The Witness Files - Issue 5 with @roelandp

Welcome to Issue 5 of the Witness Files with @roelandp.

In this series, I will be interviewing some of our top witnesses, to get an insight into who they are and what they do.

@roelandp was kind enough to take some time off from his busy schedule before SteemFest to chat with me for today’s issue. He is perhaps most well-known for being the organizer of SteemFest, as well as his hilarious Male makeup tutorial

You can find the previous issues of the Witness Files below: Issue 1 with @complexring Issue 2 with @riverhead Issue 3 with @picokernel Issue 4 with @jesta

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Thank you for taking the time to chat with me.

yw

Tell me a bit about yourself. Who is @roelandp?

I’m a 35 year old guy living in Amsterdam the Netherlands. Born & raised in a windmill, grew up in a calm peninsula in the south of holland before studying in The Hague (Hotelschool) where we had to buy a computer on downpayments for Word & Excel for our assignments. That led me to use it (next to Kazaa, ICQ and Napster) to code my first website for festival reporting (free tickets!) into the computer world. Ever since I discovered dynamic websites by use of PHP and Mysql I was hooked and even more with the start of the (social) web 2.0 area and it’s many APIs. I’ve worked at a big festival (digital marketing) for 5 years (http://todaysart.org) and then started to venture more in webprojects. Nowadays I make apps for a living (https://shoudio.com) and got quite hooked on Steemit early this summer! In the beginning of this year I had ran a mining rig in our side-room for ethereum by the way which garnered 2 BTC (about the investment :D)

Wen you’re not on Steemit, what do you enjoy doing?

Kitesurfing. But it’s getting colder now, did a short session this week, without my surfing shoes and my feet nearly froze off… At least that’s how it felt when walking back barefoot to the car on the pebbles.

How did you first find out about Steemit, and when did you first become a witness?

I found out about Steemit on Facebook through a shared ‘introduceyourself’ post by @beervangeer, which led me to explore the site and try it out, since I’m quite curious and web is my 2nd (1st) nature. I became a ‘backup’-witness about 2.5 months ago with my (unknown) alterego @paynode (I initially dabbled with payments for Steem) and recently I decided to heavily invest in the tech infrastructure and ‘rebrand’ my witness to my own username @roelandp.

You are perhaps most well-known for your involvement in organising the SteemFest. Are you overwhelmed by the positive response to the event from the Steemit community?

In the beginning I must admit I was a bit yes. So many ideas, so many chats on Steemit.chat :D. But I also realised it was a golden move and all the enthusiasm is really just great to see. So many community ideas have risen and the idea is to really have an event for the Steem users, by the Steem users, so having many people enthusiastic is only ‘winning’. If this vibe will be captured in Amsterdam in 3 weeks, it will be certainly a great weekend.

In your mind, what would a ’successful SteemFest look like?

In terms of me being happy, it will be on the monday after the event. Relieved I guess, although I’m looking very much forward to it, but where as for many others it will be 3 days out in the wild wild Amsterdam, for me it will be about hosting the biggest event I have organised so far :) For me the event is succesfull if the whole organisation goes by smooth and there is nothing to complain about and all I see is people smiling around me :)

I was quite disappointed that I couldn’t make it to SteemFest this time. How can those not attending SteemFest participate remotely? Are there any plans for livestreaming/recording of presentations or any chat rooms setup for people not in Amsterdam who want to participate in the conference activities?

Yes! Since this event is paid for by the community (early users and witnesses) and the Steem.HQ for the greatest part I think we have the moral obligation to make this event as available to anyone as possible. Therefore the SteemFest (plenary) Saturday will be live broadcasted. Both days will also see the attendance of filmers & photographers as well as livebloggers. Just follow the @steemfest account and be sure to login on Saturday 12 November 10 AM CET onwards for the livestream!

You have developed quite a few tools and websites for Steem. Tell us about these. And are there any other Steem-related projects you are currently involved in?

You can find all my tools via SteemTools.com and then by searching for ‘roelandp’. They are mostly fun apps and experiments on top of the transparent data of the Steem blockchain.

If you could change any one single thing on Steemit at this moment, what would it be and why?

I would not change a thing except maybe for the mentality of some people :)

How do you see the Steem ecosystem evolving over the next year or two? And what new features and projects would you like to see implemented?

I hope the pace at which new features of the Steemit.com site are released will continue and that new webservices and other side projects will emerge which really showcase the diversity of possibilities of this blockchain. I will definitely have my hand in some of these!

Thank you for your time

yw.

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Hope you enjoyed this interview with @roelandp.

You can follow @steemfest to stay up-to-date with the latest news regarding SteemFest. And to book your ticket or to learn more about SteemFest, please go to http://steemfest.com.

For more interviews with our witnesses, please follow me @nextgen622.

And to vote for a witness, you can go here: https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Jimmy