Marta Piekarska as Blockchain CG Co-Chair

Hi, folks–

Based on Marta's background, willingness and ability to help, concrete 
plans, company support, and location in Europe, I think it makes a lot 
of sense to appoint her as a co-chair of the Blockchain Community Group.

That would give us 3 co-chairs, well distributed geographically and 
culturally:
* Youngwhan "Nick" Lee in Asia
* Marta Piekarska in Europe
* Doug Schepers in North America

I've already floated this suggestion with Nick, and with others during 
the weekly Blockchain CG teleconferences, and everyone thought it was a 
good idea. If anyone has objections to this, please let the chairs know 
by the end of this week; if we don't hear any objections, we'll appoint 
her as co-chair.

Thanks!
Doug

On 8/5/16 6:51 PM, Marta Piekarska wrote:
> Hi Everyone!! I wanted to properly introduce myself. My name is Marta
> Piekarska, I’m the Security Architect at Blockstream. I thought, that
> since I am getting involved in all of the Blockchain work, and I
> would love to help more with organizing the community group it would
> be good for me to give you some background information. So here is my
> standard spiel:
>
> I am a Bachelor of Electrical and Computer Engineering from Warsaw
> University of Technology and a double Master from Computer Science
> and Informatics at Technical University of Berlin and Warsaw
> University of Technology. I did my undergrad Thesis on Voice
> Encryption on Android Platform and my grad work on GPU-aided Payload
> Delivery on Linux Kernel. I am currently finishing my PhD
> dissertation on User-Informed Design of Privacy Tools, while working
> for one of the hottest Silicon Valley startups, Blockstream, as their
> Security Architect. Previously, I have been working at Deutsche
> Telekom as the Lead Architect on the Future of Mobile Privacy, a
> collaboration with Mozilla and Deutsche Telekom improving Firefox OS.
> Of course, I also teach and work at the Unitiverity (Technical
> University of Berlin). My technical interests are covered by what I
> do - user-informed privacy and security, applications of Bitcoin
> technology beyond cryptocurrency, and lock picking. Outside of work I
> climbing, read latin-american novels and watch Emir Kusturica’s
> movies. I also cook. A lot:)
>
> I was thinking what would be a good plan for our group and here is
> what I came up with:
>
> After providing the Report and presenting it to the Board of the W3C,
> in August, we should plan to organize a meeting during the TPAC in
> Lisbon. It will take place on Tuesday 20th of September at
> 10:30–12:30, or thats the slot currently allocated in the agenda. It
> makes sense for us to continue to work closely together with the
> Blockchain Digital Assets Community Group, and participate in the
> Interledger Payments Community Group meeting at TPAC on Thursday,
> 23rd of September. Moreover we should collaborate with the Verifiable
> Claims Working Group that is in the process of being currently
> formed.
>
> I think  that Blockchain is a technology that will be appearing in
> many domains and the two biggest tasks I see for our team is to: 1)
> monitor the work of other groups (Web Payment, Internet of Things
> etc) to make sure we are aware of what is happening in their field.
> 2) propose use cases beyond what is happening in the other working
> groups and make sure we can identify the applications of Blockchain
> that do and do not make sense. It was clear from the various
> discussions during the workshop that there is a consensus among the
> participants that not every application of Blockchain technology
> makes sense. But we have not yet reached a point where we could
> identify a common set of the “unreasonable” applications.
>
> Until TPAC meeting I would work with everyone to prepare agenda for
> the meeting and see how can we best use the time we have together in
> Lisbon.
>
> Next, after September meeting we could continue with regular calls,
> and plan to convert into a Blockchain Working Group that can have
> more formalized character and bigger impact. With that we could also
> continue to plan our second workshop on the West Coast, this time,
> where we would be working on more technical aspects and
> specifications that can contribute to W3C standardization.
>
> Finally, by the end of the year I would hope we will have a
> Blockchain Working Group and our first RFC.
>
> How does that sound to everyone?
>
> I would be happy to answer any questions and discuss more. Below you
> have all of my contact details, feel free to hit me up about
> anything!
>
> Have a great day m
>
>
> — Security Architect @ Blockstream
>
> mp@blockstream.com
>
> +491703311307 (Germany) +14159608938 (U.S.) Signal, Wickr (martap)
>

Received on Monday, 15 August 2016 15:35:47 UTC