This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.

The Blockchain Acceleration Foundation attended last week’s San Diego Blockchain Legal Forum, spending an informative evening learning from leaders and professionals interested in the impact of blockchain technology on legal frameworks and policy.

Thanks to IEEE San Diego Blockchain chair and BAF curriculum lead Ken Miyachi, we were able to host a booth during the networking session, which was attended by roughly 100 people from law and tech backgrounds.

“We are incredibly grateful to Ken for securing us a booth at the legal forum,” said BAF President Cameron Dennis. “During the networking session we met several professionals who expressed deep interest in our programs designed to accelerate blockchain adoption and education on university campuses. Also a big thank you goes out to Jim Short from the San Diego Super Computer Center, who moderated an insightful panel session.”

Following the networking session, attendees heard from a panel of recognized thought leaders discussing the challenges that existing legal frameworks face with introduction of blockchain, and the types of issues they foresee on the horizon.

The event concluded with a keynote speech from Jim Gatto, a partner at Sheppard Mullin and leader of their blockchain technology and digital currency team. Gatto’s talk provided a macro perspective on cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, sorting fact from fiction and explaining why they have the potential to be truly transformative.

Miyachi, who recently launched a blockchain-based transactional and financial compliance platform called LedgerSafe, echoed Gatto’s sentiment about the industry’s need to distinguish misinformation from fact.

In an excellent article recently published by the IEEE Spectrum, he explained that “there’s a lot of fragmented information about blockchain on the Internet. The idea [behind the IEEE San Diego Blockchain Group] is to have industry leaders provide credible information about the technology’s current state and get their perspective. A centralized source of valid information, like IEEE, is currently lacking.”

The Blockchain Acceleration Foundation officially introduced Blockchain at Davis to its team of student organizations educating their communities about blockchain technology’s current and potential far-reaching impacts.

Partnering with the Davis-based blockchain club provides the Blockchain Acceleration Foundation (BAF) a beginning foothold in Northern California, traditionally a hub for technology and innovation. Although BAF aims to maintain its reputation as a coalition of Southern California’s premier blockchain clubs, adding Blockchain at Davis opens up a range of educational and collaborative opportunities between the two regions.

“Welcoming Blockchain at Davis to the BAF network makes the tech and blockchain scenes at UC Davis and the greater Sacramento area far more accessible to our Southern California- and Mexico-based students,” said BAF President Cameron Dennis. “In addition to attending each others’ events, we are tremendously excited to learn more about the organization’s ongoing projects and to join forces on collaborative research and community-building opportunities.”

The 35-member organization was formed in 2017 with the mission of creating an environment for people interested in blockchain to come together and expand their knowledge through workshops, collaborations on competitions and projects, and guest speaker events.

“Blockchain at Davis is incredibly excited to join BAF,” said Chief Technology Officer Samarth Sandeep. “We share a common vision of educating ourselves and our community on how we can best use blockchain to create a real impact on the world.”

Blockchain at Davis is the ninth university-affiliated student blockchain club to officially partner with BAF. Sandeep explained that the group’s decision was based on the mutual benefits the group can offer other blockchain organizations.

“Healthy competition is fun, but banding together to make a difference is even better,” Sandeep said. “We hope to provide our expertise in project development and interdisciplinary communication, and hope to gain valued research and industry partners through BAF.”

Blockchain at Davis is currently advised by Computer Science Professor Mohammad Sadoghi, who also oversees blockchain and distributed ledger projects for the department’s Exploratory Systems Lab.

Thanks to a kind gesture by conference chair Timothy Spangler, six members from The Blockchain Acceleration Foundation attended the prestigious ON:chain19 conference in Newport Beach.

The students and recent graduates who received free passes to last week’s inaugural thought leadership conference came from BAF partner organizations at UCSD, UCSB, USC, and UCLA.

“We believe it is important that events such as ON:chain19, which assemble the good and great of Southern California’s blockchain and financial communities, should well-represent the young people who will be tomorrow’s disruptors,” said Mr. Spangler, a lawyer, academic and blockchain enthusiast.

