Oh welcome to gossip about gossip. Powered by Hedera Hashgraph. And each episode will cut through the hype of blockchain promises and explore real world examples of organizations creating the next generation of decentralized applications, which will bring trust back to the internet for us all. Hello everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of gossip about gossip. The podcast where we talk about real world applications of distributed ledger technology. My name is Zenobia Gottschalk and I'm the SVP of communications here at swirl labs, helping to grow the Hedera ecosystem. I am delighted to be joined by one of the new Hedera governing council board members, Monique Morrow from synovus. Hi, Monique, how are you? I'm very fine. It's a little bit hot over here in Europe, but as we spoke earlier. But I'm doing well and it's a pleasure to be here. Good good. Now you are an independent board member. So many of the board members are affiliated with governing council members. You are affiliated with synovus. So for our audience, can you tell us a little bit about synovus and your role there and then maybe how you got involved with it era? Sure it's a pleasure. Well, first and foremost, synovus is quite an old conflict in the sense of at least 30 years old. And we're in the mobile mobility space when I say mobile communications. So any of those text messages that you see kind of messaging is really the forefront of what we do as a company. The race to Tampa, Florida, so that's headquarters. Although I'm based in Europe, we have a we're a global entity. And in fact, let's just say that they are our customers. Very our customers are either mobile or customers or mvnos, as we call them, or mobile carriers, if you want to say it that way. And our large enterprise customers. So think about banks and that of the. I think that's one side of the house that is we have a carrier business and we have an enterprise business. What I do at synovus is that I am a senior distinguished architect in emerging technology. And so examples of emerging technologies could be what we're talking about today. So it'd be like distributed ledger technology, DLT, blockchain, quantum security or quantum computing and that of the. In that vein, I'm actually a chair of the GSMA. That's again, it's a public industry forum. What's an industry forum where we look at standardization. So I'm a chair and the DLT group I actually chair that group, distributed ledger technology group, and I'm also involved in World Economic Forum and, and the Wharton School in the area of DAOs to centralize autonomous organizations. So looking at how can we make that a model that we could aspire to? There's so much negative press at the moment around DAOs. And so how can we actually put up the benefits, if you will? And so with that, how did I get involved with the how did you get involved with hedera? So happens Hedera it was an opportunity in the sense of with Brett McDowell. I actually invited Brett to speak at the gsma, talk about Hedera. I actually working with one of our partners and IBM actually talked about possibly joining the council as a company. We kind of went back and forth on that. And looked at other ways I could actually participate or contribute to Hedera. So that let's just say the dance together has been going on for about, about a little over 2 years, about two years. And with that, I have to say there has been fantastic in the sense of I worked in the I actually chaired co-chair, the decentralized identity group and then we had an enterprise group. We were actually going back and forth with members of the council or at least in these the way we were, we were kind of deconstructed, if you will, across verticals on types of use cases we could think about in terms of amplifying as a Hedera in the industry. So that's been my journey with Hedera. And I have to say it's been a great discussion opportunity. And I'm, as I said before, so thrilled to be a new member of the board. So as an independent member. And so that's an honor for me. Wonderful and it seems like you have such a broad purview over, you know, so many things that you get exposure to. And get to see with all the working groups that you are a part of. How did you how did you initially come to find Brett and haddara? Well, that was through one of our as I said before, that was through one of the partners I've been working with at least to have had been working with, at least through survivors, IBM. So one of the participants from IBM, who's since left and departed and has gone on to do other things. And so it's just one thing led to another. And that was more or less, hey, you may be interested in looking at what we're doing in Hadera. And in fact, you know, when we're participating in it was the IBM, one of the user groups that we had a couple of years ago through IBM. It was they were talking about how they were using this new technology or call it new at the time to actually look at infrastructure and so on and so forth. So that opened that door opening, that coming into and looking at Hedera through Bret and James came through one of the colleagues through IBM, who is no longer with IBM. I would say, the rest is history. I mean, it's just so dynamic, though. I mean, and I wish that I mean, that that's been a great opportunity and only an attestation of what's happening in our confirmation. That is a positive confirmation. You know, there's the pros that we see of what's happening in the industry so, so dynamic that people can go off and do their own, look at how they can carve out their own journeys with these sets of technologies. Absolutely and so you've talked, you have talked a little bit about participating and sharing the decentralized identity work. What do you hope to accomplish or how do you see yourself now in this new role on the board? What would you what would you like to do? Well, I mean, I take the role the board of directors very seriously with my new with my colleagues in the board itself. So it's looking at how we agree on governance and what governance looks like for there as a whole and all things equal, realizing that we have different communities. And so first and foremost is having those conversations that we at first call, you know. Seek to understand and debate and decide, right? So seek to understand and debate and decide so and there we want to make sure, I think as a community, and especially having had a understanding where we're going and looking at some of the top of mind issues is to assure that we have a governance in place that sets that people such that the community, because it's community driven, understand it and it is and people can look at how they can gravitate toward that. I did lead in with a concern in the industry that there is negative press out there with what's happening and decentralized, autonomous outside to say DAOs as a whole. And we don't want to go down that path of, you know, go down that path per se. And so what I love about this group is that there is the