My Summary from the Tomorrow Conference

Update(August 1, 2022) – Luckily for all of us, the tmrwconf channel on Youtube started releasing videos from the lectures.

I will be gradually adding videos and notes from those videos as I go through them, even for those lectures that I didn’t listen to while there(yay for all of us :)).

I’ve spent the last 3 days at the “Tomorrow Conference” in Belgrade and decided to write a summary of my thoughts and notes, for all of you who haven’t been there.

The conference was held at the “Belexpocentar” in Belgrade, and hosted more than 50 crypto speakers from various countries, as well more than 3000 attendees in-person(like me), and more than 10000 online attendees.

The conference had 3 presentation stages(Main, NFT TIX, and Belgrade), as well as one workshop room held by ecd.rs.

How did it go?

Although I’m not connected nor affiliated with them in any way, I must say the conference went great and far exceeded my expectations.

I also have a few remarks and advice for improvement, which you can read about at the bottom.

The speakers were top-notch, and covered a variety of topics, mostly focusing on NFTs and Metaverse.

You could also hear a lot about legislation around the world, the newest trends, various economic topics, DAOs…

The environment was well thought out, with lots of visual effects and great audio quality.

Before you get onto the main stage area, you could visit some of the 20+ stands from various companies.

Stands had lots of information as well flyers with additional information.

Everyone was polite and easy to communicate with, so you could really learn from various folks in various crypto areas:

Interestingly enough, the crowd before the entrance was massive, and you could meet and discuss all the time.

On Saturday afternoon, the organizers made a nice 1.5 hours lunch, during which you could enjoy nice food and meet even more interesting people:

Everyone received an accreditation during the registration on the first day, so going in and out was easy and seemingly without any control.

All in all, the quality of the organization really surprised me positively and made it easy to navigate.

Similar to music festivals, having more than one stage means you can’t visit everything at all times.

I did pick the lectures that looked the most interesting to me, but hopefully, we will get the recordings of all lectures in the following weeks.

The summary of lectures I visited

Day 1 – Ari Tomasson – COO Darkblock – Main Stage

Ari was the first speaker at the Tomorrow Conference and held a lecture about himself, their work at Darkblock, and NFTs in general.

According to him, all digital content will eventually become NFTs.

Day 1 – Bruno Ver – Co-Founder Niftify.io – Main Stage

Bruno had an interesting lecture on the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies, and how important it is to get there.

According to the stats he presented, only 3.8% of the population is using Bitcoin at the moment.

And we have only 0.0005% or 350k people that own at least one NFT!

He said that at this rate, it would take us another 30-50 years to reach mass adoption of cryptocurrencies.

To foster the process, he thinks we need to make crypto easy to use not only for youngsters but also for our elderly.

He also talked about NFTs and how they represent proof of ownership.

Another stat he pulled off was that 55% of people lose their receipt from a store within 2 weeks.

As Bruno put it, that won’t be an issue once your receipts start getting written on the blockchain.

Or in other words, we will see NFTs becoming the representation of physical objects that we own.

Day 1 – Laura K. Inamedinova- Founder & CEO LKI Consulting – Main Stage

The lectures by Laura I found really interesting, as I know really little about Metaverse and NFTs, which is the exact reason why I got into the conference.

You could hear about how Vans increased their customer base by 48 million through metaverse adoption, and how Gucci entered the metaverse with their virtual shoe application.

She also showed data saying that last year the largest purchase by a single person in Metaverse was a whopping 2.43 million dollars!

She also had some really interesting points on marketing tactics, and how you can’t use the same marketing strategies in bear and bull markets.

According to Laura, the future is in experiences.

Day 1 – Tanja Bivic Plankar(BAE), Aleksa Mil(WACEO), Megan Plisky(Crypto Megan), Ana Nives Radovic (TeslaWatt) – Main Stage

Next on the agenda was the “Wonderwomen in NFTs” panel, where lots of thoughts were given on woman’s role in the crypto world and even the general economy.

The conclusion was that women are generally underestimated and should be given more weight in the crypto revolution.

Day 1 – Opening Ceremony – Main Stage

I still don’t understand why the opening ceremony was presented in the middle of day one, but probably the organizers had a reason for it(maybe they waited for more people to join, as not everyone came on time).

