My TOKENIZE:LDN Storybook🎄
Once upon a Christmas Day, a Hive Santa 🎅 asked if I could gather a crew of elves and bring the gifts of our blockchain to children who didn't have a truly decentralized chain they could call their own. 😢 😪 😠
ExCel Centre London, the Venue of TOKENIZE:LDN
Chapter One 📖
My Hive “I” Story
"All I Want For Christmas Is Hive!"🎄
On Christmas Morning 2024, I sipped my holiday cocoa and told my life partner @bitterirony, "All I really want for Christmas is HIVE. With almost all our possessions in long-term storage, I don’t want presents. I just want HIVE." Of course, I was thinking of our beloved layer one token.♦️
Later that evening as he and I were hosting our annual 12-Hour @creativeworkhour Christmas Movie Marathon online for our Hive Community, a message appeared in my Discord DMs from @guiltyparties, asking if I could consider the speaking opportunity to speak for Hive at #TOKENIZE-LDN
The Christmas Day DM from @guiltyparties. It took me all of 30 minutes to discover it and say, “Of course, I will!”
Finding My Hive
As a creative, I’d been crushing on Blockchain use cases for culture and the arts since before I ever heard about HIVE. I was ecstatic to have @shadowspub onboard both @bitterirony and me in April 2022, but if I'm being honest, I found Hive a damned stubborn learn. But oh, how I dig a dopamine hit when I figure out a work around when there’s an FE fail.
It’s really the Hive community that’s my jam, despite the occasional social anxiety attack I've experienced in IRL. Despite that, I'm so into this crowd that last year I set up residence in the UK to be at the ready for a speeding train or quick flight to hop into a conference, a meetup, a @buzzparty, or a @hivefest 🎉
A Timeline Shift
Timing is everything for speaking engagements, and although the Hive speaking opportunity was months away, I was already booked on a stage in Ft. Worth, Texas for a conference of 3,500 clarinetists for ClarinetFest 2025, which was only two days before the London event. But, believe you me, I was going to make it work. I made a nutty plan to step off one stage, hop an overnight flight and step right up on stage for Hive.
However, in the late Spring, Tokenize:LDN was postponed until early December. This turned out to have been a godsend for me because at the end of August I had a near classical music career-ending accident, requiring international travel for a specialty surgery followed by an aggressively painful rehabilitation.
As October approached, I hoped I'd still make it to Kuala Lampur to speak at HiveFest10, but the doctor gave me a big, fat, "nuh uh." Yet, to my surprise the Friday before the event, he said I could fly if I really wanted, “but no heroics!” But, I’ll come clean, I let him think I was only flying to London, not to London > switch plans > continue on to KL. Me bad.
Well, it turned out the doc was right. It was way too soon to have tackled such a trip. The experience sobered me up to take it easy, stop traveling and go to work preparing for Tokenize:LDN.
What’s Under Hive’s Hood?
A big part of the preparation was taken care of, as @crimsomclad & @guiltyparties wrote and designed the deck for the conference made precisely for the Web3, Devs & Crypto-trading Con-goers. I just thought of it like they wrote the song and all I had to do was sing it. So easy, right? Wrong! What they wrote was all that and a bag of crisps, but it fell out of my range! I panicked!!
Luckily, I keep an ace ♠️ up my sleeve for challenges like this. So, to get comfortable with the "Why Hive?" deck, I went to the @creativeworkhour community. Support and encouragement are our trademarks and we hold live sessions everyday for crew members to manage all kinds of creative gymnastics. So, on the Sunday before the event, I asked for the help I needed. @shadowspub, @bitterirony and I spent 2 sessions in a CWH Zoom breakout room taking the “Why Hive?” deck, slide by slide, and digging into the material until I could paraphrase each one in a couple of different styles.
@bitterirony had a great idea! He suggested we boil the entire pitch down into five words, so that even if stage fright were to pop up, I’d be anchored in a simple architecture for the message. We three agreed on the Five Fingers 🖐️ of “Why Hive?”
- Fast
- Feeless
- Field-tested
- Framework ready
- Friendly
A Stage Fright Recoveree Tackles Public Speaking
Having my 5-fingered summary paired with good, old-fashioned “wood-shedding” on note cards just like in uni days, it was time to run the talk in front of live audiences, similar to how comics get ready for a Netflix special.
