A Syrian doctorate student in Russia joins CF to write Cardano tech documentation
Hello Cardano community,
My name is Nazim Faour, I joined the Cardano Foundation in July as a Technical Writer. I have been following the Cardano project since early 2018, after attending a community meetup in Moscow—the Russian capital city I now call home and where I am pursuing a doctorate in blockchain technology.
My role at the Cardano Foundation is to work in close collaboration with Cardano developers, focus on writing technical documentation, creating external content about Cardano, and generating new ideas based on feedback from our developer community. Likewise, I also create useful technical educational materials for external stakeholders, such as enterprise and business adopters.
I have three years of blockchain specific experience writing technical articles and documentation. My core responsibilities include the study and interpretation of highly technical documentation and cryptographic theory, and disseminating this information to a wide and often non-technical audience.
I consider technical writing as a unique skill that unites both writing and technology. Technical writing, therefore, requires a great deal of both patience and problem solving on my part, and the ability to liaise with subject matter experts and other relevant stakeholders.
As a new member of the Cardano Foundation team, I have many different goals to achieve. My main goal is to help a diverse Cardano audience and guide them through our ever-evolving technology, while at the same time acting as a link between the Cardano ecosystem and the Cardano Foundation to guarantee all technical queries are solved.
About me
Now, I will share a little about my personal story. I was born in Aleppo, in Northwestern Syria, where I studied at an undergraduate level. Through dedication to my studies, I was able to secure a scholarship to complete a Master’s degree in Software Engineering. This scholarship allowed me to make the leap from Aleppo—a place marred by severe social and economic uncertainty due to political tensions—to Moscow, the capital of Russia, studying at the National Research University, Higher School of Economics and allowing me to pursue further education freely. Becoming a Muscovite doctorate student also enabled me to learn Russian and familiarize myself with the varied and diverse culture of the world’s largest country—spanning across 11 time zones from the Baltic Sea near Finland to the Bering Strait across Alaska.
In 2016, I made my first foray into blockchain technology, taking on the challenge of writing a Master’s thesis entitled “Transparent Voting Platform Based on Permissioned Blockchain”. I am now in the second year of education to complete my Ph.D. degree in Information Security, and the subject of my thesis is ‘Blockchain Distributed Systems Security’.
After the conclusion of my Masters, my journey started as an official blockchain researcher with the Waves Platform, a local blockchain startup. In the first few months, I worked as a back-end developer but after that, Waves required the creation of full documentation from scratch, and I gladly stepped in to deliver as a technical writer. Throughout my time at Waves, I saw the team grow from 10 to 200 members in three years—proving to me what a burgeoning industry blockchain would become.
In my personal life, sports are my main hobby—in particular football. I lead the international football team at my university, with more than 30 different nationalities. Together, we have won many football awards, you can watch a short summary of our games and some of my goals for the Blue team here. I like to read about business, leadership, and entrepreneurship, and I can advise two interesting books to read: ‘Leaders Eat Last’ by Simon Sinek, and ‘The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable’ by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I also like to communicate with people, and the experience that I have gained as a technical writer with Waves made me closer to the team and the community—I am looking forward to having the same experience with the Cardano Foundation.
That is all about me for today! If you want to ask me any questions about blockchain, technical writing, or sports just leave your comment here and I will be in touch.
Best regards,
Nazim Faour