorp and Chris Larsen, co-founder & CEO of Ripple.

Banking on the Block Chain – how blockchain approaches can be applied to securities lending, identity of clients and making trade finance for supply chains more efficient. It will be presented by John Bertrand, industry value engineer – Banking, SAP.

Presentation: Triple-Entry Accounting – Reducing Financial Fraud Using Block Chains – an explanation of triple-entry accounting for tamper-proof financial reporting and auditing. It will be presented by Daniel Winters, president of Global Tax Accountants.

How Smart Contracts Enable Trustless Business – an overview of smart contracts and how they might be applied to business opportunities across several industries. It will be presented by Sergey Nazarov, co-founder & CEO of SmartContract.

Ethereum Overview and Applications – a high level introduction to the popular alternative public blockchain, highlighting applications built with it for accounting, music rights management and the usage monitoring and trading of electricity. It will be presented by Kieren James-Lubin, founder & chief data scientist of BlockApps.

Gem founder & CEO Micah Winkelspecht.

Identity Management for Block Chain Applications – a discussion of the issues involved in customer identity, drawing on the experiences of blockchain platform vendor Gem. It will be presented by Micah Winkelspecht, founder & CEO of Gem.

Factom founder & CMO Tiana Laurence.

Honesty is Subversive – How to Build Transparent and Accountable Business Systems with Block Chain Technology –Factom has tools to leverage the security of the blockchain, without the scalability limitations of bitcoin. See the three latest tools that could change data as we know it. Take away knowledge to influence your industry and learn what is in store for blockchain in 2016. It will be presented by Tiana Laurence, CMO of Factom.

Block Chain Deployment Pointers – providing practical tips of best practice approaches to developing and/or deploying blockchain technology as well as options that IT enterprises might consider as they look to deploy blockchain technology. Panelists include Pete Rizzo, U.S. East Coast editor at CoinDesk; Chris Finan, co-founder & CEO of Manifold Technology; P. Bart Stephens, founder & managing partner of Blockchain Capital and Joe Ventura, founder & CEO of Alphapoint, Ray Valdes, research director and an analyst at Gartner covering Internet platforms, web services, metacoin platforms and blockchain technology (Jen Massing, founder of Massing Works, the PR firm of the conference, tells us Valdes replaces Ventura, who is unfortunately unable to attend the conference).

Sponsors contributing to the program include Gem, Symbiont and Tendermint. Additional program contributions will come from: Alphapoint, Ascribe, BlockApps, Blockchain Capital, Blockchain Clearing Corp., Celent, ConsenSys, Factom, Gem, Global Tax Accountants, HitFin, MultiChain, Needham & Company, Overstock.com, SAP, SmartContract, Symbiont, t0, Tendermint, The Bancorp, Wedbush Securities, Wall Street Blockchain Alliance and World Economic Forum.

The registration fee is $495 in advance online, while the walk-in rate is $595.

Images courtesy of The Block Chain Conference via Massing Works