Welcome back to Holo, Matt Schutte!
Profile of a key Holochain/Holo staff member and Holoverse contributor
Photo of Matt Schutte at Mavericks in 2012, courtesy of Phil Gibbs.
Since 2014, when Matthew Schutte first met Art Brock (co-founder of Holochain.org), he has been an integral part of the original visioning and staffing of the Holochain Foundation & Holo Ltd organizations. He’s been on sabbatical for 3 years (since 2020), and is now back to support the Ecosystem as Director of Business Development for the Holochain Foundation. We couldn’t be more thrilled!
Both Sam Turner and I recently had a lovely Zoom conversation with Matt, and learned so much both about him, personally, and about the beginnings of Holochain. Here are some highlights:
Born an Army ‘brat’, Matthew travelled all over the world with his family as a child and teenager. Matt’s education includes law school at Berkley, but not to become a lawyer! His great interest and motivation was trying to “change the way that communities regulated themselves” and how to create businesses that were social enterprises. During his time there in 2007 he had epiphanies related to how to create transparent online supply chains, new ways for governance and building communities of trust. He'd found his passion and purpose! Of course, at that time Holochain hadn’t been conceived of and there were no applications that would do what he wanted to do in the world.
Matt is an avid surfer! In 2012, while surfing at Mavericks, just south of San Francisco, he nearly died as a 40 ft wave crashed onto him. Close to drowning, he was extremely fortunate to be rescued by someone on a jet ski. Despite not experiencing any fear at the time, when reviewing a video someone had made he realized how bad the situation had been and how close he had come to dying. The experience gave him renewed energy and focus, “I couldn’t die yet, I hadn’t finished my work!”
Starting a weekly meetup in San Francisco in 2013 called “Build the Collaborative Internet” along with Harlan Wood (now of Superluminal Systems), Matt and his business partner Jarod Holtz, (Yes, that Jarod, the Communications Director of Holo.host!) felt like they were building their own army for a while. Matt and Jarod had blockchain consultancy contracts with Cisco, Pepsi, and Citibank and on the side, they worked on their aligned visions of creating an alternative structure for the internet.
In 2014 they met Arthur Brock and Eric Harris-Braun who were already working on the Metacurrency Project and Ceptr. Deciding to join forces, it was at Matt’s San Francisco house, literally, that the word “Holochain” was born. Arthur, after long discussions about the platform, asked Matt, “What do you think of the word “Holochain?” In December 2016, members of the group did the first coding on Holochain. The first hackathon was held 6 weeks later, in that same living room, lovingly named the “Holodeck”!
Soon after, Matt stopped his other work in order to volunteer exclusively on the Holochain project. He expanded his home into an Airbnb, used the house to work and have meetings, and slept in his car at night… for 18 months! Breathe that in. To further support the project he and Jarod took gigs at GoPro as professional drone test pilots. The entire team was hyper focused and gave amazing amounts of time in those early days as well!
The initial Indiegogo campaign for Holo/Holochain was held in December 2017, and the ICO (Initial Community Offering) in April, 2018. Matthew served as the Communications Director for Holo Ltd and was the international “Pied Piper”, sharing the vision and helping people around the world understand the problems that Holochain would solve. (See some of the wonderful videos he made below!)
Matthew Schutte interview at the World Economic Forum in 2018
In 2020, with Covid spreading and the crypto market entering a period of downturn, the Holo staff was reduced so that the financial runway for building the core Holochain architecture could be preserved. Matt took a sabbatical and did some volunteering for the Bateson Institute, and helped them get online with their classes and programs.
Now, with Holochain moving from Alpha to Beta testing, it’s time for regenerating community outreach. Matt’s new position with the Holochain Foundation as Director of Business Development is one that he’s extremely excited about. Here are his first priorities:
Introducing Holochain to developers to encourage more Holochain Application building
Attending conferences worldwide
Determining where the “pain points” are for folks who want to develop applications, so those issues can be addressed.
Creating online events
Here’s what most excites Matt about his position and the future of Holo/Holochain:
“I am bursting with excitement that Holochain is poised to enable new forms of communication and thus make possible new patterns of coordination.
My brain buzzes with the possibilities of communication tools and process(es) that empower individuals and communities by striking that right balance of freedom to opt-in to social agreements while also preserving the agency to “dance other dances as well” or to simply walk away.
I believe that the agility and responsiveness of Holochain empowered communities will be so superior to traditional organizational processes and centralized tools that any “organization” not making the shift will get left behind. I see it as being similar to the invention of the internet in terms of its potential impact. Basically, after Holochain, everything changes.
I’m also curious about how Holochain and distributed applications more generally will dance with the Artificial Intelligence tools and approaches that are rapidly evolving at the moment.”
