or how I pitched ReiZen.xyz at Vitalia.city one year ago and it changed my life [together with a million Airmiles from American Airlines won thanks to Butterfield Bank].
November 2023: At the Legal Engineering Summit, Niklas Anzinger asked me to pitch "something" so I spent a day combining my ideas together with the Roatán vibes, and finally pitched ReiZen, a project combining RWA tokenization and intelligent communities, a vision of The Temple of Creative Healing [following the “what makes a city, a city?” discussion with Max Borders] with the starting point being pythAGORA workshops [learn, teach, create approach, we all have a piece of the puzzle]. Later that month, Christian Betancourt and Kyle MacLean Smith brought me into a pitch for a new law firm concept combining Law, Management and Web3 Legal Engineering, and after a few weeks Ixian.tech became a reality to support Vitalia.city. I found my tribe [after all, when you combine Frank Herbert fans, law and Web3, what can you expect???].
January 2024: I managed to attend a week in the first Vitalia pop-up city, and held my first pythAGORA workshop on DAOs, generating new perspectives by bringing together lawyers and bio-scientists - DAOs are different animals, we needed a taxonomy. Like this, I met my friend Maria Goreti Freitas from Brazil, and I realized I liked the DeSci crowd and what they are standing for.
February 2024: The Cayman Crypto Week started with a women-focused event, which gave me ideas. It wasn’t the right time to launch, but an awesome project started being incubated in the Year of the Dragon. At the same time, I got approved to present the findings of the first pythAGORA workshop at Eth Denver, at the same time meeting many of the LexDAO crowd in person for the first time. Also attended the Edge City launch, and some awesome glass workshop experience.
March 2024: I traveled to London and met crypto-suits. I listened to ex-Goldman brag about how money will buy out innovation, and thankfully I realized that it's only partially true. A Reiki attunement with Rika saved the day. Later that month, at Eth Bucharest, I meet some cool projects, and realized there's more Romanians in crypto than I thought. This reconnection to my Romanian roots gave me some great ideas for next steps, and I started to follow some interesting projects. Like Akasha.
April 2024: Traveled back in Cayman just in time for a Legal Engineering event with BACI. Vitalia.city, 1st edition, having just ended, I wanted the Cayman crypto-community to get an update on the happenings of The Network State. Kyle and I also pitched LexDAO and legal engineering to the Cayman crypto-community. Later that month, I traveled to Washington DC, for the ABA SciTech Section Spring Meeting, lots of good ideas and content about quantum computing, privacy and AI ethics. I realized that Spirituality and Science & Technology must merge. Also, I got hyper on rocks at the Smithsonian. Finally, I went back to Vitalia.city for the Safe Harbor Summit, organized in partnership with Ixian. More Legal Engineering, and I still argue that Derivative Digital Identities (DDIs) are the key for the digital economy and we MUST have them recognized in legal frameworks.
May 2024: Crossing the ocean to go see my family for Easter, I came back to Cayman mid-May just in time for another Ixian Legal Engineering Event with Cayman Enterprise City at the new campus at Signal House. Then, I went to Consensus, despite the fact that I don't really like crowds. The Cayman Islands sent a full contingent, and we usually get to catch up with everyone over events like this.
June 2024: Edge Esmeralda was an opportunity to meet new people from different places, brought together by common mission and values. I met my friend Iara from Brazil, and we plotted to work together on sustainability, which is and will happen.
July 2024: From California to Zurich, a short skip and jump. The DAWO workshop was a great experience and I met a legal and research community dedicated to serious work and applied science. Many amazing ideas, and new people. Forward to Eth Brussels, reuniting the Ixian team for a week of Regen and State Network focus on top of everything else. Meeting some great lawyers and catching up with friends. We started working seriously on the IxAcc, the accelerator / venture studio idea. I also pitched my DAO incubator idea - DAO345 - at the Regen Village Hub in Brussels. I returned to Cayman via Lisbon, where another crypto-lawyer event was being organized by the Lisbon DAO Observatory. At the end of the month, attending the Human Augmentation Summit in Roatán, I got pushed out of my comfort zone and pleasantly surprised at the same time. The biohackers have some interesting insights, and I received a few missing pieces for Reizen.xyz and met some wonderful people. Maria from Marabou has contagious enthusiasm, and I met Alice, which will prove very important later on in the ongoing saga of ReiZen.xyz.
