Thank you very much uh for being here and uh uh welcome at uh uh this webinar. We will be talking about ecosystems of trust. I'm grateful to women and network to, for this incredible event. I'm Laura, the I CEO of TQ.And today again, we will be talking about trust and our commitment to enable ecosystems with a new trust mechanism. For let me start from making a short introduction when uh for approximately 30,000 years statues have been produced to honor what the society of the time considers to be the best. So all those statues are perceived as presenting history. The truth is that they only represent the piece of history that the ruling elite decides to celebrate. Um We, we might think that stas do not impact to the modern modern tech driven society. However, this is not really true. They still have a huge impact in power on how society evolve. And, and recent events also demonstrate this 11 thing comes in mind uh to my mind, in particular, uh You probably remember the Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol who told us on the statues of slave trader. Um The, the name was Edward Colston.

You see him here in one of the, the statues and Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London announced that there would be a review of all the London statues and street names saying uh any um with links to slavery should be taken down. And this clearly shows that these things, statues matter, think and now leave statues aside and think of when Britain was threatened with the invasion during the war. A team of code breakers was assembled at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. Among them, Alan Turing uh the, the, you see the statues of Alan Turing here and a lady whose name was John Clark. They were both responsible for breaking the German enigma. Clark in particular was a mathematician and a crypto analyst who was in charge of a team who had a huge role in breaking German military codes. In fact, Clark was uh was in charge for um intercepting and deciphering nol transmissions. And with the team, they worked and saved innumerable um British vessels from being San by the German Navy. Uh There are two statues by Alan Turing and one is in Manchester and the other in Bletchley Park. And there is no statues of John Clark who uh also uh was uh uh paid less uh from uh compare to male peers and prevented from taking a degree at Cambridge. So, what does this tell us?

Now, you see this wonderful lady on the uh on the right side. This is Hedy. Lamar is a wonderful woman. Actually, she was an actress. Curiously enough, Lamar was also an amateur inventor in her spare time, her most ingenious invention, imagine it was a radio guided torpedo that was immune to frequency jamming. The idea utilize a type of radio signal that is known as frequency hopping, which could be used to synchronize random frequencies between the transmitter and the receiver in order to evade jamming countermeasures. And her idea today is also still exists in the Bluetooth and uh in in the Wi Fi technology. So the way Lamar saw herself uh is clear when you think of a word films have a certain space in a certain time, but technology is forever. Well, not exactly. Um I do not exactly agree in the, in the sense that technology evolve upon the time. However, uh the point is that people remind her as an actress, not as uh for the for the neutral that she had in tech. So statues by themselves are not relevant to modern citizens. But what is important are the values that they promote the behavior and the thinking patterns that they encourage. One. Statues only celebrate certain traits of an individual and they ignore others.

The values that they promote are the value that uh become basically the norm. Um So despite there being a wealth of female achievements in the history of technology, there is very little provision of Commemorating their contribution to technology. On the contrary, there are plenty of statues associated in females with beauty care um with um with kindness, which contributed to validate the idea that gender disparity in tech is simply down to what men and women are inherently good at. Uh And uh this is contradicted by the fact that in 19 eighties, we had 37% of people working in computing science who were female while today, they are the 18th percent, which suggests that there is something else that is going on and it doesn't exist really uh inherently good.

At a report by the center of talent innovation discovered that women drop out of tech rules, not because they dislike the nature of work, but because they can't fulfill their aims due to the slow career progression and to the uncomfortable sense uh given by undermining managers um and uh uh from the attitude of male colleagues.

