My name is Mark Price and I am running for NEM council and I want to provide some elucidation concerning why I am running as well as to why I think I could be useful to the NEM foundation.
What would you do on the NEM Council?
My focuses would be surrounding initiatives related to the technology itself and developer adoption.
Some things I will heavily advocate:
Catapult Roadmap
Bringing forth the Catapult Roadmap and provide understanding and transparency around the launch of Catapult as well as its inner workings including governance.
This includes having public dialogs surrounding Super Nodes, PoI, and how Catapult node on-boarding will occur.
This also includes having dialogs and documentation around how the Catapult data migration will occur.
Catapult Technology
I will advocate focusing on Catapult and stopping all efforts and spending around NIS1. We need to have intense focus on this upcoming release of Catapult so it can be a big deal to the world. When Catapult officially launches, press releases, documentation, developer guides, and many more things should be ready to ship in the launch.
I also want to focus on synchronizing technology efforts among all regions. Get everyone on the same page in regards to what technology is being used, and what exactly is being pitched and sold to 3rd parties.
Training
I would like to sprint to train the world on Catapult. I have recently been brought on to NEM North America and I am already spearheading this effort. This initiative includes:
- Creating beginner blockchain video course with use cases
- Creating Catapult architecture course
- Creating intro to Catapult development course
- Creating advanced Catapult development course
- Ensuring that documentation is accurate and launched
- Creating example code projects for: Supply chain, IoT, Fintech, Wallets, and more
- Creating training material for bootcamps, universities, and institutions that want to train on Catapult
- Creating NEM certifications and exams for: Certified NEM Architect, Certified NEM Developer
- Launching NEM Developer Youtube channel with development tutorial videos
- Creating presentations that properly articulate platform technology so wrong information is not spread at conferences/etc
Open Source & Developer Advocacy
We really need to drive community and an open-source mindset to NEM Foundation and its associated technologies. I would like to drive thousands of developers to participate in the development of NEM technology. This process involves:
- Having an developer actively manage all open source repositories
- Have issues, features and bugs ready for beginner contributors to take on (similar to Bitcoin)
- Ensuring active discussions on Github and discussions about future features
- Eventually having organized Catapult meetings where discussions can take place about next big features
- Send the message to the world that you can get involved in blockchain with Catapult, because we are all about education, helping, and changing the world through technology.
- Hosting webinars and youtube videos on contributing to NEM open source
- Have easy-to-read getting started guides for contributing to open source
- Maintain a list of open-source NEM-related projects
- Building open source example projects so companies and developers can find their use case and get started
- Attending developer meetups and recruiting developers to contribute to NEM open source
Foundation Revenue
The foundation needs a consistent revenue stream to become self-maintained and to grow. I would like to advocate a few areas of monetization.
- Training - Similar to R3’s model with Corda or Consensys, I would like to have NEM train businesses on Catapult development and get paid to do so. There would be standardized and localized pricing for these services throughout the world
- Blockchain as a Service - I would like to see NEM have a development department that helps companies integrate Catapult. The reality is enterprise businesses do not want a public chain. NEM needs the ability to monetize on private-chain solutions complete with privacy and deployment features. This would include support packages and associated training if desired
USA
One of my biggest focuses will be the growth of NEM in USA. NEM is virtually unheard of in the United States. So much more can be done. I have officially started some efforts as part of NEM North America in this regard, but it is important to state that all of the things I have mentioned above will be amplified in the United States.
Why are you qualified to be on the NEM Council?
I have been a programmer since 2007 and have owned multiple companies over the last 11 years. Most recently I have owned and operated Devslopes, a learn to code company that has trained over 350,000 developers. I understand what developers need to succeed in learning and adopting technology.
Having experience in technology consulting, I also understand what businesses need to adopt technology. I can talk the tech and bring understanding to decision makers. I know how to build developer communities and properly teach and communicate important things.
I have also personally invested over $50,000 to the NEM ecosystem. Here are some of the things my team and I have done (and received nothing in return from NEM):
- Created Open Source NEM ICO Software
- Launched NEM iOS Wallet
- Launched a NEM development course
- Hosted NEM Meetup @ Redfoos House
- Hosted 12 NEM Meetups
- Spoken in multiple countries about NEM
- Launched free Youtube playlist
- Created open source Mosaic CLI Wallet
- Created open source project for issuing certifications on NEM
- Published a NEM test faucet
- Created an open source NEM vesting calculator
- Created NEMbox
- Interviewed with Inside NEM
- Blog post about NEM
- Wrote another post mentioning NEM
- Gave 2000 free NEM courses to NEM community
- Hosted NEM Hollywood
- Many Twitter and LinkedIn posts about NEM
I think NEM Council needs a strong leader in technology who can be on camera and present important information to the world. I think I can be that person.
Why do you want to be on the NEM Council?
I love the NEM technology. I also think NEM has a great community. My team, my students, my clients, and myself have had more success building on NEM than any other blockchain. This is because NEM is built the right way. I want to push this technology further. I want to show the world that blockchain can be easy. NEM isn’t without its problems and I have suffered from some of those problems. I would like to fix them. Move things forward. Make everything and everyone better. I think I have the ability to do this. And since I can and am willing to help, that is what I am going to try and do.
FAQ
Q: You own Devslopes, could this be a conflict of interest?
A: I don’t personally think so. Devslopes hasn’t received anything from NEM thus far. Devslopes is a learn to code company that teaches technology. Any trainings I am working on for NEM will be owned by NEM. Being the CEO of Devslopes gives me an advantage in my service to NEM - adding value in training and technology.
Q: You ran an ICO on NEM and one of your products is a Catapult side chain. Shouldn’t this disqualify you?
A: I have no idea. I don’t think so. We raised nearly $500,000 in funding and then the bear market hit and all those funds have virtually become useless. We never thought of using the open-source Catapult as a bad thing, but the community thought differently. We thought it would only help NEM. In any case, that platform wasn’t funded and therefore we are building the other products that were part of our campaign including https://cacheout.io