debate. There is hey, let's look at what we need to look at together and seek a better seek a path forward such that it's not going to put us in the light of any negative press and actually amplify the positive here and we can hold it up as a standard. And that's most importantly for me is to hold all that, you know, Hedera as a standard overall. So as a director on the board, an independent director, I think this is I believe strongly that this is a great opportunity for myself and for my colleagues together collectively. Absolutely and that's so much the ethos of haddara, right, in terms of demonstrating the real and tangible and practical ways that this technology can be used for good and, you know, is being used in very pragmatic, real world terms. While we have you, Monique, I do want to ask, since you do have such a broad reach and you are part of so many different organizations that are talking about DLT, both internally as well as through your work with WEF and others, what are you hearing in the market related to distributed ledger technology and its applications? Setting aside sort of the negative some of the negativity around daos, I strongly well, if I look at DLT, I think we've passed that chasm already. I think that what we're seeing now are actual use cases coming together and actual business. I mean, in the gsma, for example, our purview is really 80% business and you know, 20% of the technology. So you don't create a technology just for technology's sake. You're looking at where you could remove friction per se and look at how you deal with automation. So that you kind of deal with those types of examples. So there is we are seeing adoption. We're also looking we we're seeing a we're seeing also how do you deal with third party if you want to understand what is trusted, especially in several types of verticals, whether it is pharmaceuticals and so on. Right I mean, those are kind of examples. So DLT in its various forms are is being adopted. I think the issue that we're going to find more and more is what is interoperability mean? You know, what is true interoperability look like? What does chain interoperability types of interoperability? We have ethereum, you have Hyperledger fabric, you have a quorum and so on, consensus, quorum, ethereum, derivatives, et cetera. So we have to kind of have an agreement of what does that look like, especially if you're talking about it from an enterprise perspective, because enterprises that care deeply about their management systems write their own space systems, you know, and so when we have something that is going to be problematic in looking at interoperability to those systems, we will have a, I think, a challenge in terms of true adoption. I mean, full adoption. So we have to make sure it is a phased approach in the industry. So people are looking at it from other aspects. I mean, now the tokenization, token economics, I mean, we're looking at other aspects of the discussions itself. So adoption is happening. It's been happening, which is a good thing. I think there is going to be also aspects of what is security look like or Social Security and privacy, which also has sort of interesting levels. So those are going to I mean, it's not going to be a lack of work or a lack of significant and I would say a lack of meaningful work in this space. I mean, you know, there are folks who are looking at the metaverse now. I mean. One of the areas that I've been involved in since 2016 has been with the IEEE. So has been looking at ethics and extended reality now. So kind of looking at it in packaging and saying, OK, extended and augmented reality is that something called the metaverse and then metaverse and blockchain and metaverse and blockchain and NFTs. So I mean, it's, it's interesting, but insofar and this is the important aspect of it, you can look at what a TAM looks like, you can look at the business case, looks like what it looks like. But in communities, it has to be adopted, right? It has to be trusted. And there is where I'm really going to be focused when we're talking about Hedera. What is trust look like and what does it feel like? Otherwise we will just be another headline and that is not the space I don't think we should be at. I think just another headline, which is a negative headline, I think we have all the reason to be positive here. So trust, it's all about trust, especially when I talk about decentralized identity, it's all about trust. Absolutely and Monique, you bring up such great points, you know, both for existing enterprises as well as for any organization or group or community interoperability and security are going to be paramount. I think we hopefully learned our lesson with the way we built the internet the first time. Right we build it sort of with trust in a different way. We assumed that people wouldn't use it for evil. And so now we have to, in some ways flip that script on its head and assume that we need to build in trust into the platforms and build in security and interoperability into those platforms. So that it doesn't get used for evil. Well said. I would say, well said. I mean, technology is not going to protect this from nefarious folks, you know, in the industry or greed. But we should be able to build some level of trust here. Right and so and I think that's where people are looking at it from that perspective. I think people are looking at, you know, what is regulation feel like look like in the European union, there are discussions in that space, etc., and certainly I in North America. So if we can create, you know, we can expect some level of I do believe we can expect some level of regulation, at least what at least talking with regulators and policymakers, because we should be talking with policymakers and taking them along this journey together. But if we do this. Well and there's no reason why we cannot do it well, we can be the standard in the industry. And I see all of the I see it all sort of the silos kind of breaking down. And so, you know, we took a look at the internet and the internet of value. And what that means, et cetera. The cat is out of the hat right now, so you can't kind of put it back there. It's been people have been talking about this for some time now. And because of what? Because of trust. And so if we can think about how we create trust and enable trust and that it's not complicated for people. Let me go back. We if you do it well and hiding the complexity, hiding it as an art, you know, from a business perspective. But if people want to really what's underneath the hood and how the motor works, you should be able and we as a community should be able to talk it to that level, too. Absolutely absolutely. Well, Monique, Thank you so much for taking the time. We really appreciate it. And we also Thank you for your service on the board and appreciate your work in helping to shepherd the community and the technology and the governance. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Zenobia. Thank you so much. Thank you.
