gm.

Yesterday, a colleague asked how I was qualified to speak on a panel about NFTs and healthcare at NFT.NYC earlier this year. The question was quickly appended with “not saying that you are not qualified”.

And this is where the world of global health and web3 diverge.

In the world of academia and global health practice, whether someone has authority on a subject is based on their position (as in the title you append to your email signature), the degrees they have, the work that they have done, and more often than not, their age.

In web3, many people use a pseudonym and control how much of their background to reveal to others in the space. Some might argue that pseudonymity allows for bad actors to run rampant. There are always two sides to a coin. In my experience, pseudonymity equalizes people in a way that I have never experienced anywhere else in the world. Read that sentence again for emphasis. You are not judged by the color of your skin, your age, your wealth, your job, but you are judged by what you say and what you do (owing to transparent and immutable documentation on the blockchain). People are given respect, influence, and at times market-moving power, based on the time and energy they have spent on a topic without necessarily ever revealing who they are.

I am not so silly as to think that speaking at NFT.NYC says anything about my authority in the web3 space. While it is the biggest NFT conference, speaker spots are ultimately not exclusive. It was a platform to share my thoughts with an audience of both supportive friends and critical strangers, and to get more people to think about how we can improve the lives of people around the world with emerging technologies.

So, how are we to decide who is qualified to speak on anything at all?

Is the Harvard professor who has spent 30 years working in rural Indonesia more qualified to speak about dengue than the 16 year old Papuan teenager who has had dengue and seen their little sister die of the disease?

Perhaps the question we should ask is where are the X, the Discord, and the inclusive crypto conference-equivalent in global health, where someone without positional power can also have a platform to amplify their voice.