GREETINGS! THEY CALL ME "RICK THE ROCKET".
The name came from training our ISS astronauts (there are some cool videos if you search for "astronaut knife throwing") and also as I am known to throw knives really fast... That part of my life was validated most recently this past weekend in Las Vegas as I won the "Game of Throws" masters championship in Fast Draw Knife Throwing. Here are the final Standings from that event: https://challonge.com/quickdraw2018/standings
I am entering the steemit community with a goal of assisting in the translation of this awesome new realm of finance to old school business people. Also I aim to contribute to the discussion of what it may mean for the future of data and finance.
As a Quora Top Writer 2018, and old school Silicon Valley dreamer, my perspectives will be a combination of financial philosophy, QA, and hopefully some illumination.
Here is my Quora profile. https://www.quora.com/profile/Rick-Lemberg
BACKGROUND:
I was a Sand Hill Road based Senior VP for Smith Barney, and then UBS. I served as an IPO specialist and as an institutional money manager from 1986 to 2000. I was broker of record for 12 IPO’s including Atmel. I then went into start-ups. For eight of the past ten years, I was Global Sales VP for the SF based real-time streaming data analytics company, SQLstream, leading projects in connected cities, security, IoT and transportation.
VIVA AIM GAMES!
I am also in sports competition management and a media host. As the creator of "Rick The Rocket's Aim Games", and a 7 -time world champion of knife throwing, I have now run 11 consecutive fully funded global martial arts tournaments. Our current challenge tournament has 217 entries from 8 nations. It is 100% free for all to enter, and has $4,300 in prizes, including free shipping globally of all prizes. Here is a video of one of our "Aim Games Live" events from April 2018 in Golden Gate Park in SF.
I have managed and hosted a total of 54 martial arts tournaments overall. I was inducted into the International Knife Throwers Hall of Fame in Austin in 2003 (Pinnacle Award of Achievement) and was the TV Host of the Shop At Home Knife Show, in addition to lots of other media.
As you may note in this current Aim Games score sheet, I know a bit about Games and Games Management.
DISCLOSURE/INVOLVEMENT:
I carry a few roles nowadays from here in San Francisco. I am VP Sales of Kellogg’s Research Labs, an established New Hampshire based shape memory titanium optimization lab. I am also a VP at Electricity From Air, a Nitinol Energy company with 50kw stand-alone electricity generation devices now funded and patented. As an advisor and VP, I am also active in management of the fitness technology company TeamMate AI.
Each of these companies is involved in projects to enable the value of data to become currency in a new positive way.
KRL is funded and now building the very first 50kw stand alone Nitinol Generators, becoming a part of a new futures market.
TeamMate will be releasing its blockchain protocol, which allows users to own and monetize their data, in May, 2018.
WHAT IS THE VALUE OF CURRENCY TODAY? ARE WE NOT MEN? WE ARE EVO.
Back in the 1980’s there was a departure from the mindset of the gold standard. At that same time, the music group “Devo” was forging a “de-evolution” movement in sound and beat.
Today there is a departure from traditional thinking about the value of our data, and the underlying value of the currencies that drive us. We are back to Evo, and at a breakneck pace.
As we in this barely scraped new millennium also forge new paths that make sense and properly align substantial converging capabilities, we are aiming to deliver on the long term promise of technology to improve our lives, while also dreaming of clarity that enables this accelerating complexity to do right for all, across borders and around corners.
The 1970’s may have formally removed cages stacked with gold bars as the underlying value of money, but it took many years before we began to work it out in our minds and actions, that a “wild west” of redefinition was beginning.
In parallel with our 20th century space-race memories, we remain proud of what we did back then to establish new frontiers of currency & financial instruments, setting a platform for what would come next.
As with the challenges of extending exploration from the Moon to Mars, redefining currency and value, tied to something far more real than gold has been a decade’s long process.
As we begin to see Mars as inevitable in the near future, we are also exploring the meaning of “self” and how we as citizens may know better than corporations and governments how to keep the free market thriving while enabling its value to be us.
Each of our paths, including how we best learn, our goals of living healthy and fit, the ways we may follow our dreams, and paths to our future in which we may best nurture others, and so much more, are open to this magical time… as value.
THE VALUE, NOT THE VICTIM.
With all of this new wealth, power, and capability that people around the world are in position to own and share, we may also enable a mega-surge in the true core profitability for data hungry companies in ways that enable them to be a part of a historic win/win, while we shift in a permanent way to becoming the value, not the victim.
As we work for a world that wants our data, we benefit from the best journey, the one that will most honestly trade our information for exactly what is most wanted; profits, making lives better, solving local, regional, and global problems, not wasting time, learning what we want to learn at our own pace in so that we each may succeed, influencing AI to be a good thing, and much more.
Each nation may always have borders and make their own rules. It is “open sourcing the world” through important cohesive technologies and how we define the value and interaction of currency and data that will eliminate boundaries and empower all in exciting new ways.
A borderless realm of learning and a level playing field for all in the key ways that enable each person and community to improve their own way of life for the benefit of all, is clearly possible.
It is up to us to work it out in the years to come…
As we apply blockchain principles to more and more of our data and processes.
As we add Gamification to business and life decisions.
As we launch new innovative crypto-currencies.
As we invent and deploy new AI.
As we define the next meaning of value, and currency.
As we open-source the world.
Various arenas of our available data portray who we are. I hope we may agree that freedom of thought and movement best remain preserved, and we each are able to attain value and benefit from future partnership.
How we assist, compete, drive, eat, exercise, grow, help others, learn, stay healthy, use energy, and much more are meaningful and have value for both industry and ourselves.
I am working on a series of articles to try and focus on worthy questions herein. It is a pleasure to meet you.