 Hi, this is Yosemite Bhakti and we are here at Open Source Summit in Dublin, and today we have with us Melanie Cutlin, Managing Director at Accenture, it's great to have you on the show. Thanks for having me here. Talk a bit about Accenture. You're involved with not only Open Source, but also the Linux Foundation, talk a bit about the history. Yeah. So Accenture is a strong supporter of the Linux Foundation across the board. We're on a number of different committees and such and different foundations. So personally, I have a role on the Hyperledger board as well. So we're pushing or supporting the growth of standards and accelerators and projects in the blockchain space. I've been in the blockchain space since 2015, and it's exciting to see how the community has come together to rethink the future of money, identity, supply chains, there's interoperability assets and accelerators every day in use. And this year, what was interesting is it moved from projects and pilots and POCs to people really talking about value and what's happened in the market and how we're really maturing as an industry. We are kind of living in a world which is very data centric, data sensitive as well. So can you talk about the role that you see of blockchain technologies in today's world? Because it goes beyond just transaction, it can play a very important role in a lot of different areas where you do want to ensure that either the data has not been tempered with or there's a chain there. So talk about that. It's interesting, the model is getting flipped on its head to where you can actually own your own data and consent to share it with another and for how long and which pieces and parts of the data. And so in that model paradigm shift, we're stopping from whoever amasses the most amount of data as a company wins about their users and then has all kinds of constraints around what they do and don't use with your data. In this model, we can start to engage with, I only want to share this piece of information with you for what and for how long we're seeing the rise of digital credentials move from early ideas to really showing your identity and where you can bring your identity to an equation that I don't need to tell you my address to tell you I'm over 21. So I can share pieces and parts of that information, but then that also leads into access to information and verification of my education or my certifications and how I can share that across the network. And so really across a multi-party system where you have the need to share value, we exchange money identity and objects all day long. And it's really the tokenization of everything. And we've seen the rise of the tokenization, we've even seen it move into the consumer side where consumers have said tokenization is helpful because once I have ownership of something and it's provable, I can then resell it to you and you can now feel confident that you have that identity, object, money, credential and share those along the way. So the explosion of this is actually turning into a convergence that will power the form and function of the metaverse going forward, which is quite an exciting opportunity. What kind of market or ecosystem you're seeing, which is growing around blockchain technologies? The ecosystem is significant. There's so much innovation happening every day. And I think what's really unique about how the open source movement and the Linux Foundation helps to organize and orchestrate some of this hyperledger is really the place to come to work together on projects. There's a bit of a, there's a theory that there won't be one blockchain to win all blockchains, right? The many will exist. And so how do we work together in ecosystems? Because I'm participating this value chain in this transaction, a different value chain there. And what the hyperledger foundation has done is helped us spur innovation where people from unrelated topics come together and create utilities of value to really accelerate the industry going forward that allows people to connect, provide irreparability, provide DevOps, a lot of the core functions that allow you to make your use case successful and integrate with others. There was an announcement of OpenWallet. There was an announcement of Linux Foundation Europe Accenture is participating some of these foundations. So first of all, once again, talk about the work you're doing with some of these new bodies and what role do you see they will be playing going forward? The announcement with OpenWallet is amazing to look at the list of, I listened to the panel the other day of the list of people participating in OpenWallet. We will be significant contributors in this space. That brings together standards bodies, governments, technology providers as well as service providers, as well as all the major, most of the major payments companies out there. It really brings this idea that to create a digital wallet that carries your money, identity and objects across the board and is portable, right? So that you can actually have a useful wallet. We have one wallet in our hands today. And as we move, and this is really the convergence we see of virtual places that we're trying to transact with, whether they're 3D or 2D, you need to be able to have something that's verifiable as I share with you a digital object that money changes hands at the same moment as the object changes hands in ownership. And so having this set of standards and convening bodies that will create some assets that will drive an OpenWallet infrastructure will change the game and really make the next generation of the internet much more useful than the fragmentation we see today across all of these networks, you can go from a gaming platform to an immersive platform to an individual website and none of that has consistency and portability, right? You buy that digital Nike shoes for a game and wouldn't it be great if you could take them to another scenario? And that's just a simple thing, not to mention some of these utility value tokens that are existing everywhere. Let's just stick to OpenWallet. What would be the role of either blockchain technologies or because when we look at because it's very new, so we are still trying to learn more about it. You folks know more about it in the background. But what kind of collaboration do you see between? Is there any overlap there that you see or collaboration there? We've been working on verify that the industry's been working on verifiable credentials on a blockchain, right? So this idea that you can have verified attestations attached to a chain that you can go back and check against pieces of data and that then becoming this is the idea of becoming a container of multiple credentials, right? Right today, they are there one purpose of I either have an identity credential or I have this credential. They just build more chains. The idea of a wallet is starting to create a convening organization that you can say my money identity and objects and credentials sit in one place and I can then use them appropriately. So there are rules to be created or guidelines or rails to be created. There's technology to be built. And then there's change and policy that needs to go. And so I think what's amazing about the people who are leaning in immediately, I mean, there's big players in this space that are, I think, going to have the right really they've had enough years of research and innovation that it is time to come together and say, let's make this happen in a reality in the open wallet. I heard, I heard a bias towards action, not a bias towards talk in all of the early discussions. And I know it's just just really forming and it's already clear that this is a commitment to the industry that we got to get this right or we're going to make it, it has to be a lovable experience. And adoption has been a problem of verifiable credentials because we haven't really focused on how do we make this a lovable easy consumer experience that they can use every day, then enterprises can easily integrate with and not every enterprise who wants a credential has to build their own infrastructure. So moving the industry together, I think it's like this, it couldn't be better under the Linux Foundation umbrella to really drive something this significant forward. I also want to talk about open sourcing meta words because we still see a lot of company, they are doing a lot of work, but most of it is proprietary in some cases. So how do you see, because open source it enables innovation, you don't have to worry about R&D, you can actually focus on what you really experience you want to bring to the user words, if you have five developers, all five developers are working on plumbing which you can take from open source. So how much are you seeing that option of open source or do you want to see more? I definitely want to see more. I always want to see more open source, right? But yeah, we're launching even internally a community of practice around all of the capabilities, right, from the experience layer down to the data layer, to the infrastructure layer and such so that we can encourage that development of assets and accelerators that make the products more helpful. As a services company, right, we're out there finding ideas and opportunities with clients, but then instigating the markets that we have real valuable solutions along the way that package these stacks together. And so it's really that only place you can come together at a developer community and say, here's the gaps in what we see, like clients are asking for these things. And so I think the open source community is a perfect place to just bring that together and say, you know, there's a lot of great tech here, but here's what we need to be able to do so that these things can work together. And just having an independent objective, right? Versus one company has, you know, the pieces and parts in the stack, but having that independent objective and the real organizing factors, right, are these foundations that pull together kind of those common needs. Melanie, thank you so much for taking time out today. And first of all, thank you for, you know, sharing, Accenture's, you know, involved with the open source, you know, as I said, this is the first time I'm talking. I would love, you know, to have you folks on the show so that we can talk more about what work you folks are doing. Not only the open source space, but all the, we talked about metaverse, we open all, there are so many things to talk about. So let's make sure that this is not going to the, the only interview that we have done together. Let's, you know, do again, but I really appreciate, you know, your time and your insights into a lot of different things. So once again, thank you. Maybe we'll do this interview in the metaverse, right? That would be a fantastic spot for it. Thank you so much for having me in the great discussion.