A Mosaic of People and Places [STEEMFEST in Lisbon, 2017]

in #meetup7 years ago (edited)

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A Mosaic of People and Places


Phew. It has taken a couple of days to decompress after STEEMFEST this year. What a whirlwind of a week! @roelandp and his entire team of organizers did an absolutely amazing job hosting, mc'ing and curating a massive group of energetic Steemians. It was pretty amazing to see a group of 300 people move from A to B so seamlessly. (We moved around a lot!) Anyway, STEEMFEST2 was action packed. Each day had about a dozen presentations to attend with as many disciplines represented.

The presentations were mixed in a way I didn't really expect but... it actually made a ton of sense. Each day was like a perfect sampling of the Steemit Trending page. New app proposals, surfers, blockchain panels, food bloggers, artists, devs and a even a little bit of hypnosis. All bumping into one another in super bizarre yet kind of serendipitous way.

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Exposure to New Passions


@hansikhouse and I presented our Steemit Incubator @sndbox on Friday morning. We spoke at length about the on / offline community we're building, and the Steem-powered campaigns coming out of it. Our goal is to use Steem as resource to fund physical projects, empowering real neighborhoods in a democratized and crowdsourced way. (An example of this was our STEEM Park Project in Brooklyn.) We were thrilled to have the opportunity to speak at STEEMFEST2 this year and have so much planned looking forward. (Much more to come soon!)

Our talk was sandwiched between @allasyummyfood (a super talented food writer / photographer) and @layz3r (a Steemit Inc. developer working on a suite of Python strategies designed to scale this platform). It was fascinating to hear the backgrounds of these presenters and learn about what they sought to improve moving forward. The Steemit Inc. team held an incredibly informative and transparent panel discussion where multiple devs spoke at length about the state of Steem and what we can expect moving forward. Presentations throughout the day were fuel for discussions throughout the evening. Group dinners were roundtables of ideas, brainstorming, constructive critique and card swapping.

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Big Takeaway? STEEM is a big league player...


Community strength aside, there were some mind blowing technical statistics presented at the FEST2. One graph in particular (by @roadscape) made appearances throughout the week (source). The report below represents the number of blockchain transactions per day over the course of 12 months. Here, you can see Steem (blue) surging ahead of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Not by a little bit, but by a LOT. I was shocked to see this, because it isn't widely published... Steem is the biggest blockchain in the world.

With all the scalability issues big league cryptocurrencies are facing today, Steem is sitting pretty and poised to take the stage in a majorly disruptive way.

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Small Town Stewardship


Back to a point about the community here... Which I think most would say is the strongest asset we have. The people here care fiercely about the success of both the Steemit platform and the Steem blockchain. (That energy was on full display this week.) The intensity of that fierceness is something that is essential to the success of this ecosystem. We need people who are aggressively showcasing problems just as others are proudly showcasing solutions. It's a rare and valuable dynamic to have, and one that cumulatively shows how passionate people are about this Small Town on the internet.

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A Decentralized Gathering


A final note here about the event itself. One feature in particular was extremely interesting. I've been to conferences and summits before, but each of them required a handful of mega-famous celebrities in order to lure in a legitimate audience. (Especially when we're talking 300 people.) Arguably... STEEMFEST didn't have any famous people. All the presenters were Steemians in one way or another. We all spent an incredible amount of money and traveled huge distances to be together as a community. There's something extraordinarily unique about that. I hope we look back on mega-meetups like this one and admire the fact that so many nationalities, disciplines and demographics met to share their craft with one another.

I'm super thankful for all the amazing presentations and conversations of this past week. It was absolutely surreal to meet people in person who I've spoken with daily over the last year and a half. Can't wait for STEEMFEST3!


PS. I took a ton of pictures of streetscapes in Lisbon. I'll share more photography in the next post :)


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I'm so glad to read this article, the graphs are VERY telling! Thanks a lot for sharing it all with us and I'm glad you had such a great time out there with the crew!

Namaste :)

Thanks Eric, absolutely! That graph should be broadcasted more than it currently is. Those stats are super valuable.

A great time was had by all at STEEMFEST. Hope to cross paths with you one day soon!

Are we allowed to use the graph for promo?!? ;) I wouldn't mind tossing this one here and there, it sure deserves exposure to enlighten the masses!

I'm glad to read you had such a great time out at the fest and plan on being there for SteemFest 3.0, where we'll meet, at the very latest!

Have a wonderful day, keep your smile and taking good care, Steem on and thrive on! Namaste :)

THIS was the recap I have been waiting for, thank you!! I've read lots of posts about steemfest and each good in its own way, but none actually addressed the meat of what I've been interested in. I had a feeling that 300 steemians in the same location would bring to light the power and potential of what we have here: community, currency, a decentralized system, and the phenomenal heart that each of us brings to this platform (irrationally I'd say!).

Presentations throughout the day were fuel for discussions throughout the evening. Group dinners were roundtables of ideas, brainstorming, constructive critique and card swapping.

Getting this larger view of Steemit and a chance to bounce thoughts around and build a different kind of life for each of us individually and collectively. For months now I've been so hungry for this opportunity and have been a bit broken hearted about missing it. Sigh. In any case, thanks for this recap and I'm going to keep reading, commenting, posting and participating as much as possible to quench this hunger!

Ah I'm so glad @natureofbeing! It took a couple days to really jot the right things down / step away from it and really think about what SteemFest was doing. There's a collective energy building here that's unlike anything I've personally experienced and that's a difficult thing to articulate!

There will be many more of these to come I'm sure no worries about missing this one :)

Looking forward to the next time we meet in person to discuss more, keep me posted about the NYC trip!

Was great to be able to share my knowledge on hypnosis with the steemfest community! I am in the process of building my website now at hypnoshaman.com

If anyone would like to see the recording of my presentation on hypnosis it can be here starting at 7:01 into the video.

I have been so exciting days in Lisbon with you~!!
I miss you already~!!

Lisbon was amazing @successtrainer! I learned so much about the work you guys are doing within the #kr community and it's really an example that the english community needs to learn from.

Hope to see you again soon!

Next time I want to study English and talk with you a lot.

I need to study Korean ;) tell @hansikhouse to teach me better!

Awesome seeing you again and meeting @successtrainer, @ramengirl, @maa and @ludorum at Steemfest this year!

Nice to know! Thanks for the post. I will be visiting Lisbon, Porto and the mountain towns in May. Looking forward to it. I'll be looking for the street mosaics now as well. @voronoi

You guys really did well at SteemFest. Although, I could only watch the livestreams, it was really interesting. SteemFest was indeed really a mosaic with small key pieces making up a great art.

Thanks so much @jaff8! It was an exciting thing to see both on-and-offline. I'm glad the team made the presentations so accessible.

Terrific, you can spend great time and have fun in SteeFest2 Lisbon, I also dream of a time, if at all possible, will also contribute to the next SteemFest event, hopefully.

Yes, great! Stay tuned for SteemFest3 :)

It was a really good presentation love the video showing how it all got started up and how the community got together to help. It was great getting to hangout with you and @hansikhouse

It was great to meet and hangout @hotmangoes! Thanks for the kind words, looking forward to the next meetup!

This is pretty nice and interesting to read thanks for sharing :)

Thanks so much for your support @blazing :D