So in short, what society consider the norm makes made women um avoid exploring further the potential in the tech space. So it treats all down to um to one element on my view. The point is all about recognizing that an individual is a complex uh um human being and that should be taken in his or her complexity and complex completeness. Um I was really uh fascinated by reading uh the book uh the network itself by Kathleen Wallace. Kathleen is a Professor of Philosophy at Tra University in Hampstead, New York. And uh um she, she explains very well how the self consists of uh social, physical, genetic, psychological, emotional, biological um relations that together form what she calls a network self. And you see it very clearly in this design. And Kathleen explains that the self also changes over time acquiring and losing traits in favor of, of uh our new social locations and new relations even. Uh but, but it remains always the same so it changes within but uh uh remaining the same self. While on the contrary, on social platforms suggested the idea of different cells that operating separately one from another. Wallace rightly explains that the integrity of the self is constituted by the unique interrelated of its particular correlation traits plus psychological, social, political, cultural and linguistic and uh uh traits. So in other words, multiple traits, coexist and build our uniqueness.

We are at the same time, daughters or mothers or scientists or entrepreneurs and learners and teachers and all these elements. Uh how these elements interconnect, build the way we operate and we interact with uh with others. And that's the fascinating thing of human beings as human beings.

Uh We uh we shine and define ourselves through communities where that, that we inhabit. Communities are where human beings have always operated. They are the source of social identity which is determined by our locational professional, ethnic, religious and political affiliation.

Communities, organize members in categories, assessing what their apparent selves against a kind of standard or certain criteria. So we are black, white, normal, abnormal uh Muslim Christian Jewish, employed, unemployed, et cetera, et cetera. Unfortunately, the oversimplification in categorization uh in, in categorizing people is something that uh some sometimes uh technology involuntarily misuse. And this can create these are situations like the one by at Google in 2015, I think when an image recognition algorithm all target the pictures in black people uh of black people into gorillas. So, although ecosystems processes depend on some sort of simplification and categorization, regardless of whether we talk about the national school system, a company or a professional community, the fact that they leave differentiating elements outside the equation opens door to discrimination to inequality to inequity which then generate uh obviously uh mistrust.

So let me uh uh give a few examples. Um uh in particular, uh let's focus on ecosystems, ecosystem or uh um communities connected together in the schooling system. We uh you achieve a certain stage. Um And your achievement is celebrated in the form of a qualification. And uh and then uh you can move to the next stage, a system that basically benchmarks the qualification to certain standards. Um and that would look like a perfect fair and objective system of category, right? But the truth is that it is not fair at all. And the reason is that a qualification in itself is defined against the standard which may be fairly defined. However, the way this is granted may be subjected to a number of variables and decrease the effective reflection of a definitive uh of a certain skill set. First example, uh cat of categorization that doesn't work um or doesn't fit more than times, let's say employment, employment hr spends a significant amount of time defining the best pathway for internal promotion. Despite this effort and the huge number of technologies and offerings from a myriad of tech vendors, the element that mostly prevents someone from accessing their progression and is the subjectivity of multiple steps of the process. Researchers found that the two thirds of UK workers have witnessed the nepotism in their workforce. Well, nearly one third admitted of having witnessed someone for a job that they were not qualified for.

So third example, so another categorization that basically uh doesn't work um or let's say is influenced by external elements that are end up to be more important than the categorization itself. Citizenship, the law of a sovereign state defines the legal manner in which a national uh identity is acquired and how it may be lost. So in the majority of countries, citizenship is acquired in three ways. So uses solely uses Sanin and uses matrimony. So by birth, by right of blood. So if you have parents or or by right of marriage, so if you have medicine from the citizenship, so from this categorization, we derive every kind of right and to cope with the fact that of uh of migration uh organi the majority of countries agreed for some kind of criteria that gives the right uh to citizenship through naturalization corresponding to certain criteria.

Um Unfortunately, this uh this uh fourth category is quite uh inefficient uh because it doesn't uh it doesn't take uh into uh into consideration is a huge number of elements. The the impact of house citizenship and the right and the right derived from citizenship or from is you can see, for example, looking at two incredibly powerful figures uh uh like uh Steve Jobs and Jack Bezos, they are both son of two immigrants, the first from Syrian and the second from Cuba.

Uh And what if their parents um were stick in a camp for 15 years waiting their case to be considered. This is what happens um for a good portion of the 80 million mi refugees that wait to be considered for citizenship in uh in other countries. So another case that demonstrate how categorization is not enough to solve problems, ecosystems celebrate. So what I want to say is celeb ecosystems celebrate uniformity, conformity, membership at one specific group or to a category uh uh which, which summer can be reputed to be better than others.

