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Women In Web3 Unite Through DAOs And NFTs Feat. Nicole Buffett, NFT Gigi, Melanie Plaza & Amy Soon (NFT LA Twitter Spaces)
DAOs or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations are now revolutionizing the ways in which we can build community. There are so many people, especially women, who are stuck on a path they’d like to escape, in search of greater empowerment. Listen in to hear how DAOs bring like-minded people together to envision and achieve something better.
Join Edge Of NFT co-host Eathan Janney as he talks to some really talented women in Web3 and learns what they are creating through DOAs and NFTs. This episode is adapted from a special NFTLA Twitter Spaces event featuring panelists Nicole Buffett, NFT Gigi, Melanie Plaza & Amy Soon speaking about women’s empowerment using the latest tools. Learn how they each are helping women in their own way, whether it’s by promoting their art or by teaching them to build new skills and support systems.
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Women In Web3 Unite Through DAOs And NFTs Feat. Nicole Buffett, NFT Gigi, Melanie Plaza & Amy Soon (NFT LA Twitter Spaces)
We’ve assembled an incredible panel of awesome achievers to talk about the fascinating things that are happening in DAOs and NFTs, especially looking at how women are finding interesting leverage points within the space, ways to come together, create new things, and empower themselves and everyone else. I’m going to get into some intros to our guests, which I’m very excited to have all of you. It’s a privilege to have such wonderful folks on. I’ll give an intro to everybody first, and then I’ll give them a chance to say hello and introduce themselves a little bit, and then we’ll move on into the conversation.
**Let’s start with Nicole Buffett. She is an NFT influencer, a philanthropist and creator. She’s a former Board Member of the San Francisco Art Institute as well as participating at the San Francisco Art Institute. She’s an artist in residence. She has been at JB Blunck, Djerassi and Infinite Acres. She has also been a speaker in several major media outlets, including NPR, Oprah, and Fortune Magazine. She has participated in some lecturing at educational institutions as well. She is committed to the healing aspects of art and the intersection of regenerative agriculture, community and art. She happens to be CryptoPunk #8771. I’m sure we’re all jealous of that achievement. **
Next is NFT Gigi. She’s the Founder, Creative Director, and Lead Engineer of Crypto Tech Women. She’s also a full stack developer with expertise in lots of platforms like React JS, JavaScript and TypeScript. State Management, using platforms like Redux. She has backend, Node.js, Express.js and MongoDB. She’s inspired by clever solutions to complex problems and creative implementations of everyday tools. You could find her on GitHub @GigiScarlet.
Melanie Plaza is also active in coding and tech leadership. She’s at AE Studio, which happens to be a partner of the show. You could find out more about our partnership at EdgeOfAE.com. We’re helping people build projects in Web3 and NFTs. She is the CTO at AE Studio, leading product and technical strategy, and building cool stuff for startups and enterprises. She’s a former Co-Founder of ELIX and Founder of Token Runners and Instill. She’s passionate to make impactful web, blockchain and AI products.
**Finally, let’s introduce Amy Soon. She is the Founder of Blu3 DAO. She’s an author and an actuary. She’s on a mission to empower women to be financially free with a little bit of crypto power and metamorphosis magic. She’s a management consultant. She grew from analyzing pension plans to managing HR and M&A deals. She has been a manager at PWC and a former consultant at Deloitte. She’s a skilled developer of people programs and culture. **
We have great folks on the panel here. I want to check in with each one of you and give you a chance to say a few words or something from your introduction we might have missed because it’s new or maybe not as well-known. Let’s kick it over to Gigi. It’s great to have you here.
Women In Web3: Blue DAO is here to empower women to achieve financial freedom in the Web3 space. Their mandate milestone is to onboard 1000 women scholars around the world.
How is everyone doing?
**Very good. Anything else you want to add about the latest in your world or did we cover it? **
I’m fully focused on Crypto Tech Women. I’m still coding full-time with Crypto Tech Women, but I’m developing a Web3 educational platform that token holders of Crypto Tech Women will have exclusive access to. In this Web3 educational platform, we’re going to be covering coding topics because as a software engineer, I think there’s so much opportunity in Web3.
