Self introduction (自我介绍) from a former politics geek turned tech nerd

Hi Steemit and all you Steemsters out there (is there an official word for Steemit users?)

I'm a former politics geek turned tech nerd living in California. I used to work on the Obama presidential campaign and his White House. I now work for a (IMHO) very promising open source distributed database company. I won't do any company promo here, but if open source distributed database happens to be your thing, please reach out! I also podcast here to amplify the Asian-American voice in the US public discourse, so if podcasting or minority social justice issues happens to be your thing, please reach out! I do quite a bit of self learning and have been lately binging on deep learning, so if experimenting with neural networks happens to be your thing, please reach out!

I decided to join Steemit because it has the promise to be less intimidating than Reddit, less insular than FB, less noisy than Twitter, and less pretentious than LinkedIn. I hope it lives up to this rather lofty standard. I'm still on most of these other networks, because it's the easiest/laziest way to know what's going in the lives of people I know (at least the parts they want me to know). Plus, there's no way I can remember each person's birthday.

I hope to share my writing here regularly to connect with people who aren't already my "friend" or "connection", and more importantly learn from new people. Since I'm fluent in both English and Chinese, I'll try to write in both languages from time to time.

I like politics but I'm not an ideologue. I despise ideologues because they stand in the way of knowledge acquisition and real progress. It's important for everyone to be politically engaged and informed (just be more careful if you live in authoritarian countries). Feel free to engage with me on issues, but please don't shout, don't be defensive, and bring verifiable facts with your opinion. I promise to do the same. That's the best way to have a thoughtful conversation.

Regarding blockchain, I've been learning about blockchain for a couple of years now and the interest stemmed from its potential to improve governance of organizations and societies. Decentralization in and of itself is not the antidote (a top-down but well-managed, well-intentioned, and well-executed organization can be quite good). But decentralization with agreed-upon rules that are self-executing and transparent can be quite an improvement. That's why Ethereum is interesting, and that's why EOS could be even more interesting. But my thoughts on these topics are constantly evolving, and I'm here to learn.

I love camping, skiing, swimming, and am a big hockey fan, an unsurprising trait since I grew up in Canada. My favorite team is the Vancouver Canucks, which is also the bane of my existence.

I tweet out of @kevinsxu and @modelmajorityp, and write quasi-professional things on LinkedIn. I will likely do almost all of my writing here on Steemit in 2018 and see how things go!

Excited to join the community, and I welcome any suggestions on people to follow on topics like eth, eos, camping hacks, democracy, wisdom in general.

Yours truly and Happy New Year,

@kevinsxu