Top 100 Reasons to "Pick Me"


By davidyang
TopCoder Member

100 Technology and Journalism Background
I am recent graduate of UIUC where I double majored in EE/CS and served as editor-in-chief of the Technograph magazine - UIUC's premier technology publication. During my career there, I interviewed industry luminaries Bill Gates, Dirk Meyer (President of AMD) and Paul Lauterbur/Anthony Leggett (Nobel Prize Physicists 2004). Since then, I've continued to pursue writing and editing opportunities. Most recently I've talked with business leader Keith Ferrazzi (best selling author of "Never Eat Alone").



11 Communication and Writing Style
During high school, I was selected to the USA Today All-Academic First Team in 2000 for my "ability to effectively communicate complex technological concepts." My goal as TopCoder's blogger will be to convey the excitement, frustration, brilliance and achievement that will radiate from this competition. I'm also technologically qualified to explain all facets of the competition - I've interned at places as diverse as Microsoft, AMD and IBM's Extreme Blue program.

I also think I have a unique writing style that would be interesting to TopCoder readers. My strongest influences are Fitzgerald and cummings - during college, this culminated in a series of published engineering humor/love poems with titles such as "k-map ," "adjacency matrix" and "Di Ode" (a parody of Shakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day.")

10 Community Development Experience
While I am no Scoble - I do run several successful forums that encompass everything from consulting lifestyle to an internal company "facebook" with average member counts in the hundreds (my ploy to get Manolo click-throughs with a "Sex and the City" forum never paid off). Running these forums has taught me that actively engaging your community is the key to building traffic that matters - not only do I spend time writing quality content, but I like to be in the fold and participating actively in comments and reaching out to my most active contributors. This active networking led to me being extensively quoted for a "Wired" article that first reported this Web2.0 mash up craze.

1 I'm fun
Let's admit, Vegas as a venue has a unique culture unmatched anywhere and I'm willing to bet TopCoder chose Vegas to enable sponsors, organizers and TopCoders have some fun in this neon-light desert adventure. I think I would be a fun, energetic person to have in this group. As evidence, I offer this fact: the thing I'm most famous for at my professional services firm is organizing the largest "Dodgeball" competition in company history (the exact number of competitions is a closely guarded secret).



Most importantly, I realize and appreciate what TopCoder is doing for the programming community with this competition. For this and the above reasons, I think I would make a great chronicler of this momentous occasion. In any event, I do wish the organizing team and TopCoder the best of luck and I hope to see you in Vegas!