An Interview with Michael Lewellen
Texas Blockchain Council Vice President of Operations Michael Lewellen sits down with us to discuss life, blockchain, and the 2021 state legislative session. The third conversation in an ongoing series showcasing TBC leaders and members.
Tell me a little about yourself.
Michael - I grew up with a techie father who works as an IT consultant, so I’ve always been a little geeky in that sense. That led me to focus on new technologies and ways to apply them. The first time I started using crypto was mining Bitcoin in my high school computer lab, just to play around with it and figure out how it works. That pattern of experimentation brought me from starting out with Bitcoin to then learning more about Ethereum and other blockchain technologies. That eventually led to today, as I’ve gotten to perform a lot of different roles in the industry: as a consultant, developer, and instructor. I continue to learn more about how the technology works to help others.
What is your role at your company?
Michael - I am part of Tarski Technologies, a product development and consulting firm. We’re primarily focused on advising companies that are trying to break into the blockchain space and want to know how to use the technology in the best way possible. I’m officially the CEO, but really, my role is to be the technical leader. I have a partner, Humza, who works on the operational side of things, and then another junior partner, Justin, who works on user experience and design. So really, between the three of us, we have a lot of expertise on how to build a blockchain product successfully, with many successful projects to date.
How did you get to know about and get involved with the TBC?
Michael - I’ve known the President, Lee Bratcher, for a good while before the TBC started. We met at UT Dallas and had many conversations about how blockchain technology was going to grow out of its infancy. I’ve been involved in the local community for a while as well, so I shared my experiences with Lee and what I had learned watching past community leaders succeed or fail. Once the TBC was officially launched in the Spring of 2020, Tarski Technologies joined as one of the early members. In the Fall, there was a recognition that the TBC needed some help on the operational side, so I decided to jump in, primarily to help with the website until my role grew into general operations, and then also Secretary. I’ve enjoyed the work I’ve done; I’ve enjoyed the progress we’ve made; and I will be continuing to serve in that role as much as my time permits.
What is your current role in the TBC?
Michael - I’m the Vice President of Operations, so I help make sure that the day-to-day running of the TBC is going well. I primarily focus on the member benefits and the way we onboard new members. I overlook the Website, Slack, and basically any software that our members use. I also make sure we have processes in place for the organization to function. I’m also officially on the books as the Secretary, which means I’m responsible for all the records we have on governance decisions and memberships in good standing.
How does your day start, and how does it progress with everything on your plate?
Michael - My day starts around 7am with a light breakfast. It is usually just a quick bit of eggs and coffee; then maybe 30 minutes of reading or watching a short YouTube documentary just to get my brain up and running. I then typically just dive into whatever I have on my desk, whether it is looking through emails or starting on the first task that I see on my Kanban board. I might also start with virtual meetings for different projects that I have ongoing. My day depends on how many projects I have; sometimes I jump right into a call with people, sometimes I work on software tasks, but I’m usually heads-down between 8am to 12pm. I then take a short break from 12pm to 1pm and then get back to it until 5pm or 6pm.
What goes on after 5pm?
Michael - I relax and wind down by reading, playing video games, doing some VR, or sometimes going out to a local climbing gym and getting some physical activity into the day. I then try to have dinner with friends, especially if we’re all going to the gym together beforehand. COVID has definitely made the whole routine a little bit more—I guess what you could call introverted. Fortunately, that’s starting to slowly move back to normal.
What book are you currently reading? And how is it shaping your outlook?
Michael - There’s the fun reading, which has been Leviathan Wakes, and that’s been very interesting. It follows the conflicts within a future solar system with different planets and areas with interesting political implications for changing humanity as it’s further separated by remote space. The nonfiction book that I most recently read, The Unicorn Project, was really good. It’s a story about how to manage complex software projects and dig yourself out of a hole. Starting from a point where things are not going well and figuring out how to improve the situation slowly and methodically. The book is mostly about learning how to manage software better, and it’s given me some good perspectives to consider in my own work.
How do you balance your work and your personal life?