August 2024: Joining one of my friends at Iguazu, in Brazil, and crossing over into Argentina, was one of the highlights of my year. Crazy Argentinians do boat trips under the waterfall, and I got baptized a second time by the Great Mother. More missing pieces coming in. Afterwards, I went to Aleph, the origin point of the Crecimiento movement in Argentina. I liked Buenos Aires and how pragmatic and well organized the community is, I believe in them and want to support them. Great things are coming, and I recommitted to learning Spanish since I already half-understand it anyway.
September 2024: After a short break, I crossed over again to Portugal to participate in ARC, an emerging pop-up city with ambitious goals, which organized a great experience, and some very valuable meetings with investors, communities, and the Lisbon Web3 ecosystem. I pitched ReiZen.xyz and also the IxAcc and won the Hypernest pitch competition.
October 2024: Bucharest again to see my folks and attend How To Web, which for me is the Romanian equivalent of the start-up tech ecosystem, even if this year the focus was overwhelmingly AI, after the fashion of the day. Oh well, all emerging technologies will combine, and the more interesting things are still to come. Like Ixian for example. Crossing over to California again, for the Artificial Intelligence & Robotics National Institute of the ABA SciTech Section, in Santa Clara, and then Eth Global, San Francisco, where I met with clients, and then back to Cayman via the direct flight from LAX. Realizing how awesome that Cayman with its fewer than 100k people has its own airline company with such great flights.
November 2024: Back into Roatán again, older and wiser.
What was good: connecting in person with people I want to work with, that otherwise I would have never met, renewing some good connections. getting some missing pieces for my personal journey and ReiZen.xyz, and getting Ixian to be known in its first year.
What I learned: my idea of multi-local rather than digital nomad has merit, it allows me to grow roots and deepen in. Traveling in slow motion (for pop-up cities rather than big conferences) is better for my health and for the environment at the same time. Big conferences should group together to follow the pop-up city model, just in bigger cities and allowing participants to organize their side events. In terms of scheduling, less is more. Life brings in new things all the time, if we allow the space for them, and that's the wonder of it. Smaller, carefully curated, groups can bring a lot of value, and I found the communities I liked. We all stand in the middle of overlapping circles, and we could do more to connect the dots. Sometimes the energy is what we need - it moves us and carries us further than we can go alone. Serendipity works wonderfully, especially if connected with intention setting and strategic focus.
What was difficult: being unable to plan and optimize logistics like I usually like to do. I really couldn't see ahead, things were changing so quickly. This is where the Airmiles were a huge gift. Finding uninterrupted focus time was a challenge. I needed to carve it out and protect it very very intentionally. I still managed two Mystery Schools in the midst of it all, and felt really good about not compromising on that. Doing everything all at once, and still feeling FOMO, is really hilarious. Made me wish to teleport frequently, thinking about putting a bounty on some future-of-travel research.
What about ReiZen.xyz:
the project pivoted a bit, and expanded.
it now integrates a part of my Strategy work, via what I call natural systems thinking, and nature-inspired designs, my work on personal agency and integration, and nature-inspired emerging technologies.
my little permaculture garden of projects is thriving, and I advanced several of them significantly, to the point where I realized I couldn't do this alone anymore and should start actively recruiting.
Overall, me plc is thriving and I have proven to myself that I can live more and be more, and stepping out of the box was a good thing. Thank you Butterfield, American Airlines, Ixian, and all of my clients at JupiterBlock for bearing with me while I was working with the magic of Dragons. Next year, though, it's more about partnerships and building long-term stuff. I'll also be launching a series of workshops at Vitalia.city entitled Magical Earth Academy, so if that speaks to you, sign up and stay tuned!