For us, there are a lot of educational platforms that are niched only for coding. I do realize we have so many different members in our community with different interests. We are going into more of a generalist direction where we will also have marketing topics and not only traditional coding topics. We’ve also been doing masterclasses for our community and those are also ranged from crypto to NFTs to art. Those will also be included within our platform. I’m super excited about that.
**That’s great stuff. It’s a common trail. Although it’s changing that developers need to be more connected to things like marketing so they know that they’re making the right products for the right people or be able to connect with the creative side of things. I love that breadth of what you’re working on. Nicole, I know you’ve got a lot of interesting things cooking these days. Do you want to mention what’s going on at the moment? **
I’m so happy to be here. I do have a lot cooking. The most closely coming up is an exhibition of 32 new animated Spirit Coins. I was connected to an amazing new IRL NFT gallery space here in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, right on Abbott Kinney called The Gallery or The Collective. The super organic way I met them was when I was at NFT LA, I was bringing some Spirit Coins to get framed by my framer here in LA and someone from the gallery was in there. It happened completely organically. It is very fun that this space is super weaving into real life. It’s very natural and spontaneous, but it’s all synergistic. I love that.
There’s so much opportunity in Web3 when it comes to coding and education. Click To Tweet
That’s happening on June 3rd, 2022 from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM. I’m getting ready for that. I’m producing my first-ever line of textiles, all locally made in Los Angeles, with a meditation throw of the Spirit Coin on them. I’m super excited to be expanding my content and how I’m weaving the physical in with the digital asset. Please come. There is going to be a bar and all kinds of amazing things going on that night. Beyond that, I am still finishing up preparing projects that are going to be dropped on Quantum Art in July.
**I loved how you incidentally used the word weaving after saying that you’re launching a textile project. You’re weaving things together metaphorically and literally. Let’s hop on over and check in with Amy. We’ve known each other as well as some of the other ladies on the panel, but I’d love to dive in a little bit deeper on what you’re up to right now. **
I’m here in Malaysia. This is the great part about being in Web3. You can be anywhere. My latest update is I moved out of my apartment from New York City after living there for eight years. Now I am decentralized living and working in a DAO, which is pretty exciting. There’s a lot going on at Blu3 DAO. We launched a few months ago and we brought 50 women scholars to Denver. We brought 40 to Rio in Brazil. We won the first prize hackathon there.
We also went to ETHAmsterdam. We brought three all-women hack teams and we even made history because we were the only all-women hackathon team that won first prize. We’re very proud of our hacker girls. Now, we have a team hacking in Activate Miami. I can’t believe we’re not even three months old. It’s been going well in Blu3 DAO. We’re here to empower women to achieve financial freedom in the Web3 space.
Our mandate milestone is to onboard 1,000 women scholars around the world. We have launched Blue3 LatAm in Latin America, Blu3 Europe, and now we have Blue3 New York, LA and Miami. That’s the beauty of having a DAO. It’s decentralized and they explode from there. We are also launching 1,000 women-led DAOs and other social tokens.
It has been exciting to be putting our minds together to think of DAO structure and everything good with DAO. We have two hackathon teams that won in ETHAmsterdam and now they are starting their startup. We are building our very own Blu3 DAOverse to onboard more women into the space in the Metaverse. That’s super exciting and I also own a project management tool with the DAO app.
Women In Web3: CryptoZombies is a solidity game development course. You build a game where you have CryptoKitties and zombies start eating it and you’re building it with an ERC-721 token.
**Great stuff. You have lots going on and we’ll be diving even deeper into that stuff. I’m very excited. This is going to be a great conversation. I loved knowing about the wonderful synchronistic connection that Nicole made through NFT LA. Part of our intention was to create an event where things like that can happen. Melanie, I would love to check in with you. What’s the latest in your world. Is there anything with you or with AE Studio that you’d like to share? **
We’re working on a lot of cool web stuff. I’m focusing on a lot of crossover utility into the space. We’re focusing on making it easy and accessible. The thing that we were working on with you guys is a concrete example of something like that. There’s a blockchain NFT application, but it’s also has a very user-friendly interface and people can see the value in that.
We’re working on some other projects like the RPC game also, which has NFT. I’m also working on some other projects with blockchain technology stuff with other companies that are building identity solutions in blockchain, which is exciting. Another app, I’m finishing that we’ve made for token owners, which is the way we will platform our own custom-branded NFT drops, so it’s pretty exciting. I decided to do that and other things because it was pretty fun and to be able to deliver value to the space. It’s pretty fun.