Uh But these uh create a society of followers, it comes at no surprise that many end up searching for contentment instead of being meaningful to themselves and to their community. So is I uh I succeed if I do ABC D. So where is the fulfillment of the individual? And what is the true essence of the individual in these categories? It doesn't exist. The factor that sets a person apart is one's unique way of connecting dots. Uh If uh if this personal uniqueness remains outside the standard equation for assessing an individual's capability or, or eligibility, then the equation will not recognize it at present. The only elements that define an individual are those of which correspond to, to the pre-existing standards uh that can be falsified, that can be misused and that can be stolen. So how do we build a trust with uh within and across society when we have no system in place for recognizing the network self that we are um in her work. While I also noticed that some traits seem to be clustered in uh in three main interconnected group. The interesting thing is that she says is that none of the event uh positive or negative professional or personal represent the individual in um on their own.

However, all of them present the individual internal uh uniqueness, even not a gender uh change statues uh uh uh or, and certainly, um if you think of migrants and the status itself uh doesn't really influence the essence of who they are. And events, any event basically is a part of the self but doesn't represent the self in itself. Some traits might be more salient than in some context than others. And uh may vary in weight um according to what stage the the individual is in. So, uh what I want to uh to uh underline is well, less um definition of uh the self as a cumulative network that allows us to account uh the ra any radical transformation uh as a part of the self and not self in itself. So, um the reason why I'm telling you uh is to come to our view uh of uh of the individual, my view of the, of the individual, if you translate uh what the research uh by Wallace into the professional sphere, and you, you come to the conclusion that we all uh that we all know very well.

What we bring to the table when we deal with problems is the entirety of our personal and professional experience, formal and non formal and even informal learning. Our abilities basically rely on how we connect the dots uh across a continuous growing knowledge. And um uh and the experience that we make adds nuances to our hard skills. And the fascinating thing is that this is an evolving scenario, fantastic evolving scenario. Uh All of which to conclude, it makes uh uh three elements to me. Uh There is no such thing like inherently good at we favor standards over complexity. And that's a huge problem. And communities could play a role in, in recognizing an individual's potential and signal their uniqueness but failed to do so by prioritizing processes. The result is that nobody wins, the individual hardly finds his own fulfillment because they simply cannot exploit their potential ecosystems and lose the the opportunity of benefiting of empowered individuals. So here the thing for employers, the education sector and most importantly to the many communities uh that are growing online and offline. I ask what if on the contrary, we contributed to signal the uniqueness and the trajectory of an individual and their relevance to specific goals, instead of benchmarking their appearance to a community uh to a set of, of predefined standards.

So the one I I suggest this, I think it's quite clear, but let's go through again. However, uh let's say, uh regardless of whether we think of a professional community, a corporation, a government or an industry or society as a whole, uh There is a huge need for responsibility, accountability and the active contribution. What generates that kind of engagement that derives that drives uh uh responsibility, accountability and active contribution to me. There is only one answer, possible answer. And this is recognition, uniqueness is the way we connect dots. It is the result of soft and hard skills, our ethics, our humanity and the the psychological impact of celebrating our uniqueness is that yes, there is an increasing of risk uh uh of individual failure, obviously, because you try most and you risk to fail more. Uh but simultaneously, it increases the collective ability to innovate and the willingness of the world community to contribute. Uniqueness comes from uh both our achievements and from, from our failures. So both need uh the achievements do not deserve more celebration than failures.

