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Ask Me Anything: Kevin Bravo 🤺

12 Min Read

Hello tech recruiter or technical person! 👏 Thank you for stopping by and having an interest in my profile.

Getting to know a candidate can be a challenging task, more when you are in an interview and have all kinds of feelings (anxiety, fear…) and short time, so I decided to write this kind of AMA in which I’m interviewing myself for you to know me 🤠

Each section contains 5 questions or fewer, the goal is to explain my technical & soft experience as well as professional interests so that any person could get to know me in less than 5 mins.

🤷‍♀️ Overall

What’s your tech experience like?

I’ve been working for the past 5 months in an NGO where I’m currently Scholarship holder and Volunteer as an intern, it’s called AVAA.

My job has been mostly to help improve internal processes. Previously the organization had a very ineffective way to manage data and time-consuming and inefficient processes to make thighs work.

I built some systems that help improve those processes and make the internal job more efficient, automatic and simple. Giving more control to the Staff about the activities, process and progress of the scholarships holders during they stay in the program.

For example, a process that used to take one to one and a half hours to be done manually now takes less than 5 minutes.

If you want to know specific details about the job done, you can check this 👇

Software Developer at AVAA

More related to the blockchain space 🔗, I built really great side projects to keep me constantly learning and improving my abilities with Solidity, Cairo, Typescript and Python.

You can check them out in my portfolio: 👇

Kevin’s Portfolio

Volunteer?

Yeap! Currently I’m part of the Excellence Program (Pro-Excellence), which is a program carried out by the Venezuelan American Friendship Association 💙 (AVAA by its acronym in Spanish), an NGO that helps Venezuelan college students by providing them leadership skills, assertive communication skills, TIC’s and English training, and provide them with Volunteer opportunities through its five internal projects and allied NGOs with the main goal of reinforce social and citizen awareness.

During the 3 years that I’ve been there, I’ve been part of different projects and activities. One of them was “A friendly Hand for the Environment” 💚 (UMAA by its acronym in Spanish). A project that seeks the protection and conservation of the environment in Venezuela. During my time as head of the project I’ve been able to manage a team of 5 people. My role was to provide strategic guidance, direct operational activities and evaluate overall performance while ensuring consistent communication with all team members.

We managed to give successful virtual training activities to educate the public about the importance of protecting their environment. We successfully raise environmental awareness among the scholarship holders and the local community of people who joined the activities. We also managed to establish a long list of allies and standardized a bunch of internal processes a workflows that future administrations could take advantage of.

Since this period was during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic we weren’t able to realize in person activities. (E.g.: cleaning, residue recollection.)

Currently, I’m part of the Commitment Committee in AVAA. Is a position in which I have to design action plans to improve compliance with the commitments by the fellows and help them with all the different questions and concerns that they could have about the program.

Until now I improved the onboarding process of the new scholarship holders by creating a program called “Partner with a Green Heart”. It’s an initiative in which those interested scholarship holders with more experience within the program (“Senior Scholars”) commit to being a guide for those scholarship holders who are just beginning their path within the program (“Junior Scholars”)

Had great results in improving the overall adaptation process that new scholarship holders come through. We already successfully implement the first cohort in May 2022 currently, the program is taking place with the new scholars of the Cohort of November 2022.

What are your main professional, academic & personal goals?

One of my main academic goals is to reach a PH.D. level. I want to reach a point in my life where I can create new knowledge that could really improve people’s lives and share that knowledge alongside my experience, not in an amateur way but professionally.

Professionally, I want a life full of projects to do, projects that I could be proud of. I would love to work in a future in one of those big tech companies (MANG) and experience what is to be a software engineer in an environment full of talented people that can shape the way we do things.

Also, I would like to continue contributing to the tech community as I gain new knowledge and experience that can be useful for others.

Personal**, I want to reach a point in where I can have a well-established and healthy family** and give all the love to my children, wife and close relatives.

💻 Talk techy to me

Tech stack Overview

  • Languages: Typescript, Python, Solidity, Cairo, Rust. SQL

  • Frameworks: Nextjs, brownie, Hardhat, Truffle, Protostar, Nile

  • Tools: Pinata, Textile IO, IPFS, Infura, Alchemy, Git, slither, Mythx, Fleek, Tenderly, Tally, PostgresSQL, Docker

  • Testing: Chai Library, pytest, Jest, Cypress

Best Personal Projects:

Crowdfy:

A crowdfunding protocol that uses the minimal proxy pattern to make a campaign, every campaign has its contract and its own storage. Has capabilities to do yield farming with the funds collected and swap tokens received by the contributors to the actual token that the campaign is receiving. Has its own token and its own governance mechanism. There is a website where you can interact with the project.

Arepa-Chain:

A blockchain protocol I’m building from scratch (currently working on) aims to be a completely blockchain which you can interact with (with his own wallet, cli, network for sharing the blocks, his own consensus mechanism (PoW))

StarkLend:

A decentralized lending and borrowing protocol deployed on the Ethereum L2 Starknet network. It is a simple protocol that replicates the functionalities of the AAVE protocol but in the Starknet network.

❔ Some questions

L2 Experience?

I have experience building in L2 blockchains and I really find interesting most of the actual solutions out there to face the problem of base layers. Although I’m very excited with L2 technologies in general, I’m very fascinated with Zero Knowledge proof related tech. Actually, I’m in my way to have a deep understanding of this technology, more specifically STARKs and Validity Rollups. Currently improving my Cairo skills.

