By YY

Could you introduce yourself and your background? What do you for a living?

I have a pretty diverse background. Most relevant to the CR, I’m a professional writer and photographer/videographer. I have several other professions such as being a doctor, and I am a touring movement instructor in dance, with a history of acrobatics, parkour, and martial arts. I’ve won awards, recognition, or competitions in all my professions.

I suppose that at this point, being the team lead of the News and Social Media team is yet another career I’ve undertaken — though no awards thus far.

How did you learn about Elastos and how did you get connected to the Elastos team? What made you so eager to join Cyber Republic ecosystem?

I’ve been involved in blockchain since 2016, and I’ve been a long-time fan of NEO/antshares. Elastos was announced as being connected with NEO, so of course I had to research it. Like NEO, the scope of Elastos was large and intricate, but since I was already a fan of blockchain paired with IoT, digital assets, platform projects, I found Elastos to be irresistible.

Anyway, I have a hard time standing by and watching something I am passionate about develop without my involvement. I’ve always been on the cutting edge, and the Cyber Republic was actually an idea I already had developed in a novel I wrote — the idea of a decentralized government was built into the entire book. When Rong announced the Cyber Republic, I totally felt like he “stole” my idea.

You are the team leader for CR News and Social Media team. Could you tell us a little more about your team structure and its members and how it’s grown?

I stepped into the role when KP made a demo weekly update, and asked for help from the community. I said I could help, “But I need a team because I don’t have time for it, myself.”

In short time we recruited more writers and researchers and community leaders onto our team, but the amount of work continued to grow.

I’m aggressive in everything I pursue, so I suppose it’s no surprise that my vision grew faster than our team (or funding) did. But I can’t help doing everything to the best of my ability, regardless of time or pay, and I should’ve known that about myself before I started. But even with high quality content, we quickly realized that content needs exposure, and so we created a Social Media subdivision to spread the word.

At this point, I’m basically doing CR News and Social Media work full time, and we have another 3–4 people working just as much as I am. In just a few months we’ve expanded to a team of arguably twenty people.

I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished so far.

CR weekly report has been issued weekly without disruption for the past few months since December of last year. That’s an amazing progress even though the team is new and CR is still in its alpha version. What changes do you foresee in roles and values of this team will bring to the community with the official launch of CR in August later this year?

I want to do more. With my background, I know the value of presentation, of education, and of aggressive presence in any industry. The world is for the taking, and there are only a few people with the drive to actually take it.

The CR is no different. With a strong community, we can create whatever we dream of. For my team’s future? I want a marketing team, not just a social media team, and I also want a media team because I have a professional background in media and I know it’s value — I know the direct consumer association of quality images with quality product.

I want a team of artists and ambassadors. I want a team of educators and content creators. I want a web presence that deserves the name of “news” in which we become a crypto resource for all crypto enthusiasts, as well as the mainstream.

There should be no doubt that I also want a sustainable model of income for this team so that while the team drives up the value of Elastos in the public’s eye, we also have a sustainable model of business in the “real-world”. We have thoughts on ad revenue, store integration, paid features, sponsorships, and even getting a press team supernode to generate funding for our team.

I could go on and on, from devote designers and graphic artists, analytics and data accumulators, to podcasters, motion animators, even comic artists, but essentially I believe that our team could be unstoppable in the era of the new internet, and I want to take our team to the very forefront of public influence.

When the full CR launches in August, we will be there, and we hope that the community can see how much value we’ve already contributed so that we can create every CR member’s wildest dreams of Elastos awareness, adoption, and impact.

What are your biggest challenges?

Time, and manpower. The vision I have. To accomplish these visions, I need help; I need individuals with skills. But for me to acquire those skills, I need to pay them, and thus, I need funding. It’s a never-ending struggle of proving what we are capable of, and then seeking the funding to continue offering the impactful products we’ve already been offering.

That being said, I believe that when people are in need, there is efficiency, and when there is “plenty”, people are wasteful. It is because of this belief that I want to always be in need of more. I want to need more time, more funding, more manpower because when anyone has too much, it means that the person simply doesn’t have a vision of where to go next or what they can already do.

There is no limit to growth, so my biggest challenge is the ever-present question of, “How do I make dreams come true without enough of __x__, and how do I get more of __x__?” And momentum is important. If you aren’t moving forward, you’re moving backwards, and the momentum you’ve generated in the past will make the future progress that much faster.

Eventually, I believe the challenge will expand into something not so much about doing more things, or gaining more attention, but how to do things ethically. I have no doubt our influence will grow, and with that, the responsibility we carry will grow as well.

You are very active in the CR forum — creating important topics that are worth engaging in, such as proposing React Native team funding, seeking candidates profile for DPoS election, as well as researching other crypto projects that are potentially becoming a sidechain of Elastos blockchain. What are you trying to achieve with these initiatives and how they are going to impact the community in a positive way?

I honestly wouldn’t consider myself very active in the forums and chat groups. This is because I spend my time organizing, delegating, and planning. The goal of my forum and chat engagements are usually focused — just planting a seed that I hope will grow. I try to offer ideas and the initial push for things that other people can step up and accomplish, but with my level of commitment to other areas of life, and to the CR News and Social Media team, there’s little time left to simple engage frequently. Less is more, and impact is not dependent on quantity.

In your opinion, if you were to rate using a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1=low and 10 = high) to describe the level of satisfaction of your current team performance, what would it be and why? Any further major changes / improvements / achievements that you would like to see from your team in the next 12 months?

I am extremely pleased with my team. I couldn’t have asked for a more committed group. 9 out of 10 because there’s always a higher level possible.

I only regret that I can’t pay the team members everything they are worth, and I can’t bring on other eager members with our limited resources yet. But I believe that with more accomplishment, more “proof of work” you might say, we will gain community attention and support. We are the eyes of the Cyber Republic right now, but we want to become its voice, speaking to the rest of the world. We will be the most powerful voice we can be, capable of changing the very direction of the new internet.

In twelve months I imagine us becoming an industry resource with a similar type of effect as coinmarketcap. Right now, coinmarketcap is the leading referrer to the Elastos website. In turn, Elastos is the main referrer to the Cyber Republic. Our goal is to create a news website specifically for the Cyber Republic but also for crypto and technology in general that acts as a major gateway directly to the Cyber Republic (and to Elastos).

When August rolls around and the full CR is launched, we want to be established as the most influential grass-roots community organization of the CR. We will be asking for a lot of trust at this point, but by then the community will know well who we are and what we are capable of, and we are betting that our impact will benefit the entire ecosystem to such an extent that we become unquestionably one of the most important cogs in the ecosystem.

Finally, what is a fun fact about yourself that we’d never guess just by looking at you?

Oh, there’s too much ridiculousness that I could mention — but as a constantly touring pole dancer, I have around 20,000 followers at this point, which is not really a lot (or little, either), but it’s enough to sustain me traveling to just about any country I want to visit and also get paid for it, which is one of the coolest things I never thought I’d be able to say.

Interview will be featured on Cyber Republic Weekly on April 15, 2019