My passions and abilities

What should I do with that by which I do not become immortal?
        -- Maitreyee, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

What I care about

• meeting my basic needs
• humanity

Meeting my basic needs is currently relatively straight forward, consequently, the bulk of my effort and interest is on the later component of my utility function. A majority of the world's population lives in poverty. I want to help address this. I am primarily interested in poverty in the developing world. There are several reasons for this:

• the developing world is where the vast majority of global poverty is, and is thus the obvious place to focus
• poverty in the developing world tends to be more severe than the West
• addressing poverty in the developing world offers higher returns than the West; $100-$1,000 in a low income country can totally change somebody's life

What I enjoy

• computing - especially engineering large scale computer systems
• biotechnology - I am interested in molecular and cellular biology
• social technology - I am excited by systems for cooperation, collaboration, social networking, and shared knowledge
• anything new - I enjoy learning and figuring out new things
• introversive activities - I enjoy focusing, processing, and making sense of things at my own pace

Things that bore me:

• extroversive activities - I typically don't enjoy high levels of social interaction, especially when there isn't time to fully process things
• the developing world - I feel I might not enjoy living in the developing world
• San Francisco - I feel I won't be happy if I spend the rest of my life living in the San Francisco Bay Area

My skills

• science/technology - I am strong in most scientific and technical areas.
• new ideas - I can rapidly assimilate information.
• planning and organizing - I have strong planning and organizational skills.
• autonomy - I am fairly good at working independently.
• organizational structure - I don't work well as a solitary individual. I do best in an organization that provides me with top level goals and feedback on my ideas.
• social interaction - I am good at social interaction with friends and colleagues, but not very good at social interaction with strangers.
• public policy - I am not very good at working on public policy by myself. I am ok at analysis, but bad at managing a social network to turn ideas into action. I may do well as part of a larger organization.
• language - I am relatively weak at English, and terrible at foreign languages

My resources

• time - I have a lot of time. I am only 37. I have 28 years until I am 65. For comparison, my entire computing career was only 14 years.
• wealth - I have sufficient wealth to meet my basic needs for now. This might not last forever. The future is so difficult to predict, it doesn't seem worth worrying about this at present. I don't have sufficient wealth to just go and found a startup. This constrains my ability to create an organization in order to achieve my goals.

What I seek