Thank you for the warm words! If you meant that you wish you knew how to program and are looking for a place to start, I think http://freecodecamp.org/ is pretty good, although I've admittedly never approached it from a newbie perspective.

I do already know something about the steem blockchain, hence the academic interest! I've already downloaded the whitepaper to hopefully get more nitty gritties. As for staying involved, I'll try! Thank you for the advice!