STE(E)Mposium #0.0 - An explanation and (hopefully) public brainstorm
The STEEMposium (Steemit STEM symposium 😉) will be a new multi-faceted weekly contest, with a topic chosen at random using the probable power of polyhedrons!
As some of you already know, I'm a science guy! Love it, can't get enough of it, and there are plenty of content creators within the #science, #technology, and #steemstem communities to almost satiate my hunger for knowledge.
As a way to increase the amount of quality content of all sorts within those communities, and maybe even put Steemit on the front page of STEM related searches, I will be providing a weekly topic for people to create content around. My favorites will be rewarded and featured in a "symposium" post to showcase their work.
The topic each week will be chosen by rolling a series of three polyhedral dice.
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The first die will decide the subject.
This could be any general STEM subject, like chemistry, robotics, space, architecture, etc.The second die will be a sort of guide question/statement.
Things like "What is/are ___?", "The pros and cons of ___.", "The history of ___.", etc. Anything that could be applied to any topic generated by the third die. This list of options will vary depending on the general subject generated by the first die.The third die will decide the specific topic of the symposium.
For example: If the general subject is space, the list of topics could range from planets or galaxies to any/all of the fundamental forces or other objects/concepts.
The lists will comprise of 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, or 20 options, as these are the sizes of dice I possess. The options in the lists may change from week to week in order to rotate options in and out, as I will likely never have exactly a number of choices listed above.
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Brainstorm #1:
What are some things I could include on these lists? What's your favorite STEM subject? What sorts of things do you want to know about a particular topic?
I'm looking to add as many options to these lists as I can, so I'll try and use every suggestion in some way.
The STEEMposium will welcome content creators of all kinds!
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2000 word science or tech articles are awesome, but not everyone can write such works, so I want to create multiple contests geared toward the same end. This could include things like "best article", "best meme", "best video", etc. I want as many types of content to be represented as possible, so when the "symposium post" is written, I will be able to showcase more than just articles.
Brainstorm #2:
What types of sub-contests could be included? What sort of content could you see someone creating around a random STEM topic?
Let's talk about money...
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I'm not entirely sure how the rewards for this will be doled out, but I know I want to award a grand prize and one or two runner-up prizes for each sub-contest. I'd also like to reward as many participants as possible in some way or another. I like the idea of rewarding winners with bot votes, though the variables associated with that could prove troublesome.
There are also a few different ways winners could be chosen, from guest judges to public votes, and a few variants inbetween.
I would LOVE to find a couple "sponsors" that would be interested in donating to the base reward pool in exchange for mad love and promotion.
Brainstorm #3:
What could be the best way to decide upon and/or reward participants and winners? Bot votes? Flat rewards? Maybe a comfortable combination? Is there some other cool way to reward people that I'm not thinking of? I'm very open to suggestions!
My hope is that these weekly symposiums will encourage those already active within the STEM community to strive to always improve their work, and possibly help bring whole new content formats to the table!
Funny side note: I originally intended to call this "Sweeney's Science Symposium", but figured it might be more successful without my name attached to it. I'm glad I came up with a more clever name... 😂
If you're interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, help me flesh out these details so we can have some really cool weekly science contests for the betterment of the Blockchain!
This is a test comment, notify @kryzsec on discord if there are any errors please.
Being A SteemStem Member
I think this is a very nice idea and it could work very well. The good part about something like that is that most of the possible answers on your brainstorm questions are going to be something that you could go with. All STEM subjects are interesting and could be great. I guess engineering content needs a bit of a boost in the STEM segment as I feel I see that the least often.
As far as the rewards go, I wouldn't say bot votes are a good way to go as some people avoid them, so those might not want to be rewarded with them either. One of the reward types that stimulate longer-term engagement in the platform is sending rewards as Steem Power instead of Steem or SBD.
I think the best way to decide on winner would be human judges, the thing is you might get so much content that you or your judges might be overwhelmed. I once ran a contest that got moderate to good engagement, but because participation required a real post with real content, I was really swamped with how much work there was to do in order to select a winner. So be weary of that too. Any other metric for selecting the winner would be easy to game.
I agree that engineering and math aren't as "popular" on Steemit, but that could be for many reasons. Hopefully this could help with some of that.
I know what you mean by some people don't like bot votes. I personally feel they are best used to reward other people's content, and not one's own, though I've been known to use them... I like the idea of rewarding SteemPower, though.
The public vote idea, I know, would be incredibly easy to game, and create a sense of unfairness that is already so prevalent here. Going with human judges, I'd like to have a couple for each sub-contest, as I know the volume of content to sift through would take too much from someone's own Steemit time.
Thanks for all your input!
My pleasure! Looking forward to seeing what your idea morphs into in the end. I'd say that the fact that you decided to look for input and wanted to brainstorm together with the community is a really good sign right out of the gate ;)
Such an interestign concept i hope it does well it should be very interesting
Thanks! I have high hopes for it!
Good luck
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You got a 2.79% upvote from @mercurybot courtesy of @thatsweeneyguy!
No offense meant to anyone, but it really seems the ratio between {the fame&fortune seekers + the emotion-based-conviction-driven} and {empathy driven seekers-of-rational-solutions} is not much different in the steem community compared to the outside world; may in fact be worse due to the easy h(m)oneypot attraction here.
I wish you the best of luck in finding the right audience @thatsweenyguy!
I'm not exactly sure what's trying to be said here. Which of those black and white categories would this post fit under?
Sorry @thatsweeneyguy ..I don't always succeed in getting across what I have in mind - one of my many weaknesses!
You and I may love finding the true and truly useful relationships between between things and have a passion for sharing such insights. This sadly does not seem to be the trend here. I became aware of this as only a handful of readers have taken the trouble to look in depth at what I am attempting to share, and applaud it for what it is worth. I sincerely hope you succeed in gathering interest groups around topics of their liking.
I see the real relationship between energy and real production to indicate this commodity to be the most sensible interface between economic calculations and reality, as neither time nor emotional evaluations interfere with this relationship. In spite of the fact that the majority of economic assets, like information and the arts cannot be evaluated in terms of energy, the critically important ones that keep us alive to a very large degree can. And the greater the role automation plays in provision of life supporting goods and services, the stronger the relationship between energy and staying alive and healthy becomes.
Based on the above, a currency with a unit purchasing power for energy (say for one unit of electricity / one kilowatt-hour of energy) can IMO serve as convenient means for expressing at least real economic quantities in figures independent of time and market sentiment.
How well this somewhat more scientific approach to economics will fit into your STEM environment I do not know, considering that, rightfully, dedicated scientists tend not see economics as a true science!
You got a 5.20% upvote from @redlambo courtesy of @thatsweeneyguy! Make sure to use tag #redlambo to be considered for the curation post!
You got a 11.41% upvote from @minnowvotes courtesy of @thatsweeneyguy!
You got a 11.38% upvote from @brupvoter courtesy of @thatsweeneyguy!