Attendees listened to presentations from top industry figures exploring the diverse ways blockchain is disrupting the financial system and transforming how people invest, save, transact, and plan for their future. The stacked speaker roster included SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce, Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Brian Brooks, and Bitmain Chief Operating Officer Philip Liu.

“The 40 minute Q&A session with SEC Commissioner Peirce was the high point of the conference for many (including me),” Mr. Spangler said. “She took question after question from the audience and was very generous with her time and insights.”

In between speaker sessions, BAF members were able to network with industry leaders, family offices, investment professionals, and academics at the waterfront Balboa Bay Resort venue.

The Blockchain Acceleration Foundation (BAF) is pleased to announce the first three members of its advisory board: UCLA Professor Leonard Kleinrock, USC Professor and Ming Hsieh Faculty Fellow Bhaskar Krishnamachari, and computer programmer and entrepreneur Brian J. Fox.

“I am honored to welcome Mr. Fox, Mr. Krishnamachari, and Mr. Kleinrock as advisors to the Blockchain Acceleration Foundation,” said BAF President Cameron Dennis. “As we continue developing our educational programs, the ability to draw upon our advisors’ collective expertise and extensive networks in both academia and industry will be invaluable.”

BAF’s advisors will contribute industry knowledge and thinking to the organization’s current and future work, give advice and support to the board of directors and officers, make introductions within their networks, and serve as a public advocate for the organization.

Leonard Kleinrock

Leonard Kleinrock is an Internet Pioneer and Computer Scientist currently teaching at UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. Mr. Kleinrock developed the mathematical theory of packet networks, the technology underpinning the Internet, as a graduate student at MIT. As a UCLA professor five years later, he was asked by the Advanced Research Projects Agency to put his theory into practice. In September 1969, with a team of select graduates and others, Mr. Kleinrock brought up the first node of the ARPANET, the seedling that grew into today’s global Internet. One month later he directed the first transmission to pass over the blossoming network.

Now known as one of the fathers of the internet, Kleinrock has been recognized with many distinguished international honors for his work, including the National Medal of Science, the United States’ highest honor for achievement in the sciences. Watch the following video to hear Mr. Kleinrock discuss the childhood event that led to his career in engineering, his research on packet switching, and the process of bringing the early Internet to life.

Bhaskar Krishnamachari

Bhaskar Krishnamachari is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC and Director of the Viterbi Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things (CCI). His expertise spans several fields, including wireless networks, IoT, distributed computing, and machine learning, and he recently became active in research on blockchain technologies. Mr. Krishnamachari co-authored a paper describing a system that incentivizes fair play in e-commerce absent a third party, and ultimately believes a similar protocol could enable millions of everyday “microtransactions” between interconnected devices.

Mr. Krishnamachari has co-authored over 300 papers, which have been collectively cited more than 25,000 times. He has received the NSF CAREER Award and the ASEE Terman Award for outstanding electrical and computer engineering educators, as well as several best paper awards including at ACM/IEEE IPSN and ACM MobiCom. In 2011 he was listed in MIT technology review magazine’s TR-35 list of top 35 innovators under the age of 35, and in 2015 was named one of Popular Science magazine’s “Brilliant 10.”

Brian J. Fox

Brian J. Fox is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He is a staunch supporter of Free Software, and is the author of the GNU Bash shell. As the first technical employee at the Free Software Foundation, Mr. Fox worked with Richard Stallman at MIT, where his software output included GNU Makeinfo, GNU Info, GNU Finger, GNU Readline, GNU History, and contributions to GDB. Fox also was the maintainer of Emacs for quite some time. After his tenure at the FSF, Mr. Fox became a consultant to firms worldwide, and in the spring of 1995 created the first online banking system at Wells Fargo. This was followed immediately by the creation of MetaHTML, the first complete programming language designed for creating dynamic websites.

Mr. Fox is currently the CEO of venture technology firm Opus Logica, is the first technical founder of Orchid Labs, is a founder/partner in Kano.ONE, and is a general partner in Kano VC. Kano is an advisory/venture firm for blockchain startups focused on the creation of positive social impact. In 2017, Mr. Fox co-authored a New York Times piece with former CIA Director R. James Woolsey Jr. advocating open source election systems as a means of securing US elections against Russian interference.

