Adelaide will play host to a global blockchain summit in March

HUNDREDS of blockchain experts will converge on Adelaide during the upcoming Mad March season as part of a global summit on the emerging technology.

The ADC Forum’s global blockchain summit will be held in Adelaide in March.

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HUNDREDS of blockchain experts will converge on Adelaide during the upcoming Mad March season as part of a global summit on the emerging technology.

The event will be hosted by the ADC Forum, and is expected to attract more than 500 attendees.

High profile speakers will include British economist and politician Lord Meghnad Desai, early Bitcoin investor and chairman of blockchain data security company Shyft, Joseph Weinberg, and OECD director and former ASIC chairman Greg Medcraft.

ADC Forum founder Michael Roux said the summit would be held as governments continued to formulate regulatory responses to the rise of blockchain technology.

“It’s fairly timely that you bring the technical people, the regulators, governments, policy makers and major businesses together, to be able to work out that this is actually starting to mature in a way that is quite pervasive, in terms of the future of the economy and how society works,” he said.

“The focus on cryptocurrency and bitcoin created a euphoria and some negativeness about blockchain, but blockchain has so many other applications.

“It’s really important that people get to understand that, so they realise it’s a bit like the internet in the 90s - it is going to become pervasive and sit behind a lot of things that they do and they won’t even know.”

ADC Forum vice-chair Stephen Roux said development of the Lot 14 start-up hub at the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site was a key factor in the group’s decision to launch the event in Adelaide.

“We toured with some potential sponsors early on and it was that vision around Lot 14 that attracted them, and they’re considering things like starting their businesses here and their entry into Australia here,” he said.

The ADC Forum’s flagship leadership retreat brings together the country’s top brass in politics, business and academia each year to discuss the pressing issues facing Australia and the world.

Premier Steven Marshall, who attended the retreat in Gold Coast earlier this year, said the blockchain summit would offer an opportunity to showcase the renewal taking place at Lot 14.

“There will already be massive activation of that site by then and I think we have a compelling offer to this sector - of a really great central location, a curated program on that site, which I think stacks up with anything going around at the moment,” he said.

“This (blockchain) is a new wave of technology, which I think will have profound effects upon the way we do all business across the world, and because it’s at that early stage I think South Australia has got this unique opportunity.”

Adelaide-based blockchain consultant Luke Lombe said the summit would put Adelaide on the blockchain map.

“In terms of the level and the scale of the attendee here, it’s unlike anything that I’ve seen around the world,” he said.

“It’s also allowing a lot of the hidden talent that’s currently bubbling away, that people don’t really know about, to connect with government and industry leaders.”

Michael Roux said the ADC Forum was also working on establishing blockchain education courses in Adelaide to plug the skills shortage emerging in the tech industry.