India Steem Meetup #1 - Jaipur was fun!

I have been making voxpop videos for over 2.5 years now and over the time, I have managed to fine tune my skill and rake over 50 million views on those videos. Though YouTube is not being too kind to its video authors lately, I'm finding love for my talent from a place I didn't expect it from - blockchain.

My life has changed ever since I on-boarded steemit. I was chatting with my dear friend @firepower who is on a mission to grow steemit community in India and is organizing meetups across the country for the same. While discussing on how to make such events more interesting than it already is, we stumbled upon the idea of making voxpop videos for these events. With my skill, I could make videos that general audience could enjoy while making all the attendees feel included. This also gives a boost to my professional moderator / comedian career that I chose after quitting my corporate desk job. It's a win-win situation for all, and I instantly hopped on board the mission, with first stop being Jaipur, India.

Jaipur is known as pink city because most of the historic elements in the city are painted in pink paint. I was welcomed to the city by my Uber driver who shared a story about his business and taught me few lessons. I couldn't roam the city much because I had to visit the meetup location, Tapri Cafe, to figure out a place to shoot professionally. I tried to make most out of time by visiting Hawa Mahal on day 1.

Day 2 was the event day, and oh boy it was awesome. It was a casual meetup where few awesome users came together to have a cup of coffee and chat about steemit while getting to know each other and building offline human connections. I was a bit skeptical about the video initially thinking about how could discussion about a blockchain platform be made fun to watch by the general audience. My main aim for these videos is that people who are not on steemit should also be able to watch it, which means the content shouldn't be very technical.

Thankfully, the crowd was awesome and I enjoyed interviewing them in front of the camera till the point my cheeks started hurting. We would have had to call the ambulance if I didn't take that coffee break. I enjoy making such videos because this work doesn't feel like work to me, and that's exactly why I left my corporate desk job.

It was great interviewing @aishwarya @indiantraveller @cityboy @mehakmittal13 @prakashghai @komal @mariashabbir @kajolag @ruwatiatanu @rovingman @homemakershivi @jayantgarg @classyjewel. We also had Latika and Gopika who are new to the platform and came to the meetup to learn about it. Special thanks to @vinayakgupta for helping me with the camera, which is why he isn't in the video. The video has come out really great and fun.

I like the direction my journey is taking me in. Jaipur is a great city to be in and offers great food and easy access to all the places across the ciry. I wish to travel more to conduct such meetups across the country and abroad with @firepower and finally put my video making skills to greater use and build a community where members reward each other for quality content published on this great blockchain based social media platform, steemit.com.