Still, it was an interesting show:

@bitcoinminingsoftware Tomorrow Conference Opening #tmrwconf #cryptocurrency #blockchain #nft #metaverse ♬ original sound – BitcoinMiningSoftware

Day 1- Vitomir Jevremović, Chris Andersson, Léo Caillard, Tomo Vukasović – Main Stage

After the opening ceremony, a rather interesting panel followed.

The thoughts and advice of the panel moderated by Vitomir were valuable, but what’s most interesting is that this panel was held in Metaverse.

In a nutshell, Vitomir was wearing a VR headset on the stage, and the other participants joined from their own houses.

Seems like the “Tomorrow Conference” name was very appropriate after all! :)

You could hear a lot of interesting stuff here, but the main point was that metaverse and NFT’s strength is in communities.

Or as Vitomir would put it: “Communities like collectors are value creators”.

Day 2- Ivan Bjelajac(MVP Workshop) – Main Stage

Day 2 started rather early.

Ivan had interesting insights on DAO, Web3, and smart contracts.

According to him, Web3 developers will soon be called developers.

Day 2- Vitomir Jevremovic(Solsea/all.art) – Main Stage

On day two, Vitomir held a lecture on his own, discussing the NFTs markets and further development in this space.

According to him, the biggest strengths of NFTs are communities, and we need an NFT standard that can be used on various platforms and in various metaverses.

He also commented that the crypto markets will stay like this for the next 2 years, which is in line with my thoughts on 4-year crypto market cycles, connected to the Bitcoin halving.

Day 2- Aleksandar Matanovic(ECD) – Main Stage

Next on the agenda, we had Aleksandar from ecd.rs, who had a lecture on the evolution of money.

He touched on points like how there’s no industry with more millionaires that are financially illiterate, how Visa and MasterCard sell trust, how Satoshi embedded trust into the money, and how he scaled that trust through blockchain technology.

Day 2- Tanja Bivic Plankar(BAE) – Main Stage

Next on the agenda, we had Tanja, who had valuable insights on the current state of the NFT market.

According to her, you need 3-5 years to develop a high-quality product, which is often neglected in the NFT space.

We need to engage the community and connect NFTs with the offline world.

Regulators and innovators need to cooperate more across the crypto industries.

NFTs are currently in the hype phase.

Day 2- Aleksandra Maric(Amaze&Co), Adrian Niculescu(MetaStudio), Luigi Senese(Daoversal), Frank Fitzgerald(PAX WORLD) – Main Stage

A panel on Metaverse that followed was quite interesting too. Some of the notes:

The community will never go to waste.

A metaverse development should focus on creating utility.

Hardware for metaverse is a great business opportunity.

This is a decentralized community, without authority, so you have to involve and do your part.

Day 2- Kristijan Glibo(Beyondi) – NFT Tix Stage

Kristijan provided valuable insights on DeFi(decentralized finance) and crypto legislation in general.

He also thinks that we need to make crypto applications much easier for people to engage, especially the elderly ones.

According to his insights, in countries like Switzerland, crypto ICOs will soon need to have a sign from a lawyer, responsible when things go wrong.

Day 2- Dušan Žica(2142) – Main Stage

Dušan Žica had an interesting introduction on how the Metaverse term was coined.

He then went on to explain their 2142 project, which is a community-driven NFT comic book.

Day 2- Robert Lonsdorfer(Hundred X) – Main Stage

Next on the stage was Robert, with his lecture on “Investing 3.0”. Here are some of the key notes:

We live in the world of uncertainty.

Risk isn’t equal to uncertainty.

Crypto markets are dominated by experienced traders from stock trading markets, so you need to understand their methods in order to make money in crypto trading.

Don’t listen to what the FED says, look at what the FED does instead.

Hire people that are better than you.

Day 2- Maria May(CAA), Maceo Plex(Ellum Audio), Dušan Kovačević(Exit), James Sutcliffe(Pixelynx) – Main Stage

Unfortunately, Maceo Plex didn’t make it on time for this panel, but he certainly did rock the party later at night.

You could hear a lot about Metaverse and NFTs in the entertainment industry, but the main conclusion was that metaverse is an addition to real life and not something that’s going to replace it.

Day 3- Nenad Gligorić(IOTA) – Main Stage

I found the lecture from Nenad very interesting, partially because I didn’t know much about IOTA in general.