Reenter the @creativeworkhour community. On the day @bitterirony & I checked into the Moxy-Excel Centre, we ran my first dress rehearsal from our hotel room with the CWH crew in the Zoom room. How did I do? Meh. I went overtime, was noticeably nervous, and gave run-on examples for the slides.🥱
For the second dress rehearsal, my feet were much closer to the fire. This one was held at ExCel London-right on the Tokenize:LDN floor in Hive's Reserved Area on Day 1. That was a crazy experience! People were everywhere, I couldn’t hear myself talk, I felt conspicuous and a bit vulnerable to hear the feedback I needed.🫤
Second Dress Rehearsal for "Why Hive?" broadcast from the Reserved Area of the Christmas Networking Market sponsored by Hive, where we personally invited conference attendees and hosted online @creativeworkhour's Co-Working for Hive.
Getting Schooled on How Hivians Talk to the Public
In March of this year, I heard that Hive would be both on stand and on stage at the Web3 Amsterdam event, so I hopped a flight and stayed at the event for both days. To learn the gift of Hive gab, I shadowed @crimsonclad, @roelandp, @coldbeetrootsoup’s @minigunner and @artakush. I noted Crim whenever she was on stage or leading a panel discussion. Back at the Hive stand, she let me record a convo with one of the devs there. To prep for TOKENIZE:LDN, I returned to that recording to learn dev-friendly HIVE idioms. It was my personal crash course!
@crimsomclad on stage at Web3 Amsterdam, Circa Amsterdam, NL, March 2025
Chapter Two 📖
The Hive Crew TOKENIZE:LDN
DAY 1
Let TOKENIZE:LDN Begin!
The London event brought in seven of us Hivians from across the UK and Croatia, including @bitterirony who flew in from Boston, USA. It was a proud moment to be in the audience with @bitterirony, @collinz, @adetorrent, and @lordbutterfly to watch @mcsamm take one of the five stages arranged around the conference floor. As I listened to his Day 1 talk on the Hive Borehole Project @wellsforall, I began to visualise myself speaking there, too.
@mcsamm speaks for Hive in his talk about the @wellsforall project
WHY DESIGN DECISIONS MATTER AT CONFERENCES
As a designer, and having just watched how well @mcsamm excelled at communicating his message, I decided to pull out my conference designer hat. A bit of my background: one of the first briefs I took in London was to design a stand for a high-end furniture studio for Design London, formerly 100% Design. This experience, along with 20 years of attending conferences across my major interest areas which include architecture, sustainability, futurism, industrial colour forecasting, as well as design and fashion weeks, informed the kind of experience I wanted my audience to have.
So, as my own art director, I determined where I wanted to stand, where I wanted the furniture, what kind of mic I wanted to use, and that I‘d ditch the podium to be closer to the listeners. I reviewed the brief for my 20 minute talk with my stage manager and A/V professional.
Since clothing is a key non-verbal communicator, I chose to wear rugged heavy corduroy mechanics suits, one for Day 1 in Cranberry, and one for Day 2 in Black Forest green to send the message that Hive is community-driven chain welcoming to newcomers, but also, to make me easily recognizable as a Hive representative, a host of the Hive Christmas Networking Market. This worked according to plan, as attendees would start conversations with me because of what I was wearing!
With @bitterirony in the Reserved Area with one of the many trees decked with Hive British Christmas crackers.
For an added element of fun for my upcoming talk, I planned to play a bit of a Ms. Santa and bring a bag of hand-made ceramic Hive tiles for everyone in the audience brought from my days spent with Hive friends @hivebeecom at @krolestwo in November, where incidentally I scored the Deni Cler cashmere raspberry beret (above).
Seated next to me at @krolestwo,"The Kingdom” is @mipiano as she applies the first coat of paint on the Hive ceramic tiles, example of the ones we were hand-finishing to bring to the London event. (photo by @mipiano)
Tokenize:LDN Hive Christmas Scrapbook🎄
South View of the Bar of the Hive-Sponsored Christmas Networking Market
The Hive sponsored Christmas Networking Market design concept was a true stroke of genius, thanks to @crimsonclad & @guiltyparties. Given the event had been postponed for five months and that no one in their right minds risks a December conference, it was just the bit of magic needed to warmly welcome all those who ventured through our snow-drifted architrave.
Plan: Hive-Sponsored Christmas Networking Market
On Plan, you can read the huge bar as pictured in the photo above. The rectangles are the half-dozen pine picnic tables, the circles are the standing height tables, and the van is the Red Truck Grill you see in the photo below. In the lower left, marked by the Persian rug, is the Reserved for Hive Area (below) that we used as an HQ, by personal invitation only club for attendees we wanted to spend time with, and where we hosted 2 days of @creativeworkhour Hive community live co-working sessions.
