Who are you?

My name is Mackenzie, I’m a self-taught dev and educator. I love startups, and building things that help foster community. I believe in the founding principles of the internet and I believe blockchains are going to help preserve them.

What lured you into the world of blockchain?

I was living in Hamilton, Ontario at the time and it was the Canadian version of what was happening in Detroit after the collapse of manufacturing there. I spent a lot of time looking for work, and thinking about money. Bitcoin seemed promising when it arrived, but Ethereum smart contracts were a revelation. For me, the idea that anyone could create their own currency, that financial systems could be programmable, disintermediated and decentralized all seemed like an exciting and powerful alternative to the old system which was in disarray. I was learning to program too. This notion is still with me today. I still believe that smart contracts are a key to building more independent, stable and inclusive global networks and I want to be a part of building them!

How did you get hooked on Flow?

I’m highly aligned with the underlying design goals for Flow. Decentralized, low barrier-to-entry, “web scale” smart contract platform that is easy to use? Yes please. If smart contracts will play a role in the future, creating them has to be as easy as creating a website on the internet is now.

After meeting the team building Flow and finding out how excellent everyone is, and how much the team was aligned and believed in what they were building, I was hooked!

What should I read next?

Read about an alternate reality, or the past. I just finished reading “Killing Commendatore” by Haruki Murakami, because it fell off the bookshelf while I was walking by. Now I’m reading “Following the Curve of Time”– It’s the journal of a family’s summer explorations of the British Columbia coast by sailboat in the 1920’s-30’s (non-fiction).

What’s your favorite video game and why do you love it?

SimCity 2000 made a huge impression on me as a youngster. It was the first time I felt what it was like to design the future for the benefit of others using my own creative initiative. It also helped me learn about computers, I had to build a new “486” to run it since at the time my parents' intel 386 with 4mb of RAM couldn’t cut it!