 Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCUBE. Covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. Okay, hello everyone, I'm John Furrier. We are reporting on the ground here in Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbound, it's a global conference of leaders from around the world who are coming into Puerto Rico with the local entrepreneurs, with the local ecosystem to talk about the future of the digital nations in the world, digital transformation, obviously cryptocurrency, blockchain, all the people are here, theCUBE is here as part of our 2018 kickoff of all the crypto blockchain shows. My next guest here in theCUBE is Gustavo Diaz-Scoff, who's the founder and president of the Young Entrepreneurs in Puerto Rico Society. Also heavily involved in the ecosystem. Thanks for speaking with me. Thank you. So what's going on here in Puerto Rico? Obviously we just talked with Michael Angelo, who's the co-founder of EduBlock, but we're talking about a whole transformation going on in Puerto Rico. What's the young culture like? What's the old guard say? I mean, our people, what's going on? What's the mindset? What's going on in Puerto Rico? We know the hurricane that hit, but again, looking past that, what's the cultural vibe right now in Puerto Rico? I think the cultural vibe right now is that there's a little bit of hesitation, but at the same time, there's a lot of excitement. Events that, for example, the one that we're hosting yesterday, Lot 23, that brought the local and the visiting communities together actually clear up and lowered those agitations and actually bonded and brought more energy into the whole push. I think that is the overarching vibe here in the island. It's just like, awesome, something's happening. We don't know quite yet what it is, but there is a historical narrative of the island, and there is definitely a very bullish view of the island. So what's really going on here is that people are excited, but you've got the whole world descending upon Puerto Rico. We were at the lot last night with the party. We put out a nice sizzle reel this morning, but the vibe was awesome. People were dancing, a lot of people smiling. You were there? We were there. We just put them up on our Telegram channel. I was the organizer of it. Congratulations, really awesome. Thank you. Outside, nice weather, things were great, but it really is about the cross-pollination, about the culture of Puerto Rico. Maintaining the culture in Puerto Rico seems to be the top story that we hear from folks here. Yes, we like to bring in the industry, but don't tell us what to do. We're Puerto Rico. Don't stomp on our land. I mean, I'm not being perspic, but I mean, there's kind of a vibe like, look at Puerto Rico is proud, but that's got to translate into execution. What's the young guns doing? So this is a reality in terms of like, what the young guns are doing. And sadly, sometimes it's a very sad story. And the reality is like, when you look at the World Economic Forum's competitiveness reports, we have the sixth largest conglomeration of trained scientists and engineers in the world. Holy shit, that's insane. But at the same time, we have 90% of them being unemployed or unemployed because we don't have like, technology companies are actually requesting and demanding that type of knowledge. And so that's where we're actually failing in terms of execution, because we're going to end up working either for a bank or for a government company, government agency. And so there's not that many opportunities to actually go and build that. And now just looking at the whole shift and how the world has basically come in towards yours, it's like, wow, there is an opportunity to actually use this human capital and work together and just start developing and challenging ourselves locally to keep building, either as an entrepreneur or as an entrepreneur. You know, Brock Pierce, I thought said a great today on the keynote he gave here at the Blockchain Unbound Conference. It's a global we going on, it's a we, not a me. And I think, you know, someone who's seen many ways in my life, this is the biggest wave ever because it's creating essentially a flat world. It's global. So it's not like the old guard, gatekeeper migration pass up. So the migration for up the ladder, if you will, in society for a young individual was kind of structured in the past. Like you get your degree. Now the ladder has fallen. Yeah, I mean, Peter Teal at one point is looking at those people not to go to school. Literally the world is your oyster with this new technology because now it's a global fabric. There's no central authority. You have access to open source software. It's fully connected. So now's the time to make it translate. What do you hope for for the community in Puerto Rico for to make that connection and the intellectual property flow, the relationships? What do you guys are looking for that have happened? Yeah, so the answer is going to be a little bit historical and that goes back to a question I asked off of the camera. I was like, do you know where the first special economic zone was built? The first SEC was built. It was here in Puerto Rico. And for those that don't know that that was economic model that we use as a human race in 130 nations and 4,300 zones around the world to transition an economy from agriculture to manufacturing. And I believe that right now we're building that fabric. We're starting to reconstruct that second generation of an SCZ. And whatever's happening here to other built better cities where people like are able to access their food, are able to access capital, are able to access opportunities in a way that it's de-risked, I believe it's being built right now. And I think that is where we're heading. Because we already did it 71 years ago and this is just a perfect on-coction to redo it. You know, I talk with a lot of leaders. One of them is Teresa Carlson who runs Amazon Web Services Global Public Sector which is government, schools and whatever. We're seeing for the first time, and this is what I think Amazon sees. And then the leader in cloud computing which is phenomenal, which again levels a lot of gatekeepers if you think about it that way. She talks about digital nations. That we are now at the front end of the beginning of a wave where sovereignty at a national level with this no-border kind of digital culture is a huge opportunity. How are you guys recruiting? How are you spreading the love? How are you spreading the work? It's not just developers, it's about the communities. Well, first of all, I think it's important to actually say that it's better. I think Puerto Rico being a free associated states of the United States of America is like the best place to actually test this philosophy and push for that. I think that the way that we're actually starting to recruit that is by spreading onto the world and saying like, hey, this is happening, come back. As I was mentioning in May, we're going to Washington, DC to present over 23 organizations that are working on basically all of this happening and be able to bring more consciousness, bring more tools into the island and be able to build essentially a future of it. Talk about the things that you're working on right now. You mentioned before we came on camera one of the things you're doing in Washington, DC. What are some of the things you're hoping to accomplish over the next year in your role and inside the community here in Puerto Rico? I hope to, with EduBlock, be able to help more students get into the space, be able to leverage better connections and relationship with these corporations that are in need now of blockchain developers and be able to have that circular flow of the people here in the island and the people internationally that are looking for talent. That's my main goal and if I could put a number of it, it would be amazing to have 500 students recruited or with an internship within corporations by the next 365 days. As you guys at EduBlock are creating a separate event forum for what's happening at Blockchain Unbound to the education community because it's pretty pricey to come to this conference. An investor conference, an industry conference. You're seeing a world coming together. A lot of people coming in from the crypto blockchain community. What are people talking about in Puerto Rico about this migration and this intersection of the two worlds? Is it good, bad, confusing? Are people trying to figure it out? What's the vibe? They need more information. They need more data. We only had a few articles and that's it. Yeah. My father, for example. Articles from centralized news organizations, not trusted news organizations. What is the decentralized data say? The decentralized data say is like, it's that this is a good technology. We need to be careful. Like we need to understand it correctly. And we need to raise awareness around the community because it can either go really, really, really, really well or we can repeat the past couple of years in the island. It could fail miserably or be a home run. Great stuff. We certainly want to expose the information and share the stories of the key things that are working on it. You're doing a great job. You guys are doing great work. We support you. Obviously from Silicon Valley, we're theCUBE and our job is open free content and what we're doing here. Puerto Rico, we're the Gustavo Diaz-Scaf who's the founder and president of the Young Entrepreneurs Club here, Entrepreneurial Society in Puerto Rico. We're on the ground getting all those top stories and sharing the data with you. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching.