Elena Sinelnikova on CryptoChicks mentoring women in tech

0:22on you're very welcome I'd love to start the interview by getting a little bit of the story behind crypto chicks I know there's a little bit of history to run through could you start out with the background on when you first started crypto chicks what were the goals that you set out for the organization and how is that growing out I guess it was

0:40it back in the days when I me and my girlfriend we were kind of fascinated with the blockchain and we discovered blockchain by accident and we started looking into it by installing a theory wallet and found out that it's not that straightforward so we decided to make it easier you know for the other girls the first step that we did we created a meetup group and we in this meetup group

1:07we called it blockchain and get the currencies for ladies and we held our first meetup just with a whiteboard and we're drawing the structure of blockchain on the board explained in the wallets explaining security exchanges back then that was in the 2017 that was something very new and the whole crypto is going up crazy up so there was a lot of interest but we focused more on the

1:36technology side not on investments or not and you know on the making money or you know some we were interested in developing blockchain knowledge and giving it to the girls and to women and also to young girls to use that's great that's how we started that's amazing aleena and in 2017 with the rise of the prices and the markets going into the

2:05mainstream news that definitely brought a lot of traction but with that a lot of people realized that this technology had a lot of promise for all of these different industries and not just on the cryptocurrency side even just on the blockchain side for things unrelated to payments so I'm glad that helped grow the crypto chicks platform and could you talk a little bit about how

2:32much you've grown and how much you're seeing women involved in the industry right now you know when it first started similar to the days of the internet it was seems like it was 90% men and it seems like we're getting more of a diversification which is great so have you seen a shift in the industry overall as you've continued to grow crypto chicks as well that's for sure

2:53back then it was actually more than likely maybe five three to five percent of the women in the in the blockchain maybe in crypto it was a little bit better but in the blockchain technology itself there was less women because this is a you know technology and women seem to be less interested in it so we started off a word of course with the meetup groups we explained the

3:17technology but then we organized our first hackathon event where we had a goal to have at least 60 hackers that women hack in the blockchain and we had hundred 70 applications Wow which was a huge success and it turned out that actually the interest is bigger than we expected and since then we were able to bring lots of women and raise the interest and now all

3:46our women that we brought over the years we know that they have either successful careers in there in a blockchain for example like architects solutions architects they blockchain solutions architects in big companies and some of them started their own businesses some of them work in the you know in the research a field of the blockchain so yes those were a few that we brought in

4:13and overall we noticed that the percentage of women that are involved in this technology growing for sure that's great to see that they're flourishing and starting their own companies as well and when you first look at blockchain technology a lot of the technicalities can seem very daring and it seems like a large leap in terms of the things that you need to learn but

4:38from what I read with crypto chicks you also have a mentorship program the crypto chicks hatchery where you start from the beginning you know and sort of lower those barriers to entry could you talk a little bit about your mentorship program what's it all about and how it's grown yes we plan this group the secretary program in mind that we would like to do a continuous education for

5:04our women the one that entered our hackathon because you know they did the hack and then now what they developed all this kind of solutions ideas but then they just have to you know stopping and go home so we provided them an opportunity to enter this program and develop their business ideas further we acquired the pool of mentors and develops the whole you know the meetings

5:27the program the mentorship techniques for them and also milestones for them to follow and to develop their own businesses right now we are in the very last milestone and we have our results and prizes come in on June 6 for these teams we have ten teams right now in this program ten companies that we grew that's great and you've done so many different events you know business

5:53events networking events as well as hackathons and coding events but I'm curious to know how much has crypto chicks needed to pivot through the lock downs in the early 2020 and the cancellation and postponement of a lot of large events has that affected the program and have you pivoted because of that it's in somewhat affected our crypto chicks retreat program although

6:17we just did the very last one meeting widgets just right before the lockdown we were lucky and our last one will be on jukes June 6 which we still hope to hold in person if not we'll hold it online we don't have to move our cryptid chicks hatchery oh sorry coop – chicks hackathon in Toronto a little bit down the skin is in-person event but instead we created a

6:45new hackathon which call planet-wide SOS hackathon and SOS stands for share our strength which we did in a partnership with our stock so we are right now in the community building phase for this hackathon we acquire in the audience the sponsors the community leaders and so far we have registrations from 24 countries in to this event this event is

7:14actually online its virtual its will be running on for the other course of like 3 sorry 2 months followed by this product on so as I said once people hack at this hackathon we budgeted a marketing spending for them to actually go and promote their ideas to the world and we also opened it up to all technologies so people with all the

7:44grounds and all technologies can hack the goal for the hackers is to create solutions for the new world for the lessons that we learned in this lockdown and also we managing on the entire hackathon why using the blockchain tools for example created Daoist are created the Builder collective Dao which is digital cooperative where each hackathon member

8:13is the participant in his Dao and have a voting power that correlated to it contribution to the DAO and also we are raising money using the blockchain we have for example block chain link where all participants that share this link will share also the profit from the from the magnet race so that's something that we do on the blockchain work chain

8:40allows a lot so and they also involve partners for example like the seneschal and we bring in our hackers there to socialize in the virtual environment and the virtual reality because we're now in lockdown we of social distances the virtual realities alternative on a blockchain as well that's great that you're including you know the voting prize pools the

9:05networking all integrating the blockchain as well and I have used decentraland as a virtual reality world for networking events and it is a world of difference from just going on to zoom and seeing people you get to customize your avatars and you can have infrastructure and build out a whole digital conference floor so that's super exciting and yeah the fact that you

9:27already have 24 countries signed up for this hackathon is amazing could you remind me again when does it start or is there a deadline to register by and it's available for any people around the world are there any requirements it's available for any people around the world actually people who never even know anything about blockchain good to enter because we're

9:52going to teach them how to get involved and also we accept registration up until May 28th in this period of May 1st to May 28th we run in the community building events in a decentraland and also over zoom and we also have webinars that running online and May 29 we will have opening ceremony May 29 to 30 first

10:20and then it's all full of the with a hackathon on June 1st 2:16 so we'll have two weeks of hacking and then followed by the judging and followed by this prayer that on the one that we will be promoting all these applications to the world so this is the and even though the two sign up you can go to s or s hackathon calm and just register simple is that sounds great

10:46well I'm glad that you've continued to grow crypto chicks and you know pivoted well through the lockdown and I think it'll be actually really exciting because it showcases not only virtual conferencing but also prize pools voting all of these other things that people are going to be learning about blockchain while they're able to learn coding so that's super exciting and all

11:08best towards that I will leave the links to the event and crypto chicks in the description box below and that's all the time that we have for the interview but I really appreciate you taking the time alena to speak about crypto chicks and the SOS hackathon and let's follow up after the event and see what comes next for crypto chicks thank you very much

11:29Ashton and we really appreciate also even chain involvement in this thank you yeah thank you so much thank you