Diploma speech, HWZ Hochschule für Wirtschaft Zürich, Fraumünster : DIVA.EXCHANGE

October 2021

Diploma speech, HWZ Hochschule für Wirtschaft Zürich, Fraumünster

Carolyn Bächler-Schenk, co-founder of DIVA.EXCHANGE delivered the diploma speech on 14 October 2021 in front of more than 400 invited guests at the Fraumünster, Zurich, in a ceremonial setting.

The topic was the digital future par excellence: namely digital money, digital securities, digital loans and how everyone can be their own independent and private bank. The great and long-standing competence as well as the commitment of the keynote speaker Carolyn Bächler-Schenk impressed the guests.

Dear HWZ graduates, dear guests, friends, parents and lecturers.

It’s wonderful that you’re all here today.

I’m Carolyn Bächler-Schenk, part of the client’s team, and it’s a great honor for me to talk about an exciting and real innovation here.

The HWZ graduates were right in the middle of it all. And they were great.

Let’s call the child by name: diva.exchange is the client. Your own bank for everyone. Everybody can participate. Everyone is their own personal and private bank for digital values and that means, conversely, no more central offices for all types of digital values.

Digital money, digital stocks, digital loans, digital art. However. The future answer to all banking, finance, pension and trading questions is: diva.exchange. 100% real and 100% community.

At the first meeting with us as the client, the graduates swallowed empty. Diva-like-again-and-what-is-that-a-strange-idea? And by the way: It’s IT and complicated and Apple, Facebook, Google and Netflix work wonderfully – so why should I be very interested in diva.exchange now?

Welcome to the interface between IT, communication, modern freedom of design and social responsibility. The innovative power of computer science – more specifically: modern cryptography – gives people tools to create the right world for themselves.

To be in control of one’s time, one’s values and one’s decisions – these are some of the most important and valuable elements of our being.

While the sirens of the central offices and closed clubs – governments, corporations, and so-on-and-so-on – are singing the sugar-sweet little songs of carelessness and irresponsibility, committed young computer scientists and experienced innovators have long since made progress. The first stage was ignited ten years ago with the crypto values. And meanwhile, this technology is a movement and a growing, global, open community.

But watch out! Such an open and modern community faces major challenges in protecting technological and social achievements from abuse and overriding regulators. In the world of diva.exchange, this protection takes place through unconditional transparency and free access for everyone. While key posts get lost in expensive and tough battles for patents, supremacy, control, and manipulation, the open and free technology community delivers one major innovation after another. However, the protection only works if there is continuous communication.

And so we have come back to the HWZ graduates: Innovation needs communication. Technology needs communication. Progress needs communication.

It was the task of the graduates to explain diva.exchange. To explore the “why”, make it accessible and understandable.

Conclusion: I was blown away by the performance of the teams. Serious. At the end of the week we were simply thrilled with diva.exchange. Deliveries were made at all levels: intellectually, creatively, professionally. The teams let the ghost out of the bottle and the curiosity off the leash. The result after a week of hard work were fascinating presentations that strongly inspired and motivated us at diva.exchange.

Dear graduates. Thank you so much for your great work.

Dear Sir or Madam – Please give the graduates the applause they deserve.

Let us now talk about a very special human quality: “courage”. The HWZ has proven this. A cooperation with a crypto project would be an outrage in itself. But a cooperation with a Swiss association that develops free software and claims to build the bank for everyone and everyone is allowed to help build? This is simply an infinite enormity. Well – the HWZ did it. And that’s incredibly great.

Bernhard Schweizer and Dominik Stöcklin, the Oscar for courage, excellent support and foresight goes to you. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. diva.exchange is very proud to be able to work with you.

Now we want to hit the home straight and put the cooperation between the HWZ and diva.exchange in an expanded academic context.

This year diva.exchange also carried out two projects with the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, ZHAW. The research work of two students at the ZHAW, Computer Science Department, was rated 6 – a real rarity – and examined the storage level, i.e. the blockchain, of diva.exchange in detail. The work took about half a year. The results of the work are of great importance for diva.exchange and have also triggered an international response.

The second project was recently completed with a grade of 5 after a good 9 months together with the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences, IT department. It is the second research collaboration with the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. The research examined the anonymization level of diva.exchange. It is one of the declared goals of diva.exchange to put the privacy of all users above all other interests. The continuous research collaboration with the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts also helps us to master this particular challenge at diva.exchange.

As you can see: innovation, research and communication go hand-in-hand at diva.exchange. Driven by curiosity, courage and the spirit of discovery, we are part of a modern community of free and open developers.

By the way: You can now and easily take the first step: open LinkedIn on your mobile, search for Carolyn Bächler-Schenk and send me your contact request. I will accept this with pleasure. There is a lot to do and you are sure to have ideas, courage, a spirit of discovery and are happy about any inspiration.

With this in mind, I wish you a wonderful occasion and many exciting encounters. diva.exchange says thank you and goodbye.

This is DIVA.EXCHANGE

The non-profit association DIVA.EXCHANGE, Baar, uses a barrier-free and collaborative approach to create free banking technology for everyone. The open source technology ensures the privacy of all participants in the financial system of the future. The blockchain-based overall system is completely distributed. Everyone can participate in DIVA.EXCHANGE.

Remark

The speech above is a transcript – the live version (hold in German) might differ.

Credits

Translation by https://social.diva.exchange/@Hackenstacks. Thanks a lot!