Last week the CSUN Blockchain Society (CBS) traveled to Silicon Valley to attend AIShowBiz3.0, the world’s first summit focused entirely on artificial intelligence in the entertainment, media and blockchain sectors.

The student organization’s officers worked to obtain free tickets to the conference, which was enough to encourage four club members to split an AirBnB and attend the two-day event. CBS President Santiago Cuevas expressed gratitude for Molly Lavik, the co-founder of AIShowBiz who provided the group with free student tickets.

“I want to thank Molly being a champion of entrepreneurship, for supporting our cause by providing us this opportunity to connect with great people,” Santiago said.

CBS member Jesse Cruz‘s favorite part of the conference was learning about the various projects presented during the Shark Tank-style pitch competition. After three stages, the startup Cerebri AI emerged from the competition victorious, impressing judges with its model for measuring individual brand commitment and recommending best actions at scale.

Santiago added that one of his key takeaways from the conference was gaining exposure to the wide range of technologies experimenting with artificial intelligence.

“Even though Artificial Intelligence (AI) is such an uncharted territory, nobody is afraid of it,” Santiago remarked. “Everybody is trying to approach AI from different paradigms, but nobody is afraid of it.”

CBS Co-Founder and Vice President Manuel Vergara said his favorite event during the conference was a speech from Canva chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki, who stressed the impact of grit and perseverance while also reminding the crowd to smile every once in a while.

In addition to Kawasaki, other major speakers included Film Director Jannicke Mikkelsen and prominent venture capitalist Tim Draper.

Although blockchain and AI research remain in nascent stages, Manuel left AIShowBiz with the impression that human collaboration, as opposed to scientific breakthroughs, will determine how far-reaching these technologies become.

“Rather than technical barriers, there are more human barriers to adopting emerging technologies like blockchain or AI,” Manuel opined.

Santiago had similar sentiments regarding the importance of diversity and community in the research community .

“In order for us to be able to build this world of 5G, IOT, blockchain, and AI, we cannot silo the information,” Santiago concluded. “We all have to work together and develop teams that encompass full skill sets.”

Following UCLA’s first quarter offering an accredited blockchain course, students embraced the role the class played in raising blockchain awareness on campus and building a vibrant community interested in the emerging technology.

“55 more students than last quarter are walking around UCLA with a deep understanding of blockchain,” said Andrew Battat, a second-year computer science student and one of the course’s teaching assistants. “The impact that can have on the student population is hard to quantify, but I believe it will have a tremendous impact on blockchain interest and adoption in the long term.”

Third-year computer science student Salekh Parkhati said the blockchain class was easier compared to advanced courses, but still recommended his peers register if they can because the data model underlying the technology could eventually lead to important innovations.

“As we can see, this technology has already created a huge wave in many different industries, so this is definitely worth some time and investigation,” Parkhati said.

Unsurprisingly, introducing a room full of computer science and engineering students to blockchain went far more seamlessly than your typical dinner table conversation.

“I’ve been struggling to explain blockchain to my family for so long that once I finally got in a room full of computer science students, it was like playing a game on easy mode after playing the game on hard for so long,” Battat said. “The students had a base understanding of computing, cryptography, and all the other elements that make up blockchain. It was only a matter of putting the pieces together.”

Blockchain at UCLA, one of the largest university blockchain clubs in the country and an original BAF member organization, designed the pilot blockchain course curriculum. The group already hosts a weekly student-led education series, which teaches members about the technology from both business and technical perspectives.

Due to the lack of readily-available blockchain assignments online, the teaching assistants and Professor John Villasenor were forced to devise their own homework assignments for students. These included building a blockchain in C++ or Python, working with Cryptozombies, developing a decentralized application, and writing an essay on a permissioned blockchain of each student’s choosing.

Battat said the teaching assistants received fantastic feedback from students, with most major hurdles coming from administrative work rather than curating curriculum or the lecturing itself.

