Samantha Radocchia, or "Sam Rad" for short, is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, author, and emerging tech advocate who combines the mindsets of an anthropologist and a technologist.
Sam has delivered keynotes globally and led corporate trainings at Fortune 500 corporations, trade associations, conferences, national governments, NGOs, investment firms, and the United Nations, educating leaders on the technologies and cultural shifts that will shape their organizations—and daily lives—in the years to come.
A reformed gamer, she started studying virtual currencies in 2009 while writing her anthropology thesis on currency exchanges in the virtual world, “Second Life.” Since then, she has founded three companies, holds several patents, and was an early outspoken voice in blockchain as the co-founder of Chronicled, an enterprise blockchain company focused on supply chain. Samantha now consults executives, trade associations, governments, and investors on emerging technology trends and delivers keynotes at events worldwide. Most recently, she founded a company currently in stealth, working at the intersection of livestreaming and global payments.
In addition to emerging technology, Samantha is deeply passionate about Future of Work, Future of Production, Future of Community/Governance, Future of Cities, Future of Finance, Future of Wellness as well as sustainability, not just in respect to environment, but in business. She has built experimental cities, leveraging blockchain, IoT, robotics, and AI; assisted in the creation of large scale RPG game design and virtual world architecture; deployed mesh sensor networks across small and medium sized cities; worked with governments to track temperatures of volatile substances and medicines across hostile environments; created globally distributed and decentralized organizations of 1000+ members and helped companies shift to embrace remote work; assisted in the creation of a decentralized voting and governance system; rolled out identity and cryptocurrency to disaster zones and refugee camps; architected a decentralized manufacturing network with connected 3D printers and 3D knitters; deployed a drone delivery and authentication service on blockchain; assisted in the creation of a smart charging station for autonomous vehicles; and more. She also is trained in and speaks on organizational culture and theory, particularly as we shift to globally distributed and remote workforces. Her lectures on risk, emotional intelligence, and intuition have been featured by globally recognized universities such as MIT, Harvard, Columbia, and UCL.
Sam is the author of the #1 Best Selling book, Bitcoin Pizza: The No Bullshit Guide to Blockchain, writes as a contributor to Forbes, and was named to their 30 Under 30 List in 2017. She writes in her blog on “Radical Next Ideas," and believes that the idea of Radical Evolution is paramount to the, now outdated, Digital Transformation mindset. She seeks to utilize technology to empower, not entrench.
Sam is a licensed pilot and has accumulated over 700 jumps as a competitive skydiver.
Follow Sam on Twitter at @SamRadOfficial
This talk examines blockchain--and more broadly, decentralization--as the future backbone or “operating system” for emergent technologies in every industry, both new and old. It takes the audience on a journey from our past, present, and future operating systems, highlighting how in addition to a shift in technologies, we are experiencing a broader shift in mindset, which will change how we interact with each other, our businesses, our governments, our finances, our products, and our environment. Industry / Focus Areas this talk can be tailored to include but aren’t limited to:
● Finance
● Governance / Cooperatives
● Communication and Internet
● Smart Cities
● Supply Chain
● Digital Manufacturing
● Food Production / Agriculture
● Internet of Things
● AI / ML / Robotics -- i.e. Autonomous Vehicles, Robotics, Drones, Machine Economy
● Environmental Impact, Circularity, Waste Management
● Organizational Structure - Future Organizations
● Leadership
● Healthcare
● Natural Resource Management and Energy
● Space Commerce and Remote Community Governance
● Retail
Listen as the witty author of Bitcoin Pizza: The No-Bullshit Guide to Blockchain takes you on a journey to understanding the crazy, fast-paced, and notoriously confusing world of Web 3. This talk seeks to dig into the seismic shifts taking place in respect to the architecture, business models, tools, and behaviors of the internet itself and envisions a future for our virtually mediated lived experiences. Areas covered include:
● What does the shift from Web 2 to Web 3 mean for society?
● Who are the major players?
● What are blockchains? Why are they important? What can you do with them?
● NFTs (Non-fungible Tokens)
● DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) and Cooperative Governance
● Augmented and Virtual Reality
● What is the Metaverse and are we all living in the Matrix?
This talk explores the increasingly blurred lines of virtual worlds, gaming, and reality. Virtual and augmented reality technologies, decentralizing technologies such as blockchains and crypto, and shared spaces such as games and metaverses are shifting the way we live, work, and socialize. What does this mean for you and your organization? What about your life? Relationships? From the perspective of a cultural technologist and anthropologist who spent close to a year living and working in the early virtual world, Second Life, this talk takes you on a journey to the not so distant future. Topics include:
● The shift from Web 2 to Web 3
● NFTs and the economic backbone of the metaverse
● DAOs and the governance mechanism of the metaverse
● Advances in spatial computing, AR, VR
● Difference between AR and VR metaverses
● The role of gaming and game engines
This talk explores the role of gaming and play in the metaverse. Virtual and augmented reality technologies, decentralizing technologies such as blockchains and crypto, and shared spaces such as games and metaverses are shifting the way we live, work, and socialize. Beyond that, these technologies -- and ideological paradigm shifts -- from centralized to decentralized systems will reshape our economies and financial system. From the perspective of a cultural technologist and anthropologist who spent close to a year living and working in the early virtual world, Second Life, this talk takes you on a journey to the not so distant future. Topics include:
● Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Day Trading, Gambling, Gaming
● The significance of an open information society on traditional financial markets
● Game Worlds, Play-to-Earn Gaming
● Fractionalized Ownership
This talk takes the audience on a journey of society and examines how every aspect of society is experiencing a radical paradigm shift called decentralization. From distributed and remote work, to decentralized and at home medicine, to on demand production and vertically integrated supply chains, to decentralized finance. We cover:
● The existing paradigm and why our current conceptions of society are no longer relevant
● 10 areas where our society is radically shifting from centralized to decentralized
● Finances
● Food
● Education
● Healthcare
● Supply Chain and Manufacturing
● Work
● Community
● Transportation
● Knowledge
● Gaming
● Energy
● How technologies like blockchain, AI/ML, additive manufacturing, robotics, quantum computing, IoT are coming into play
● How you and your organization can anticipate what’s next
This talk covers an introduction to open banking, decentralized finance, and financial inclusion. It highlights the changing landscape in the banking sector, discusses how finances are becoming digitized, decentralized, and democratized leading to greater transparency and opportunities in the developing world.