It comes out when you chat more with folks at AE Studio, but there are these little few words that are a theme of what you guys do and that’s about increasing human agency. I love that as a theme within a business as building software to make people’s lives better and help them do more wonderful things. I would like to get into a warm-up question. It doesn’t have to be a super long answer, but I want to get deeper into your world and understand the evolution of your thinking and involvement in Web3.
**I want to start with Gigi. You’re a programmer as we established and you seem naturally drawn to tech. I want to know as much detail about the moment that made you dive so deep into NFTs and Web3. If there wasn’t a moment, tell us about that gradual process of noticing you were in the water as it came to a boil. Tell us how you got involved. **
I’ve been involved with crypto since 2017. I did not know anything about NFTs back then. I was surface-level involved with crypto and that was before the crash. Afterwards, it’s continuing my life and coding. It wasn’t until 2021, I heard Gary talking about it. I’ve been a follower of him. He mentioned NFTs in a podcast, but I also know I saw the news about a twelve-year-old kid who did an NFT project about some whale. He was able to sell it out. It was fascinating to me because that article talks about coding and that was the first way in.
DAOs are decentralized. That’s the beauty of it. They just explode from there. Click To Tweet
I worked at a startup. I didn’t have a lot of time outside of fully focused on project building. I would listen to podcasts here and there. I did tell my best friend about NFTs. I sent him the podcast and the articles I read and he did his own research. He came back to me later and was like, “Do you remember that thing you sent me? I’m trying to build a game.”
He’s not an engineer. He found this thing called CryptoZombies which a lot of people are familiar with. If you’re not, it’s a Solidity game development course. You build a game where you have crypto kitties and the zombies start eating them. You’re building it with an ERC721 token. It’s pretty cool and it’s free. If you haven’t, you can check it out at CryptoZombies.io. He sent me this and he’s like, “Let’s see who can do it faster,” because he wanted to understand if that was for non-dev that wanted to be devs or if someone who’s an engineer can go faster. We’re very competitive with each other, so that was the beginning of it.
I was like, “Let’s do it,” and then as I was going through it which is a very long intensive course. For me, it was easier because I have a lot of background in coding. There were so many languages that I’ve worked with that made Solidity easy to understand for me. Going through it, I was like, “I liked this,” because I love gamified learning. Eventually, I finished it and then I started building my own thing. That was my beginning into Web3.
**It’s fascinating how these kinds of beginner projects can reignite or ignite a flame even in someone who’s experienced or has some things under their belt. That’s a fun story. I want to go over to Nicole and ask you a different question. You’re a different personality than Gigi. You’re not a programmer. I don’t even know if you might consider yourself a general tech enthusiast, even though you’re quite involved. You and I spent some time together. **
**We’ve been hiking in nature. We talk about digging in the dirt and making real art objects out of dirt, a very organic person from my perspective. I want to know how and why you might think the world of organic creative expression in the natural world might have any connection at all with this tech and Web3 stuff. How do you see that? **
What Ethan is saying is I’m the big hippie in this space. It’s true. I love making dirtballs. I’m about to focus on that project with Ethan which involves lots of dirtballs and they will be translated into NFTs. Everything that I do in Web3 starts in the physical space. All of my NFTs begin as painting. I came into this space early in 2021. I didn’t know when I was going to have another art show. I’m a traditional painter and mixed media artist. I was already into exploring all different mediums with art. That same spirit of curiosity and commitment to art in every single way that can be expressed is what drives me in my life.
Women In Web3: Explore all the different mediums of art. Having curiosity and commitment to art in every single way it can be expressed is really what drives an artist in life.
The digital medium has given so many more legs to my work. As far as dirt and Web3 go, the source of the work starts in the physical. I like attaching a physical to the digital asset because integration here is super important for different reasons. It’s not necessary for every aspect or space, but I enjoyed it because it grounds the way in which we can utilize it and the utility of what we’re doing, and the multifaceted nature of this space and Web3.