“We ran over some speed bumps along the way but we got through them, and I’m confident that if we get the chance to teach the class next year, the course will be that much better,” Battat said.

Whether the course will be offered next year, however, remains to be determined.

After funding for the winter term (January through March) class initially fell through in November, BAF connected Blockchain at UCLA with MouseBelt, whose Blockchain Accelerator promptly offered up $15,000 to cover the course. Villasenor, a professor of electrical engineering, public policy, and management, agreed to volunteer his time to teach the Special Topics class, and the groundwork was laid for one quarter.

UCLA has not yet decided whether it will offer the class during the 2019-2020 academic year. Seats for the pilot class and its waitlist quickly filled when registration initially opened, but the administration is still determining whether it will fund the course. Given how quickly jobs in the blockchain space are growing, offering a gateway course exposing developers, computer scientists, and engineers to the technology seems to be the prudent long-term move.

“This class will doubtlessly encourage students to seek out professional knowledge in [blockchain],” Parkhati said. “I believe the class’ presence will attract more smart minds to explore further and eventually make huge impacts in this industry.”

While UCLA’s administration remains on the fence about bringing the blockchain course back, other major universities have taken major strides in recent years to develop their own blockchain course offerings. A Coinbase study revealed that 42 percent of the world’s top 50 universities offer at least one blockchain course, largely a response to increased demand from companies for people who understand cryptocurrency-related issues. Although UCLA ties for sixth on Coinbase’s list of top universities, unless the pilot engineering course is funded, the only remaining blockchain classes will be offered to undergraduates through the school’s extension program.

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The Blockchain Acceleration Foundation hosted a booth at the Crypto Investment Summit last week, spending two productive days networking and collaborating with investors, researchers, and students interested in the adoption of blockchain technology.

In addition to attending, the Blockchain Acceleration Foundation (BAF) sourced free tickets to the prestigious summit, which were claimed by 23 students in its network of university blockchain organizations. Thanks to CIS organizer Alon Goren, students from five blockchain clubs attended the event free of charge and heard from speakers including Charlie Lee, Andrew Keys, and Tim Draper.

Officers from Blockchain at UCLA, Trojan Crypto Club, CSUN Blockchain Society, Blockchain at UCSB, and Blockchain at UCI comprised the group of students and blockchain enthusiasts who helped host the booth and inform attendees about BAF’s initiatives and goals.

Edward So, president of the Trojan Crypto club, said the event’s close proximity to USC’s campus helped raise interest in blockchain technology among club members and the greater student population. Adrian Covarrubias, CSUN Blockchain Society’s president, said he left CIS with a deeper insight into different cryptocurrencies, investment opportunities, and internship offers.

The Blockchain Acceleration Foundation introduced California State University, Northridge’s Blockchain Society to its network this Monday, bolstering its robust roster of university-affiliated student organization partners. CSUN Blockchain Society marks the seventh organization from Southern California and Mexico to officially partner with the Blockchain Acceleration Foundation (BAF).

“CSUN Blockchain Society is incredibly excited to join the BAF network,” said club president Adrian Covarrubias. “We look forward to contributing to the mass adoption of blockchain technology in Southern California and beyond.”

Among the main reasons the organization’s officers decided to partner with BAF was to gain access to credible blockchain speakers, receive tickets to regional conferences, and learn about job opportunities in the space.

The 40-person organization, which formed at the start of the 2018-2019 academic school year, has already hosted five events on campus encouraging blockchain education and awareness.

By hosting workshops and collaborating with fellow BAF organizations, club leaders said they hope to equip their members with the skills necessary to develop and deploy decentralized applications on the Ethereum blockchain by the end of the Spring 2019 semester.

“Partnering with CSUN Blockchain Society marks another important step as we continue to incorporate the most talented blockchain thinkers and students into our network,” said BAF President Cameron Dennis. “I am thrilled to work with Adrian and the rest of the organization’s members, and cannot wait to see the decentralized applications and other projects produced by the group.”

In addition to collaborating with the other BAF organizations, CSUN Blockchain Society club leaders said they also aim to work with the business and computer science schools on their campus to pool their collective knowledge and resources.