This talk covers an introduction to crypto currencies, decentralized finance, and the global payments ecosystem. It highlights how organizations can embrace new payments technologies and rails to scale their financial business to a global audience. It covers:
● Overview of global payments
● Regulatory landscape
● What it means for you and your business
Over the past few decades, the globalization of supply chains has gone from being a radical outlier to a commonplace. The simplified version of the story runs that, as communications technologies connected us globally, and transport technologies enabled the shipping of parts, local supply chains morphed into global ones. Now, we think nothing of purchasing electronics from Japan, avocados from Mexico, and toys from China in a single visit to the supermarket. Supply chains as we know them, however, are changing due to geopolitical tensions and tariffs, pandemics like COVID, fragmentation of people and communities, and emerging technologies. We are seeing something new. The demand chain. In this talk we cover:
● The death of supply chains
● The rise of something new: the demand chain
● What does the future of localized, just in time, on demand production look like?
● What technologies, tools, and mindset shifts can you use to radically evolve your supply chains?Originally written as this article - From Supply Chains to Demand Chains: The Future is Local
Food-specific supply chain talk for Whirlpool and Pepsico.
This talk takes the audience on a journey through emerging decentralized and civic organizational models -- models beyond multinational corporations and nation-states, models which will carry us into the future of urban niche organizations, space colonies, and virtual worlds. We cover:
● Evolving organizations - from top-down to ecosystem
● Evolution of employment - from lifetime to gig economy and beyond
● The current state of the gig economy - what about work that can’t be done remote (yet)?
● Designing the organization of the future
● Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
● Blockchain Operating Systems
● New governance models, tooling, and incentive models
This talk examines the exponential shift to distributed teams and workforces and the role of decentralizing technologies such as blockchain, AR/VR, cooperative communities, and gaming in shaping the future of work or elimination of the concept of “work” all together. We cover:
● Beyond “reskilling" - how to adapt & learn (future of learning/education - from a career dev perspective)
● Impact of UBI
● Automation and changes to expect (or what's still unknown)
● technology as a partner vs. replacement for jobs
he landscape of gig work and freelancing is changing as a result of COVID. This talk examines what we can do in the immediate term as people who use gig and freelance work, what industries, sectors, and tools we can expect to be most relevant in the medium term for this segment, and envision a future of gig workers. What is the future of work? Is it full time employment, gig work, or some hybrid in between? We go into:
● Beyond Uber and AirBnb, what about other industries like fitness, hospitality, and health?
● Building a knowledge economy
● Global infrastructure for a global workforce
● Beyond the W-2 and 1099, what’s next?
This talk equips you with a practical guide to embracing remote work, leading a distributed team, and building remote-first culture. We cover case studies, first hand accounts, and practical steps to thrive in a remote first environment.
● Practical tools and tips for working remotely, leading and thriving in distributed teams
● New tools and work environments
Organizations today embrace innovation frameworks such as digital transformation. These frameworks, however, are incremental and outdated, leading to staleness and lack of innovation. This talk explores how organizations can think outside of these existing frameworks, embrace new paradigms, and thrive in the face of exponential change by implementing a mindset that I call “Radical Evolution.” We cover:
● Thinking beyond the incremental frameworks of innovation and digital transformation
● How to “edit” your organization’s “DNA” to trigger radical organizational evolution
● A framework for implementing radical evolution in your organization and daily life
Leaders today are plagued by fear-based decision-making, which leads to incremental innovation, not the radical evolution required to embrace the abundance of exponential growth. This talk investigates the psychology of risk taking, emotional intelligence, and intuition for leaders and organizations in order to innovate from a place of trust and abundance, versus fear and optimization.
This talk examines the exponential shift to distributed teams and workforces and the role of decentralizing technologies such as blockchain, AR/VR, cooperative communities, and gaming in shaping the future of work or elimination of the concept of “work” all together.
Leaders today are plagued by fear-based decision-making, which leads to incremental innovation, not the radical evolution required to embrace the abundance of exponential growth. This talk investigates the psychology of risk taking, emotional intelligence, and intuition for leaders and organizations in order to innovate from a place of trust and abundance, versus fear and optimization.
This talk takes the audience on a journey through emerging decentralized and civic organizational models -- models beyond multinational corporations and nation-states, models which will carry us into the future of urban niche organizations, space colonies, and virtual worlds.
Organizations today embrace concepts such as innovation and digital transformation, but they are incremental. This talk explores the lessons learned through biomimicry and biological systems and their growing role in organizational evolution, or what I call, “radical evolution.”