Not a sleigh exactly, but this little red 60s Citroën dressed as a reindeer brought us a highlight of any respectable German Christmas Market 🌭
With Sharon of the Red Truck Grill at the Hive-Sponsored Christmas Market
With Charlotte Sadd of Just Me, a Edinburgh-based non-profit for identity fraud prevention
DAY 2
I speak in the last spot before lunch on Day 2. This better be good!
Not my first time on a Hive stage, but my first time to be the face and voice of Hive on a public-facing conference stage
With Carol Jules, a disability coach & a mobility tech specialist, & her carer, Sheila, following my talk. They loved it that I gave them two the Hive tiles I made myself in Krakow. That's @adetorrent wrapping up for us in the background.
With the "Why Hive?" talk done and dusted, the crew headed back to the Christmas Market for lunch. From the red truck, I ordered the Bratwurst on a Pretzel Bun with Red Braised Cabbage and Curry Ketchup. Oh, my gawd!
Hive Fam Photos
With @steevc, who was my spotter during the Q & A after the presentation. He was champion!
With @mcsamm, my encouraging friend and fellow Hive speaker.
With @adetorrent, my newest good Hive friend. I had no idea what an Hive OG he is!
@steevc and @bitterirony together for the fourth time. The three of us first met in London for a @buzzparty meetup on 30 November, 2023 at The Edition, Fitrovia, London.
The last Hivians present to close the event, Devin and I invited @steevc and @adetorrent to dinner. @bitterirony and @steevc figured out the local edition of the same restaurant we went to together two years ago, Mildred's.
It was a squiggly line to get to the Canary Wharf eatery, but Steve got us there like a conquering hero!
A classic moment we won't forget anytime soon...@adetorrent said, "Wait, this is a Vegetarian restaurant?" 😂
It was a short visit, but a good one. @bitterirony got to celebrate an American Thanksgiving with me and got to know the Hive Crew better to boot (photo below). Tomorrow, he's back to Boston.
Chapter Three 📖
TOKENIZE:LDN for Hive - The Rest of the Story
The immediate feedback from the talk was energetically positive. To my pleasant surprise, encouraging comments came in person from the audience, one before the Q & A began.
"This wasn't just the best talk of the FinTech Tokenize:LDN event, it was the best talk I've ever heard at a conference, ever." - Aadil Bundeally, Transformational Finance, AI & Regulatory Agent
With Georgia Andre-Goldmine of Blockaid, Onchain Security Services. She loved Hive's space for NFTs, as she leads an NFT community.
A few kind comments came via LinkedIn.
With the Katarzyna Kempa and the Axendi, Customer Service Specialists
With Charlotte Sadd of Just Me, Fraud Prevention Specialist
From Phillipe Weber, FinTech & Saas, Director at Vodaphone, UK
From Aadil Bundeally, Transformational Finance, AI & Regulatory Agent. I was stunned that he offered a compliment I couldn't have wished for! 🎁
WHY CONFERENCES?
Oh, now I've done it! I've taken a pro-position on why conferences are important to Hive. So let me do what I can to share my perspective as someone who has designed, covered, and spoken at conferences for more than 20 years in a dozen countries.
Hive can't afford to vanish from the wider world. Conferences are where entire industries decide who's relevent, who's building, and who's still in the game. As a polymath who works across multiple fields - futurism, sustainability,architecture, industrial colour forecasting, and design & fashion weeks - I have experience noting how market opinion is formed in these high energy, high stakes environments.
When a project stops showing up, the message is unmistakable: contraction, uncertainty, and retreat. Fear can be detected by one's absence. But I truly believe that visibility isn't vanity, it's vitality.
Tokenize:LDN is a perfect example. It wasn't attended by only devs and crypto traders. There were analysts, educators, philanthropists, curious newcomers, policy makers, and yes, actual MPs from the UK House of Commons and peers from the House of Lords. All had come to understand where value conveyance is headed in the blockchain landscape, how it's to be securely developed, and who's shaping how the world is adopting it.
I firmly believe Hive needs to be "in the room where it happens," not because of a desire to see our name in lights, but because Hive works. It's fast, feeless, field-tested, framework-ready, and driven by a friendly community who owns the hell out of it and will (as we say in Texas) defend the whole shootin' match!
Bottom line: If we're not there to tell our own story, someone else will tell it...not the way we'd have it told.
(Not) The End of Story 📖
Thank you, HIVE Community for taking a chance on this @hivebuzz minnow to represent the chain in a such a big pond venue.
Thank you to the HIVE Tokenize:LDN Crew who traveled, took time of from your bill-paying jobs, and like me, spent your own fiat to be there to show the Fintech market and policy makers who we are, what we do, and what power rests in the hands of the Hive community.
Happy Holidays, from the Hive Crew from Tokenize:LDN 🎁
*From left to