**You’re not the only hippie, I would consider. I want to kick it over to Amy. I love bringing the topic of DAOs into this. All of us here in some way are connected to some DAO projects. Amy, Blu3 DAO has been a big part of what you’re doing. When did you know that that was going to go from an idea that was being kicked around into a real thing? **
I’m laughing because I feel like in Web3 space, things move so fast. There’s not a lot of time for thinking, but more doing. I don’t know if there was exactly one moment that I saw what Blu3 DAO was because I have to be honest, I didn’t. It’s a great story because I had been investing in crypto for a few years. I have a group of women and we learn about investing in crypto, stock, options and all that good stuff.
One time, my friend was visiting in town and he was going through this Terra happy hour. At that time, they were going to the moon. He was like, “Would you like to join us at this happy hour?” I’m like, “Of course, I’ve been investing in crypto. I would love to meet the genius minds behind it. When I showed up, I remember feeling intimidated because they were all brilliant. There were all these founders of different DeFi protocols and all that stuff.
I thought I knew crypto, but in that happy hour, I realized I knew not a lot. At that moment, when I met people in the space, everybody was so inclusive. They were all intelligent and creative, but there was so much passion and humility. I fell in love with the space. One thing I noticed in that venue, and there was a second party that I went to, was there were not a lot of women. I had met the Head of VP for Cosmo, Shelley. She was welcoming me with open arms.
There was this moment where we were at the bar and she’s like, “Amy, we are here to represent women and show up for other women. We need to support and protect each other.” I had that sister moment with her. Going from there, I started meeting a lot of the Harmony guys. They had the campaign for Create Wealth in Harmony and I wrote the book for them.
I wrote my book in three weeks because, Stephen, the Founder of Harmony, told me that if I didn’t finish my book in three weeks, I would’ve missed ETHDenver and if I didn’t make it to ETHDenver, my book would be irrelevant in six months, which crazily that is true because one of my chapters is about the Anchor Protocol. We all know what happened to Terra. It’s so crazy how fast the space moves.
When I was writing my book, I wanted to recreate that experience I had, which was my first crypto conference, that magical moment of learning about the Web3 space, and how vast the space was. I wanted to recreate that experience for other women to come into the space. That gave birth to bringing women scholars to ETHDenver.
When we went to ETHDenver, we were not a DAO. We were just 50 women scholars that wanted to go to our first crypto conference in Denver. It was that supportive community. There was magic and love in the air. It was like we were made of the same DNA and we were all there excited to learn. I call ourselves the crypto baby. They’re also the big sister and little sister where people had more experience and we’re all sharing with each other. That gave birth to Blu3 DAO.
**It’s very organic in coming together with a word that came up before here. I love hearing about how it’s sort of magical or those words that you used. I’ve seen that come up a lot on our show and Web3. The idea of things being magical and coming together. Nicole mentioned that too. It’s not always going to be an easy road. We’re all very hard workers, but it’s that knowing when the opportunity knocks and how to take advantage of it and take action. It sounds like that’s what’s going on. **
**I want to kick it over to Melanie. I want to ask you, since you’ve been a founder and a leader in tech, outside of Web3, the things that are similar and different between being a general tech founder and making things happen at Web3. Do you see a difference? If not, how do you see Web3 as a natural extension of tech evolution? If you do see a difference, what would be the differences between the Web3 space and being a tech founder and leader in general? **
That’s something I’ve thought a lot about. I like to think of a blockchain and then all the other different things in technology and treat it like that for a long time in my mind. The difference is this is not a new iPhone upgrade that you’re getting after people use Postmates or something like that. I don’t think it’s something that’s almost like an entire paradigm shift. Blockchain is like the gaslight and then they were switching to electric. People were like, “What if houses installed a slating? Is it worth it?” People thought, “This light bulb is stupid.”
It’s called CryptoZombies.io. You can find that online and do it on your computer. Maybe it’s also phone accessible and it’s free. It also has other ones. It has Solidity and Libra, which is the token for Meta. They have added other ones too. It does give a very comprehensive view of blockchain. It’s pretty cool.
Thank you very much.
Important Links
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@BuffettNicole – Twitter
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@NicoleBuffettArt – Instagram
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Twitter – Amy Soon
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@AmyTheSoon – Instagram
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@Blu3DAO – Instagram
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Twitter – Blu3 DAO
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Spotify – Edge Of NFT
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iTunes – Edge Of NFT