Have you had experience with solidity security best practices?

Yes, in fact this is one of the areas in which I have more interest in the blockchain space. Along with tokenomics. I really like doing research about the recent hacks that are happening in the ecosystem and learn from them. Usually, I spend time reading the security audits that companies like Open Zeppelin or ConsenSys do. And also, often times I get my hands dirty doing some security audits in Code4Arena.

Have you already integrated AI tools like ChatGPT to your workflow?

Yeap! ChatGPT and related tools are being an amazing addition to my workflow, not only as a developer but also in my personal projects and day to day related stuff. It Had increased my productivity a lot since I start using it.

What other technologies do you find interesting besides Blockchain?

AI, and cybersecurity

What is your favorite programming lang?

I don’t really have one, in fact I don’t stick with only one programming lang, I use them based on the needs of the project I’m building. I’m not a believer of “One tool fits all.” So, I just use them based on what are the requirements and needs of the projects. Also, I’m not closed to learn any new programming lang / tool, if the project requires it, no matter how difficult those can be.

Also, I have a huge intellectual curiosity and I’m always open to learn new things, tools…

Now, if you want to know which programming languages I use the most, those are: Typescript, Solidity and Python.

😜 Lighting Round

  • What are you reading right now?
    • The Wisdom of Crowds.
  • Hamburgers or pizza?
    • Hamburgers
  • WAGMI?
    • WAGMI 🚀
  • All your net worth is in the hands of this man?

  •   *   Yes

💃 What Would You Ask & Seek at Your Next Company?

What are you looking for in a company?

Right now, my goal is to get involved in the exciting and freaking out startup environment, working out to raise a company from the bottom to the top.

I don’t want to work in a monotonous company in which everything is perfect and most of the processes are already established. I want to create and establish those processes. Really, I would like to work in an environment in where I can propose, design and implement ideas that can really improve the company and the services it offers for its users.

I want to work in a company that really believes in what they are doing, a company that wants to make some real change in the way we use things (for better) to improve people’s lives.

If we remove money off the table, what would you say is important for your next gig?

In order of importance:

  1. Culture: I would love to work in the insane and shockingly startup ecosystem, with people trying to build something they are proud of and can have a real impact in the world improving peoples live.

  2. Intellectual curiosity: I would like to work in a company that is always pushing its team towards excellence, with an insatiable desire of never stop learning.

  3. Flexibility: I would like to work in a company that understands not everyone runs on the same schedule and that looks for punched out tasks and getting things done rather than punched out hours.

  4. Company mission & values: I would like to work in a company that really believes in what it says, not only because of money, of course it’s important, but more important is to leave a footprint in all those lives with the product and experience we are building.

Your perfect job description:

“We are looking for a freaky adept technologist to work alongside us building our protocol, making research for improving our existing products and spending time researching the most efficient way in which you can write, designing reviewing and innovating smart contracts to improve the protocol.

So, you’ll help us out first of all: designing, coding, testing and deploying smart contracts, review existing code written by other team members, research, architect, and develop innovation solutions to scale the protocol, define new features in order to contribute to build a great user experience, help build reliable and scalable systems with a strong focus on security (even trying to implement new l2 solutions). In addition, you’ll provide documentation, guides, and act as a second line of support for our community.

Lastly, we´ll avoid booking unnecessary meetings in your day and we’ll also give back to the dev community in general through Meetups, events, or even contributing to open source, etc…

Welcome aboard!” 🚀

😃 Personal Details

const name: string = "Kevin";
const lastName: string = "Bravo";

const nationality: string  = "venezuelan";

let age: number = 23

const languagges: [] = [
  {
    language: "Spanish",
    level: "Native"
  },
  {
    language: "English",
    level: "Proeficient"
  }
]

👨‍🏫 Getting to Know Me

How do you keep yourself up to date?

It’s a bit of mix & match:

  • I’m active on Twitter and usually follow dev’s and projects I am interested in. I usually find important updates, or links to talks, events, and technical tutorials.
  • Medium / Hashnode / Devto / Substack tutorials and technical articles, I like the technical articles published here which tend to go more in-depth and technical than random tweets and subreddits.
  • Online Courses & Training, currently I don’t have a subscription for a learning platform because I cannot afford it, but in general when Pluralsight gives its free weekend I enjoy taking one or two courses. Usually, I learn through free courses and videos on YouTube. And I’ve been taking some of the hands-on projects offered by buildspace.

And actually, I’m enrolled in two bootcamps offered by the StarkNet Community: Stark Basecamp Cohort 2 and Cairo Starkcon. I was also part of the first bootcamp related to Zero Knowledge proof offered by EncodeClub

What are you currently working on? (Besides your actual work)

I’m currently in a self-learning process in which I’m learning about ZK-Proof and the primitive mechanisms that make them possible. I’m also building some stuff using Cairo to be more proficient with the language.

What interests you most in the blockchain space?

Tokenomics (Bonding Curves, Prediction Markets, Token Curated Registries) and how to apply them on smart contracts, EVM dynamics, Interoperability between blockchains and L2s and ZK-Proof.

Blog posts

You can check all my articles here 👇

Kevin’s Blog

💭 Contact Details