Hi friends! I figured I should do an introduction, now that you’re all here.
Wow, it feels wild for that to be true. The core IFIN team has been working for over a year, planning for this launch.
More on that later.
My name is Michael Taggart, but along the way, folks mostly just started calling me “Taggart.” Suits me just fine. I’m the Executive Director of IFIN. By day I’m a Senior Cybersecurity Researcher at UCLA Health. Before going all in on cyber, I was an educator, teaching programming and running IT programs in K-12 schools. I’m a teacher at heart. I don’t know how to be anything else.
Uh, what else. I think out loud, which can be annoying, but means I write a lot. I wrote a book. And several other courses.
I love technology; I always have. Perhaps foolishly, I still hold out hope that this thing through which we reach out to each other can be more of a force for good than ill. That the access to the vastness of human knowledge is worth fighting for.
I’m still willing to fight. Maybe this place can be where we can reclaim some good.
I’m so happy to be here with all of you.