Hello Steemit: An Introductory Exploration and Self Explanation

Hello Steemians, I am excited to meet you all and have high expectations for the potential of this transformative platform.

My name is Devon, and I am a 29-year-old market analyst for an international Ed Tech company based in Cape Town, South Africa. My primary role is to analyse the market demand and potential benefit of various subject matter vertices to help Universities decide on which courses to develop for the online market. In this capacity, I have the amazing privilege of working with some of the world's most prestigious Universities such as Harvard, MIT and Cambridge to name a few, and, apart from working with some amazingly intelligent individuals, I have the added bonus of being able to research and learn about interesting things all day, which, in the near future I hope to share with you.

Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devon-king-92149b54/

I am a father of soon to be 2 beautiful human beings, although the verdict is still out on the second, and, apart from work and family, my interests include:

All things technology
Blockchain
IOT
Machine Learning
Data Analysis
Consumer Psychology
Global Economics and Politics
Sustainability
Playing music
And a little bit of cheeky gaming when the wife allows

I consider myself an open-minded individual although I am still trying to understand the post-truth Trump era we find ourselves in today. In my younger years I used be a professional athlete and after exhausting my family's budget representing South Africa on numerous sporting tours (not funded by the government over here) I made the move to the UK to represent the country in their olympic potential triathlon team due to my family being British and me having dual citizenship. There I had the chance to train and compete with now, 2 times olympic champion Alistair Brownlee and his brother Jonathan, as well as, having all my tours and equipment funded, much to the excitement of my father and his bank account.

After realising that hurting oneself for 5-7 hours a day in training was best left for the Brownlee's, I decided to pursue my studies at UCT where I learnt a great deal about socialising, the power of the human liver and kidneys (thankfully I still have both) and most importantly just how little I knew and would ever know about the world. Starting with an LLB Law and moving to a Bsc in Politics, Economics, Philosophy and Statistics before landing a job in Digital Marketing…… (The traditional education model is weird, I know) I developed a healthy appreciation for inebriated social dynamics, poor living standards and unhealthy food but, also left with a very diverse perspective on life guided more than anything by the privilege of being able to interact and engage with an intelligent peer group.

My career started with a chance meeting with the CEO of a company which at the time was working in the new and exciting field of SEO and Digital Marketing, and although a weird direction to take given my studies, the field allowed me the opportunity to upskill and become an expert far faster than would have been possible in a more traditional and established industry, and, being able to provide guidance and advice to senior executives far more experienced and knowledgeable than I, due to the subject matter being foreign to them, really stimulated my thirst for knowledge and technology. Through working with digital advertising platforms I learnt to make use of statistics for data analysis utilising search trends and social indicators as well as integrating lessons learnt through psychology and consumer behaviour to develop a skill set in analysis which has lead, in what seems the blink of an eye, to 6 years later and back to the top of this page where I am today.

I am excited to join this growing community as well as to stop this somewhat embarrassing overshare, and look forward to contributing some of my thoughts and findings on topics ranging from education, the business applications of blockchain technology, random commentary on the laughable state of our current political economy and pretty much anything I find interesting from the general research I do.

Here is too meeting as many of you in the near future as possible.

All the best

Devon