We’ve always appreciated Matt’s amazing ability to help the non-technical folks (like us) understand Holochain and the Holo Network. We’re so happy to have him back!
To support Matt’s new work, here are some wonderful ways to be supportive of him, and the entire Ecosystem:
Attend testing and other events.
Hearing from people with deep expertise in a particular domain (industry, community, government agency etc) where they know of an unsolved problem that has been plaguing them for a while and where they think Holochain might be a key part of opening up their “wicked problem.”
Support him in connecting visionary folks with developer talent, with investors, or with other community members that they might be able to form co-mentoring relationships with and accelerate the realization of those visions.
You can reached Matthew at matthew.schutte@holo.host
For speaking requests - here’s his Media Kit.
Article: Beyond Jobs (2016)
Videos with Matthew Schutte:
Why the Future Of Innovation Depends On Privacy (2015)
Is Holochain Better than Blockchain? | Interview with Matthew Schutte (2018)
HoloChats with Matthew Schutte and Jim Cook of Mozilla (full interview) (2018)
Catalyzing Coherence Live: Matthew Schutte of Holochain (2019)
Ethical Computing and Natural Systems (2019)
🌟Latest ‘hAppenings.community’ News:
Database Holochain Project Review/May, 2023:
What a 6 months it's been! Since we launched hAppenings.community we’ve been enjoying getting to know you, meeting with many of you and sharing our learning with the Holochain community. We’ve discovered more than 20 new projects to the database and are about to embark on our 6-month community data review.
If you are involved in a Holochain Project, we’ll be reaching out this month to update the status and information about your project. Certainly we’ll continue to research publicly available data, and, we’d love to hear directly from you whenever possible!
Feel free to schedule a meeting with us, so we can update your information together! And, if you’d like to do it on your own time, here’s the form! Thanks!
🌟 Latest Official News from Holochain and Holo
DWeb Camp: Discovering Flows - “The Holochain Foundation is one of the sponsors of this year’s DWeb Camp. A five day woodland conference that brings together visionaries from across the distributed web, DWeb Camp is an opportunity to build the in-person networks that help our independent and collaborative efforts thrive.” ‘Experience’ DWeb Camp video. Neighbourhoods and Hylo will be there too!
🌟Latest News from the Holoverse:
May Update - Mewsfeed - “As of the month of May, the MewsFeed Open Collective project has continued to make progress towards its goal of a proper first release!”
Hylo matching funds - double your contribution! - “We have a generous offer on the table from one of our core partners Holo. They have offered us $5,000 / month of support for the next year to fund general Hylo development, alongside more concrete steps towards Hylo running on Holochain, if we can get other supporters to match them!”
Building for Bespoke Culture - Neighbourhoods - “the greatest benefits from the Sensemaker result from making apps that are the most compatible with the Sensemaker. We call these ‘level 3 applets’. Level 3 applets will enable a high degree of customization by non-technical community creators and members.”
Neighbourhoods Foundation - “In March 2023, the Neighbourhoods Foundation Charitable Trust was incorporated in New Zealand. This incorporation reflects our commitment to maintaining the Social Sensemaker as a free and open-source technology.”
If you have a Holochain Project and have news, events, articles or videos you’d like to submit for possible Newsletter inclusion, please contact us and/or become a Creator/Member!
🌟 Job Board
Developer Relations Lead, Holo - 100% Remote Work
UX/UI designer, Holo - 100% Remote Work
Marketing Manager, Neighbourhoods - 100% Remote Work
If you are a developer looking for gigs, check out the leads on Dev-HC on Discord, at the Gig-Matching Section!
If you have a Holochain Project or Supportive organization, and have job openings, please do let us know so we can post your listings!
🌟Other Related News & Events
The A.I. Dilemma by Centre for Humane Technology - “Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin discuss how existing A.I. capabilities already pose catastrophic risks to a functional society, how A.I. companies are caught in a race to deploy as quickly as possible without adequate safety measures, and what it would mean to upgrade our institutions to a post-A.I. world.” We, at hAppenings.community, think Holochain could have a useful role to play in the A.I. enabled future.
🌟 And, find more here!
Are you Curious? Click here to learn more!
Are you an Advocate for Holochain and the projects being built on it? Click here to explore!
Are you a Creator of Holochain Projects? Whether you are a developer, designer or have just a GREAT idea, this would be your place to begin. Click here to check it out!
Creator/Member Portal: Are you currently, or within the next year starting a Holochain Project? You’ll want all the extended information and ability to submit your events/job listings and project updates! Click here to become a member!
And be sure explore ways to Support the Ecosystem!
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