Original note: CoinTelegraph
Tangle Patagonia is an initiative that emerged in Argentina and that disseminates knowledge about DLT technologies and Internet of Things, with a focus on IOTA. They have held several events and plan various activities for this year. Cointelegraph en Español interviewed its founder, Gabriela Jara, on February 23rd, to learn more details.
Gabriela Jara, besides being the founder of Tangle Patagonia, is a moderator of the IOTA Latam facebook group, a member of IEN (Iota Evangelist Network), as well as content coordinator and editor at IOTA Hispano.
From that place, she remembered how all this began: «From becoming a member of the IEN, a network that brings together people around the world (developers, programmers, entrepreneurs, etc.) in order to promote IOTA; and being in contact with so many enthusiasts who are all the time projecting and devising Proofs of Concepts, awakened in me the desire to do more than just be present in the community. This is how TANGLE Patagonia was born».
Tangle Patagonia was born in early 2018 initially with the purpose of creating awareness about new DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) technologies, Internet of Things and focusing on IOTA and the technology behind this particular DLT.
«We think it is a tool for the development of new solutions at the industrial level and in people’s lives that needed to be made known,» Jara said.
«In Argentina and particularly in Patagonia, the crypto community is just waking up, so we also felt it necessary to raise awareness about IOTA/TANGLE in this region, because it is a completely new technology and different from the best known that is Blockchain and therefore Bitcoin,» she observed.
Last year they organized and participated in several events, such as, for example, the first IOTA Meetup in Argentina, where they were as exponents. Serguei Popov, co-founder of IOTA and who was responsible for writing the IOTA white paper, also participated.
«We organized several Meetups in Bariloche in the FAB LAB Bariloche space and we were also able to participate in the Expo Emprender in Santa Cruz. It was a very edifying experience, as we were surrounded by people very interested in the subject and willing to enter the crypto world in general,» said Jara.
In addition, last February 15, the 2019 activities formally began, with the first crypto meeting held in the Fab Lab Bariloche space: «It was a very productive morning where we could talk about DLT´s, Blockchain and IOTA/Tangle».
Support
Gabriela Jara highlighted that the IOTA Foundation has been a great support for what they have been developing, as well as people from the entire community around the world.
IOTA Community
«As part of the IOTA community in Argentina I must say that it has been growing this last time and it is a very united community,» said Jara. «This one moves mainly in facebook», she added.
Seeing that the community was growing not only in Argentina, but also in neighboring countries, it was decided to change the name of the group from IOTA Argentina to IOTA Latam and thus give participation to more Spanish speaking people.
«As far as Argentina is concerned, we are quite restless and throughout the year we organize several meetups and workshops in order to consolidate ourselves as a community and to be in continuous learning with the advances that are achieved with this protocol», she highlighted.
The IOTA community in Argentina was created in 2017 by Marcelo Bianchi and Daniel de Michele. Near the end of the same year, Gabriela Jara became moderator of the group.
«IOTA was born in 2015 and on this side of the world I think we were only able to echo it in Argentina in 2017 when the Facebook community was created,» she recalled.
Under this premise and being IOTA relatively new, she believes that there will be more and more enthusiasts of this technology that will join the group and the Meetups that take place in Argentina and in Latin American countries.
Team
Gabriela Jara described how they work: «In Argentina we have a community with tremendous added value. We have our own RCL (Regional Community Leader) Daniel De Michele, who is also the founder of IOTA Hispano, where I’ve been working was content coordinator and editor for year and a half now. Daniel is also founder of XDK2MAM toghether with along with Alejandro Elustondo, who were chosen to receive funding from IOTA Ecosystem to develop their project.
She also highlighted the work of the third place winners in the competition launched by the IOTA Foundation, The Perfect Brainstorm, Nicolas Schteinschraber and Federico González with their project Circular Energy Management.
«On the other hand, Marcelo Bianchi developed iotareatta.ch when we still needed to promote tx with the old wallet,» he said.
There are many people who are actively working in the activities that are developed in the community. That’s how Gabriela Jara named: Ezequiel Outon, Claudio Martín, Gerónimo Patat, Lucas Horton, Nicolás Borga, Nicolás Pedroso, Juan Carlos Zeta, Juan Quitegui and Sol Hilgemberg.
«Also here in Bariloche I must say that Juan Pablo Cánepa, from Criptoposta, has been a great support for Tangle Patagonia and we have managed to work as a team to be able to take the community of Patagonia always further. Each one of us, from our own place, contributes our grain of sand in the expansion of this community», he added.
Plans and expectations
According to Gabriela Jara, this year is going to be a great year at the community level in Argentina as well as in Latin America. Particularly the desire of Tangle Patagonia is to be able to grow as a community in Patagonia.
They want to provide the necessary tools to make known, on the one hand, all the tools that there are around decentralized technologies to develop useful projects for different ecosystems, as well as to raise awareness about this unconventional economy offered by the crypts.
«We do not give trading or investment advice. We just want people to open up to unconventional alternatives that can help improve their day-to-day lives,» Jara said.
They’ve already started planning this year and there are several challenges. «I believe that what has happened with the crypto market last year has led us to concentrate on seeing the technology behind cryptomoney, in this way we are able to exploit the wealth of tools that are openly offered to us in many projects that were born in Argentina (Open Source technologies) and we think that there is still a lot to do, many solutions to offer and many people to come,» he said.