Michael - I have a physical Kanban board. It’s my daily task list of things to be done with sections for TODO, DOING, and DONE. It’s pretty simple. Every time there’s something that needs to be done, I create a sticky note. I then use the Eisenhower matrix, where I categorize my tasks into one of four priorities to figure out which ones I should do first. I build a rough backlog of items every week and then I start working through them depending on their priority and my time. It’s a personal system that combines elements of Kanban, Agile, and the Eisenhower matrix.
What are you most excited about in the blockchain space?
Michael - There’s a lot of interesting things going on. I think the most exciting thing is the implications for security and accessibility. We’re currently in a world where most of the technology is controlled by a very small group of people, whether they’re tech companies, or governments, or banks, or businesses. There is a large part of our online economy that is dependent on things that are very closed off, even though the internet itself has always been considered very open. I’m excited to see what blockchain does to open things up by creating new business models that encourage open markets and platforms. More specifically, I’m really excited about something called the Baseline Protocol, an initiative to allow corporations to cooperate on complex workflows. It can help businesses manage complex supply-chains. That’s just one particular initiative I’m pretty excited about, but there are a lot of other parts of the space that are incredibly exciting as well.
Are you currently working on any new legislation at the Texas blockchain council?
Michael - Nothing new that we haven’t already filed. Currently, the thing I’m most excited about is digital identities and finding ways to make it easier for people to verify their identity with the government or issue credentials. Digital Identities not only provide a lot of value because they are more efficient but also because they can be private. The idea that you can have a driver’s license that doesn’t reveal your birth date, or your driver’s license number, or your address whenever you need to verify your age—for example, to buy alcohol. Your age could be verified without providing all this other information that can be used for identity fraud. Not only would that be great in person, but especially online. I think that would really unlock a lot of potential in the online economy. In addition to that, I think it could be used for every other blockchain project to verify that I own something through my identity. I could, for example, say that I, Michael Lewellen, own this NFT, or own this car. If we get to the point where we now have NFT’s representing cars and real estate, we could combine that with digital identities. We would have a direct connector to say that this person is real and owns this asset. Things then get really interesting from there on out, especially for the government. However, we’re still very far away from this technology becoming commonplace. That’s why the Council is pushing initiatives that get us closer to digital identities through legislative working groups.
“A block in a blockchain is just a page in a ledger book and the chain is the binding of the book.”
If you could simplify blockchain within a few sentences, how would you describe it?
Michael - I think the simplest way to view a blockchain is as a distributed ledger. If you can visualize a paper ledger book, you could see that every line of that ledger book represents a transaction between one or more people. Then every page of the ledger is a summary of one day of transactions. Really, a blockchain is very similar to a ledger book, except that it just provides digital guarantees around the content. A block in a blockchain is just a page in a ledger book and the chain is the binding of the book. What a blockchain does is provide a guarantee that the transaction blocks are in the exact order that they originated in and that they can’t be changed after the fact. Block 100 came after block 99 and after block 98, just like pages in a ledger book. How much do I owe you? How much do you owe me? These basic questions are what a blockchain helps us answer, because you’re not trusting one person holding a ledger book. All of us get a copy of a distributed ledger, so we all have the same guarantees. When no one has singular control over that shared ledger, it opens up a lot of possibilities.
What is a nugget of wisdom you’d like to give our readers?
Michael - For those of you looking at blockchain just now, it is is a very fascinating space to explore. I think it’s important that everyone learns a little bit about it. However, I would say always be optimistic about the technology but skeptical about implementation. What I mean is that there’s a lot of use cases for blockchain that will likely be successful in the future, but the technology is still new, it’s still experimental, and there are still things that we have to hash out. So if you’re trying to put something into production or if you’re trying to, you know, bet a large bit of your business or money on the technology, you have to be very careful that you’re doing something that provides sustainable long-term value. I still think it’s important that businesses understand the technology and try to do something to participate in it. They just need to make sure that they don’t go all-in until they know the best way for the technology to be applied. That is the same way we plan to approach it with the Texas government. It’s going to be a slow and steady process of finding out what works, what doesn’t, and issuing guidance where it makes sense.