Hello Steemians! The Steemit Team (#newsteemit) had a great time at Steemfest and we’re now all back to work pushing forward on Communities and SMTs. For those of you who didn’t watch the livestreams (shame on you!) we’d like to update you on some of the exciting developments that we covered at SteemFest.

Group Presentation

We kicked things off with a group presentation during which every project lead spent about 10 minutes going over what we've accomplished over the past year, what we're working on now, and our visions for the future of Steem.

Communities

In his Steemfest presentation, @roadscape explored his vision for the future of steemit.com. In his view, having the most powerful blockchain isn’t going to get you very far if people can’t see what it is capable of doing. While some may think that the problem is not enough blockchain-level features, that we need more marketing, or easier sign ups, it all boils down to engagement.

@roadscape believes that Communities has the potential to address all of these core issues, but that’s a lot of pressure to put on just one application! So while designing Communities he asked himself questions like, “What does a healthy platform look like?” “What does a moderation system which serves its users look like?” “How do you shift Steem from a game people play to a way they interact with the world?” And of course, “What is a Community?”

He answers all those questions and more in the following video and then wraps things up with a surprise announcement and demo of Communities which are now in Private Beta!

SMT Wizard

In their blockchain presentation, @vandeberg and @gerbino gave a surprise demonstration of the SMT Wizard they’ve developed which will enable anyone, not just developers, to launch their very own SMT in minutes! The wizard is still in development, so it will continue to get better over time, and we plan to release it to the public in the not-to-distant future.

In the following video, they launch not one, but three SMTs in under 15 minutes while explaining what they are doing. These are actual Smart Media Tokens that were created on the testnet!

Steemfest was an amazing experience for the team and we can’t thank @roelandp enough for all the time and energy he puts into making these conferences as fun and informative as possible. There is no other conference in the world like Steemfest and that is due in large part to his herculean efforts.

Of course, it also wouldn’t be Steemfest if not for the amazing community members who assist Roeland (shout out to the @firepower team) as well as attend the conference. Thank you all for sticking with us through the difficult times.

We can’t wait till next year!

The Steemit Team