Sndbox End of Year Review [Pt. 1 of 5]

Sndbox is a Steemit incubator for creatives and communities. We utilize the Steem blockchain to empower impactful projects worldwide.

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Welcome to Part 1 of our End of Year Sndbox review!

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Learning from the Past, Projecting to the Future

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Throughout this week, we’ll be reporting on Sndbox’s development over the past several months with statistics, strategies, and takeaways for the Steemit community. Our goal is to be as transparent as we can and to package what we’ve learned so that other Steemit-based companies, organizations, and community groups can utilize our experiences.

Today’s report will go over the broad analysis of Sndbox and following days will look at specific technical, social, and developmental components of the organization and its members. Our posting schedule for the rest of the week will be as follows -

• Tuesday: Financials and Voting. We’ll dive into the numbers of our voting strategies, delegation and Steem Power use, and the focused distribution of support for Sndbox projects and our fellow network. We hope that this post can serve as a resource for community guilds seeking feedback on curation strategy and efficient impact.

• Wednesday: Outreach and Impact. As a part of our long-term vision for creative and communal impact with Steemit, we have developed a program to spread blockchain to the real world. This roster will go through the in-person activities and programs we pursue as a core component of Sndbox.

• Thursday: Sndcastles, Projects, and Developing Steemit’s First Foundation. Sndbox’s ultimate goal is to incubate members and create valuable impact on the “real world.” Here, we’ll cover the major projects and not-for-profit initiatives of the community. Plus, we’ll be announcing a new initiative that spearheads this mission into 2018.

• Friday: Sndbox’s 2018 Roadmap. Finally, the last post will reveal our plans for 2018 and go through the direction we’ll be pursuing and the benchmarks for each quarter. We’ve got a lot to unpack for the coming year and we’ll begin presenting our latest long-term dedications this week!

Our Mission

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At Sndbox, our mission is to build an digital (online) and physical (offline) creative community through the power of Steemit and the Steem blockchain.

• Recruit : Onboard super talented creatives and entrepreneurs who are entirely new to Steemit and cryptocurrency as a whole.
• Coach : Over time, we’ll help these minnows become dolphins. Sndbox will reward strong content and provide supportive feedback. Coaching is critical to retain talented Steemit contributors and help them engage their audience.
• Empower : Our team is developing an incubator that creatives can harness to empower their craft both professionally and financially. We believe that interdisciplinary practice paired with emerging technology can revolutionize growth and independence for the 21st century professional.

The Big Picture Since July

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Sndbox is proud to have scaled up to today since launching at the end of July 2017. During the first month of Sndbox, we had only 7 members in the community. Today, in the month of December, we are have an active group of close to 100 fellows. Sndboxers span over 20 countries, speak over a dozen languages, and produce content for innumerable communities and foreign-language groups.

Beyond our individual fellows who are focused on their professional development and integrating their ambitions into Steemit, we have our structured Sndcastles - Steemit incubator hubs that seek to nurture real-life communities onto the website. We provide support (without any fees) and voting for 5 Sndcastles. Through collaboration, we’ve been able to advise and support several major charities, funding drives, marketing campaigns, meetups and presentations, and dozens of other educational and creative initiatives.

Lastly, we have our major Sndbox projects. We work with fellows to co-launch major Steem-powered initiatives that we believe will transform real life communities. We've officially launched two so far, focused on integrating blockchain involvement with public landscape conservation and education.

We look to maximize the outreach and impact of Steemit through both our fellowship network and our own activities in New York City. We’ve grown our The Creative Blockchain NYC Meetup Group to almost 600 members in the past 5 months as well and we recently unveiled our 2018 schedule for monthly activities. We are striving to establish the strongest community interested involved with Steemit in New York.

Building a Business on Steem

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The Sndbox incubator is a business that we built to integrate and apply Steem onto the creative world. Our goal has been to nurture, educate, and execute on behalf of this incredible community and get more individuals and organizations empowered through this technology. (Learn more about our launch, here.)

A core avenue of outreach is our website, www.sndbox.co. It offers an interface to learn about the Steem blockchain, understand our mission and work, and be introduced to the ecosystem we operate within. Part of that introduction is through the comprehensive tutorials we provide. Each tutorial is specifically created for those who are completely new to the technology and jargon of blockchain and crypto.

A business also entails a great deal of public engagement. Over the past few months, Sndbox has rapidly increased the number of public and high profile presentations for other organizations and companies, including the World Bank in D.C., Google Campus in Seoul, and private design firms in New York City. We’re always looking to onboard serious professionals who could leverage the Steem blockchain in innovative ways and disrupt their respective industries.

Day 1 Tips and Takeaways

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Each day, we want to share a bit of what we’ve learned by operating and growing Sndbox related to the topics covered in this post. Hopefully these can be utilized by other Steemians to help diversify the bright future of the platform and bring the Steem blockchain to the world. Here are three main takeaways for starting an organization through Steemit -

1. Create Collaborative Networks (on and offline) - In cultivating a community, we’ve found that it is extremely important to nurture the development of networks both on and offline. Whether you’re a startup, community group, or interest organization, diversifying your audience with team members will help you scale quickly and in a more productive way.

2. Start with a Plan - Even on personal and small accounts, have a plan with how you will develop and scale your Steemit-based content. Determine big-picture ideas of what kind of influence you want to have, your projected schedule of content production, and the overall lasting impact you want to have on this platform.

3. Set Goals and Benchmarks - We like to encourage goal-oriented blogging on Steemit. Payouts are only one metric of producing valuable content. Set goals, make mistakes, experiment, create benchmarks for followers, number of comments, types of shares on other social-media platforms, and how you will ultimately utilize the cumulative content you share. A Steemit blog is a new kind of micro-business that requires focus and short-term gains towards a long-term goal.

Crunching the Numbers

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In the past few weeks, we've been gathering all the statistics and documentation for the aforementioned categories and efforts. We're excited to share it all with you so join us tomorrow for the breakdown of our financials and voting mechanisms!

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