Uh And they are not necessarily better than failures because without the risk of failure, there is no achievement and together they give a much stronger impression of who the individual is. However, how many times do we see fellows appearing in a city? So recognition is each step that can lead an individual to demonstrate their uniqueness and communities can help. So nothing on its own, can can be represented um could represent some someone uniqueness. Uh Even not as uh however, when, when the multiple communities that we contribute to award the soft skills, art skills achievements, failures, contributions, participation, the result is a much stronger representation of the community network self that we are. In other words, it represents the trustworthiness uh uh of uh of a set of information about the individual. Um Today, the term community, let's talk about a little bit of who are these communities. The thermal community is associated with the multiple contexts so that the more uh physical, virtual professional, civic uh uh just uh let me go back for a second and communities are connected together within the ecosystems that generally are quite uh vertical, uh whatever is the nature of the community and the nature of the bond that exists between its members.

Um Communities are the place in which uh the a trait of the individual can be known and can be celebrated and within which members and within these communities, members enjoy trust. Based also on the trait that they make evident within the community. Trust is, um What is trust?

Trust is the belief that someone is honest and reliable in for what they say, one's reputation dictates the extent to which others in the ecosystem or outside will trust that individual. Um based, it is based on uh reported prior conduct and character. So the recognition is what allows an individual to grow their reputation. So basically, the reputation is uh many is made up of many recognition. Unless you, you choose to live on the Himalayas, the place where celebration and the recognition happens uh uh is uh uh within, in the context of a community. So while people uh within the individual national know their reputation, it's always very difficult to transfer or benefit from one's reputation across ecosystems. Just think of how difficult it is for migrants, for example, to rebuild their lives elsewhere. If you think of our virtualized world, uh uh we, we navigate across platforms without the ability to showcase or merge our persona in the unique persona. We are um in the same way, we move from one employer to another, but can't take information about our performance elsewhere.

Uh If we want to recognize one's uniqueness, uh the recognition should uh therefore be um portable and uh should not only be digitalized but also made private and secure uh in order uh for to in order to make it impossible to be falsified and generate the trust that uh uh it's finally, it's the final goal, converting recognition into into a digital data point helps to design the trajectory.

Think of uh uh how insurance companies calculate premiums, they observe the trajectory and the calculate the probability of an event based on the data. Now think of a multiple pieces of validated proofs about one's contribution, uh achievement failures, um results, skills or memberships provided to the individual in the form of digital awards that cannot be falsified, cannot be misused, cannot be converted uh uh to someone else name they, these become the data point of one's complex network.

So the, the one that we are looking in this uh in this picture, we live in an incredibly exciting times here. The point we live in an incredibly exciting time with the technology and we can convert, we can make the small pieces of information about once uh um story um as immutable records and protect their privacy. At the same time, recognition of immutable verifiable proofs is what TQ does but many other um many other uh I'm I'm glad to say that uh uh verifiable credentials, uh Blockchain based uh credentials or is something that the world is embracing for birth for the land registry identity and many other uh use cases.

So the future is uh very much is going very much to be more transparent. Um We personally, we contributed to uh to, to the space of a verifiable credential with um a specific software called it CIA. Um But our way to contribute to, to meet the 2030 sustainability goals um is uh is that uh uh as this basically is not only to uh to make the truth traceable in the form of a recognition, a digital recognition or if you want a certificate is um the, the, the, the way we think uh is uh important to contribute to the future is enabling communities on one side of any kind to empower their members, signaling any kind of contribution, participation, skills, and achievement, and uh uh to contribute to the individual to uh and in order to facilitate the individual to synthesize their uh uniqueness and the way we, we do it is by with the, with the, the chek is called cisco is, is like a glue basically of all credentials together that measures uh uh at any point in time how much um valid and trustworthy is a set of claims.

Basically um is uh what we, what we want to do is to signal the uniqueness of an individual and move the decision making from a judgmental exercise to an objective evaluation of relevance. So the fi I leave you with the, with the thought the future of work is really about um is, is really not about uh um if we are good or wrong for a, a job is very much about the relevancy that we have that can be only determined by who we are in our entirety. So, um I think, I hope I'm in time. Yes. 1020. Uh I, I'm happy uh to um leave you my, uh my, my context. Uh If you have any question and you would like to keep in touch, please feel free to do so. I'm very happy to talk further uh with um anyone who operates in this space is interested to know more. Thank you very much.