WIN Minutes — Issue #4
September 2022 is over. It has been a very quick and productive month with sprints, communications, and quite a number of conferences attended. But what is more important, the first travelers received their rewards for traveling with WIN.
I am excited to share already the 4th issue of WIN Minutes and grateful for the feedback you share with me.
Vladimir, Marketing Lead at Winding Tree
ETH Warsaw
It was the first Ethereum conference held in Warsaw (Poland). And it was a good one: well-hacked, well-designed, well-sponsored, well-side-evented, and well-accommodated in a building of Warsaw University of Technology.
I came to the conference with the 3 main goals:
✅ To test our Web 3.0 booking platform;
✅ To customer develop the teams;
✅ To build bonds.
The first hotel in Warsaw booked with a smart contract
Back in April at Devconnect in Amsterdam, we discovered the two main «filters» that travelers from the Ethereum community use when booking hotels for conferences: the distance and the price.
Using the same strategy I got my hotel booked in Warsaw. Here is a guide to on-chain bookings. All the steps are clearly described for you to join the community of frens who trav3l.
After the check-out, I received the tokens proving that I had CO₂ emissions from my trip retired with help of Toucan Protocol.
Next time I am going to choose the Líf Tokens, which will be used as governance tokens in the DAO. Sustainable traveling has never been so easy! You can join our community today with your first step into Web 3.0 travel world:▶ BETA.WIN.SO
Show out to new frens
ETHWarsaw brought together a lot of beautiful people and quite a number of projects working in Web 3.0. We had amazing conversations with team members and agreed to support each other on the way to the mass adoption of blockchain technology.
- Wildland;
- Halborn;
- MakerDAO;
- Ramp Network;
- Primex;
- The Arweave Project.
Developer’s POV
My colleague Tom from the developers’ team visited the event as well and shared his insights:
🟥 Polish web3 scene seemed so far to be small but it is getting more community fans;
🟥 DAOs are on their rise, however, the community does not seem to be very familiar with them;
🟥 A lot of great panel discussions related to DAOs and their best practices (especially makerDAO);
🟥 It was great to see Starknet having achieved good progress on the solidity transpiler.
Dappcon in Berlin: UX, community, partnerships
Berlin is one of the Web 3.0 capitals and the Gnosis community ( who organized the event) is one of the strongest in the space. Winding Tree had 3 people attending the event:
- Eliane — UX designer;
- Nabil — community manager;
- Maksim Izmaylov — our founder.
UX Design
Eliane visited quite a number of talks and pitched WIN to individuals getting their POVs. People gave here different answers from total resistance to using crypto for payments to sincere interest and support of the product we are building.
Insights after the conference and interviews with attendees:
🔗 We need to involve our community in testings the product more;
🔗 We might be too early with Web 3.0 for such an industry as travel;
🔗 We need to know our audience and speak their language through product, design, branding, marketing, memes, communication, community, and reputation.
Partnerships and Community
Max was focused on conversations with founders and developers. The list of new and refreshed contacts is impressive:
🤝 Stefan and Teck from Gnosis;
🤝 Scott from Gitcoin;
🤝Nick from Digital Travel Think Tank;
🤝 Ian from Travel Massive;
🤝 Beth and Marcel from Toucan Protocol;
🤝 Marc from Filecoin Green;
🤝 Wen Has from Huobi Global;
🤝 Kai Cui from Bookingdata;
🤝 Shannon from ETHDenver org team;
🤝 Palmer from Shelling point;
🤝 Mareen from Dappcon org team;
🤝 Patricio from POAP;
🤝 Benjamin Ohhshiny.
The main takeaway from all the events and conversations he had:
many projects are looking for mass adoption, but none of them really cater to no-coiners. Winding Tree can bridge the gap between crypto and the real world by building a product that everyone can understand and use
Nabil on his side managed to make some nice contact with frens to work together on the Winding tree community: growing and engaging it in work, tests, support, and governance. Now we are working on a calendar of community activities! I will share it in the next issue.
The Web3 in Travel Conference in Porto
Vincent, the head of partnerships, went to Porto to participate in a great event devoted to Web 3.0 tech in Travel. The conference was organized by tripscommunity.
It was a productive meeting for owners of vacation rental properties and tech specialists from the Web 3.0 world. Among the speakers on the panel were:
- Clement from Kleros ;
- Luca from Trips Community;
- Mafalda from X-Plora;
- Antonio and Vincenzo from Takyon;
- Sebastien from Smily;
- Gian Franco from Hospitalidad Emprendedora;
- Matthew from Triend.
But for new contacts with independent accommodation providers, Vincent brought some cool insights:
🔻 Kleros can be used to resolve disputes between guests and hosts
🔻 Triend can be used to verify reviews through blockchain and visuals
🔻 We need to organize Web 3.0 summit during a hotel-related conference
The general tendency of the professionals is much more optimistic. Short-term rental owners face the same issues as hoteliers. Though the process of onboarding them should be tailored, enabling a smooth and painless transition into Web 3.0 technologies.
One of the ways to achieve this might be a Web 2.5 solution as a transition of management software. So much exciting work is ahead!
T2RLEngage 2022 in London
At the very end of September, our founder Pedro went to London to participate in T2RLEngage 2022. It was the 8th annual conference for airlines and travel technology companies from across the globe with a focus on key topics to help drive growth and recovery, sharing best practices and hearing from industry leaders, experts, and analysts.
Pedro was invited by Cory Garner to Participate in the Blockchain in Travel panel with:
🎤 Juan from TravelX;
🎤 Tim from Vendia;
🎤 Brook from Blockskye.
He had a perfect chance to teach (onboard) attendees about Web 3.0 and share the vision of the Winding Tree with the audience of Airline executives.
Cory Garner mentioned Winding Tree as one of the solutions to many current problems existing in travel. And what is more exciting, he highlighted that more and more travel buyers are starting to «play» with the emerging tools.
Following the panels and discussions, there is no doubt that the travel industry is approaching a great shift from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. Pretty every speaker would mention either blockchain or NFTs or crypto payments.
And we bring this shift closer BETA.WIN.SO
Last month we had a pre-launch of the dapp to test it and to get the first feedback. It was absolutely important because we got so many insights to work on. Among them is the option of GROUP BOOKINGS. Because there are a lot of teams that travel either for conferences or for team-building sessions and would love to book with crypto.
With help of our new colleague Rob Speirs, we created a number of articles, which will navigate you through the processes.
To wind up I’d love to mention the thought of Cory Garner that Pedro shared with me. One of the possible ways, how the industry is going to develop is the subscription model, where a traveler is delivered to a destination under the subscription. This includes a taxi ride to the airport, a flight, a room in the hotel, and much more. No more searching and booking. With a single click and you go on a trip.
Sounds inspiring?
Let’s work, test, experiment, and build together. Join our Discord, Twitter or LinkedIn to learn more. And please share this newsletter with friends who travel, colleagues, and executives involved in the travel industry.
Sincerely yours, Vladimir
