Gloria on pop-up cities and web3.
Everything she knew about blockchain came from her parents and relatives calling it a pyramid scheme. Ten months later she is at a pop-up city in Ethiopia working out how it applies to women’s sports. What changed, in her own account, is not evidence. It is proximity.
She is direct about where she started. “All I knew was Bitcoin scams. I’ve heard from parents and relatives talk about how it’s just a pyramid scheme and all. So that was my idea of blockchain at the start.” She had never bought any. The opinion was inherited whole.
She dates the turn precisely: August of the previous year. And she names the work it took, which is the part most conversion stories skip. “I had to unlearn my hate for it.”
Asked what a pop-up city even is, she gives the clearest definition on this channel: “The pop-up city is a meetup of Web3 builders, mainly in Africa, to use Web3 as a tool to develop the continent and make it better.”
Asked whether two or three weeks there had shifted her perspective, she declines the easy answer. “I don’t think much has shifted.” The one thing that did surprise her was the count. “I didn’t expect as many builders to be there. I was shocked by the numbers.” And then, immediately, she declines to be impressed: “There can still be more, though.”
Her own field is women’s sports tech, and that is the lens she is looking through. “The possibilities of how it can be integrated in different industries, like my specialty, women’s sports tech. So I’m here to just learn as much as I can and see how it can be moved into or merged with women’s sports.”
Filmed at a pop-up city in Ethiopia for We Them Media.