I’ve learned about Soonaverse(the feeless NFT marketplace on IOTA), the IOTA tangle technology, various IOTA layer 2 frameworks, the Shimmer Stardust technologies for creating your own coins, how Metamask and IOTA can be connected through the Ethereum Virtual Machine, and also a bit about the Proof of presence.

Day 3- Gary Teh(TrueSight DAO) – Main Stage

Gary was rather enthusiastic in explaining how their TrueSight DAO works.

He also touched base on his fight to cut the fake news by removing the narrative.

Their DAO functions like a social network.

They noticed a dopamine rush on an unexpected token airdrop.

Social status is a very important currency.

 

Day 3- Aleksa Mil(Waceo) – NFT TIX Stage

Aleksa had a very interesting lecture on DAOs and their regulation.

There’s a long way till we make the DAOs legally complaint.

It’s hard to make a legal property of a DAO.

You can’t have a DAO as an LLC, as not all members of a DAO are also the owners of the LLC.

Day 3- Craig Sellars(Tether/Omni Foundation) – NFT TIX Stage

Unfortunately, Craig couldn’t join us in person, but he held a remote lecture on his latest work- moving the identity onto the blockchain.

We heard about keychain.org, proof of self, and the digital genome.

The summary of lectures I didn’t visit, but are luckily available on Youtube

Joel Dietz(Metametaverse)

Joel was rather enthusiastic and was mostly talking about how he and his team are building various metaverses.

Among other things, I learned that he is the founder or co-founder of a well-known MetaMask browser wallet.

One of the interesting things I heard was how he and his team have built a Metaverse based on the plans of Dubai, including the pathways of flying cars that you can use to navigate through it.

Richard Buettner(Niftables)

Richard had an interesting lecture, mostly reviewing the Niftables platform.

According to him, existing platforms are not built for the creator.

They are also not built for the community, but to trade JPEGs.

He also mentioned Quantum- the first NFT on the blockchain ever, sold in 2021 for 1.4 million dollars.

Wesley Ellul(Quizando), Gamifying life with NFTs

Wesley was talking about using gamification to improve productivity and foster competition between teams inside the company.

According to him, gamification has been proven effective in:

• Extending engagement
• Collecting data
• Providing deeper insight
• Increasing revenues

McDonald’s Monopoly Campaign increased its sales by 5.6% in the USA & 5.8% in the EU.

Hotel Football increased its client data conversion rate from 7% to 55%.

He also thinks that NFTs are great for rewards in gamification:

• Trustless(you don’t have to trust a third party)
• Verifiable
• Transferable
• Open

Some of the tactics used in NFTs for gamification:

• Exclusive access to events
• Reward and loyalty system
• Leaderboard & User Identification

He also presented an interesting quote:

People will forget what you did and said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

So you should make them feel good.

Final thoughts about the “Tomorrow Conference”

All in all, it was amazing and a great opportunity to learn about various crypto topics and make new connections in the crypto world.

Especially in the NFT, Metaverse, and DAO areas.

I’m sorry that I didn’t take at least one picture from each of the lectures and lecturers, but I was there to learn more than to document the event :)

This in no way means that lecturers I didn’t take a picture of had less meaningful thoughts, nor that the ones with pictures were more boring than the ones without.

Simply, the pictures and photos happened rather randomly.

My younger brother Vladislav joined me on the 3rd day, and that’s when the majority of short videos were recorded.

But hey, the organizer took care of that, so you can check their official Facebook account.

Or, you can check the Twitter hashtag- #tmrwconf, and apparently the #tmrw one.

What I’d like to see improved for the Tomorrow Conference 2023

Pretty much the only thing I’d like to improve for the next year is the following:

(yes, “Tomorrow Conference 2023” is already confirmed, and we had the opportunity to scan the QR and buy tickets early).

Compared with the main stage, which was huge and great, the other 2 stages and the workshop room were rather small).

The NFT TIX stage could accustom around 150 people, which is a bit too low compared to the main stage which probably could take 2000-3000 people.

Simply, the NFT TIX(and the other two stages) had great lectures as well, but sometimes it was hard to join due to capacity.

I’m sure that at least some lectures weren’t attended by some people simply because those people couldn’t get in.

But of course, this was the first year, and not everything could be perfect, although the organizers did get rather close to perfection.

I also hope that we will get the recordings of all lectures, which might take some time.

The ones who attended the conference remotely will get them through their ticket, so hopefully, the same will go for regular tickets.

Tomorrow Conference 2022 Gallery

Photos

Videos