On Friday February 9th, the Operations and Information Management (OPIM) Department held a workshop on an Introduction to Blockchain. This workshop taught by Christopher Day, a business advisor from RapidQube, is the first in a series of three Blockchain workshops discussing how this new technology is disrupting and revolutionizing the business world.
“Blockchain is a big secure database that’s in the cloud. The database consists of shared ledger that are the same across four nodes that communicate with one another to say if the data is good or bad,” said Day. Each group of transactions gets added to the ledger as a different block, and it becomes a chain because each block builds upon the data from the first block. Although the concept of Blockchain is relatively new, it is not a new technology. Instead, it is a system that uses existing technologies, that wouldn’t normally be combined, in new ways.
“Blockchain is changing the way that technology is moving and evolutionizing in the workplace. Every single workplace should know how this works,” said Radhika Kanaskar, a junior studying Management Information Systems (MIS). Blockchain can be used for a variety of different things such as to track produce, ensure flawless audit trails, assist lawyers with contracts, and utilize cryptocurrency. This is because Blockchain provides a seamless trail from the first stage of production until its final destination. The blocks in a block chain are interconnected and because the chain of transaction trails is open to the public, the tracking of produce will forever lead in the right direction, and the same goes for audit trails. This is especially helpful for people who want to know their sources, people who wan to track transactions, and people who want to resolve or eliminate mistrust. It is one of the only modern technologies that provides visibility to all of the people in the transaction. “Blockchain technology has exploded within the past four or five months because of bitcoin. Some people are putting millions of dollars into this and so many people don’t know how it works. It’s important to attend workshops like this to know how it came to be,” said Alex Martinez, a senior studying MIS.
“I liked the workshop a lot and thought it was very informative. Having a third party vendor come in from a company to teach us the workshop was really interesting because he had a lot of deep knowledge on it,” said Martinez. Luckily, Day will be returning this Friday, February 16th, at 1PM in the OPIM Gladstein Lab on the third floor of the School of Business to conduct a follow up workshop on Blockchain in Business.