About

I was born in rural Texas and spent my childhood on the move. My family lived in half a dozen states before heading back to Texas for my high school years. I was busy raising horses, goats, and chickens when dad brought home our first computer, a 486dx33. In my family home, which we built from scratch ourselves, I learned to build software and discovered the online world. These were formative years.

My passion in high school was driven by a desire to make indie games, and I did. I created Splat, Bob and His Amazing Journey Home, and The Legend of Talibah. Some of my games were featured on Softdisk's CD-ROMs and even on a data CD included in an Information Society album. I released shareware version on BBSes and, eventually, this new thing called the Internet. I called my little indie game label Zaskoda Soft.

Although it seemed that building software was a passion for me, it took a lifetime of exploring to realize it wasn't. It was merely what I had to learn in order to express my creativity at the time. It turns out, I enjoy crafting experiences for others to enjoy - in any medium. Early on this was games and online communities. But in time, I followed this passion to create music, build art installations, perform as a fire dancer, and craft unique organizational cultures.

The name Zaskoda came from my great-grandmother's maiden name. After discovering part of our family history and feeling a kinship to the name, I borrowed it as online handle for all things ever since - from publishing DOS games and composing tracker music to my identity across social media and just about anything else online.

Years later, a patner and I went to Burning Man where she referred to me - for the first time - as a shortened version of the name: “Koda”. People overheard her, picked up on it, and decades later, Koda is what most of my friends call me, and “zaskoda” is still my handle nearly everywhere online.

I have a BS in Computer Science from the University of North Texas, with a minor in English and Technical Writing. Highlights from undergrad include: President's List, Dean's List, ACM member, and game development coursework in Ian Parberry's LARC lab.

Years later I went back for an MS in Information and Communication Technology for Development from CU Boulder's ATLAS Institute (3.97 GPA). ICTD is an interdisciplinary program about how technology actually serves communities - not in the abstract, but in the field. Mine was the practical kind: I built field-data tools for Re:Vision, a Denver nonprofit fighting urban food deserts, and trained local women on the platform in two languages. I did a social entrepreneurship case study with Prospera, a Guadalajara nonprofit helping women become micro-entrepreneurs. I built and benchmarked a mesh network for last-mile connectivity in an under-resourced community and wrote it up as a measurement study. I studied distributed systems architecture and big data techniques where we mined large-scale Twitter data about the Colorado floods that were happening around us at the time. I topped it all off with a semester working directly with the Burning Man Project's technology team during their transition from an LLC to a nonprofit.

I'm a decentralist, philosophically and technically. I believe ownership of the Internet should be distributed, and I've been advocating for federated identity and open social systems most of my life. Centralized power eventually becomes corrupted by bad actors. It's a pattern that plays out time and time again. I believe that, ultimately, the best systems are decentralized and open.

I'm egalitarian and politically independent. I care about authenticity more than polish - in writing, in design, in behavior. I try to stay self-aware about my own contradictions and I'm always doing my best to grow into a better man.

The picture above isn't a costume. It's just me embracing my cyberpunk vibes on a Wednesday at Realtime Worlds.

I'm a fire poi performer. A granted festival artist. An occasional amateur actor. A HAM radio technician - callsign KI7APH. I served as president of Apogaea, Colorado's officially sanctioned regional Burning Man event, during its most successful year, and built the Temple of Moon there in 2011 - a memorial art installation in the shape of an infinity symbol, climbable, eventually burned at a ceremony, built with no prior large-scale art experience.

I've snowboarded an active volcano and managed to ride 56 days in a single season. I've surfed a hurricane and flew a small plane over a glacier. I took my first diving trip at 17 and am still an active diver. I also enjoy downhill mountain biking, backpacking, and overlanding.

I love to travel. These days I split my time between Seattle, Washington and Merida, Yucatan. You'll often find me visiting friends and community in Texas, Colorado, California, and beyond. Or, I might just be off on an adventure somewhere else.