The Post SteemFest Blues
SteemFest 3 has come to an end, and I've got the blues. I've never talked to more different and interesting people in a five-day span. I made tons of new friends and it was nice to finally meet the people I've been talking to online, for so long. Right before SteemFest, I'd had some doubts about participating. My technical background is pretty basic, especially in regards to cryptocurrencies and the blockchain, and I was worried about making a fool out of myself.
But all the fears were unfounded. Everyone at the festival was awesome, and the event was more about making connections, than showing off technical expertise. This post will be a concentrated wrap-up of the five days of Steemfest.
I embarked on a super early flight from Valencia to Krakow. While approaching the city, I was captivated by the scene out of the window, with the rolling hills obscured by fog. It was beautiful, but that fog caused some problems ... just as we were about to touch down, the pilot changed course and ascended sharply. He wasn't able to see the runway, and we had to circle Krakow for twenty minutes.
Once I had my suitcase, I got a message from @guchtere, asking if I needed a ride from the airport. He had driven all the way from the Netherlands, making a pit stop in Frankfurt to pick up @mrprofessor, who had flown in from Brazil. I'd hung out with @guchtere before, but it was the first time I'd met @mrprofessor in person.
Our apartment was right across from the Qubus hotel, which was the headquarters of SteemFest. While we waited to check-in, we chatted and watched @mrprofessor try and put his bike together -- he'd be crossing Europe on bike, after the festival. Suddenly, we heard a "THUD!" Looking up, we saw a car stopped in the intersection... and a woman lying in front of it. Luckily, the collision hadn't been so bad, and she escaped with just bruising. Imagine our surprise when we learned, much later, that this unfortunate victim was a fellow Steemian: @misslasvegas!
After catching our breath, we checked in, freshened up, and went to the lobby of Qubus to register and pick up our badges. This was also our first opportunity to mingle; the first people I ran into were @world-travel-pro and @daveonarrival. I also had the honor of chatting with @aggroed, who is one of the founders of @steemmonsters -- I've been addicted to the game since it debuted, and he was able to answer some of the many questions I've been storing up.
Then, @goodwithtravels showed up. We've been connected on Discord for some time, and I've always appreciated the superb quality of his posts. He's an ambitious guy, with a true hunger for travel, and his heart is in the right place. Knowing that @travelfeed helped inspire him makes all the hard work worthwhile.
Another Steemian I was excited to finally meet, was @llfarms, who was my @curie mentor and the most patient teacher I've ever met. I ran into @stoodkev (see you at the Beehive Festival in Taiwan), @suesa (we connected from my short time using the Sola platform), and @reggaemuffin -- I'd been dying to put a face to that famous user name! And I can't forget @tashidelek and @pharesim, whom I didn't get enough of a chance to talk to -- thank you for being a sponsor!
But wait, there's more! Thanks to @soyrosa, @r00sj3 and @karinxxl for putting me under your Dutsch wings. I was surprised to run into @matkodurko and @phortun, who were there just for the day. I appreciated @brian-rhodes taking the time to listen about our movie site @criticker; with his Steem-funded films, he's showing what this platform can do for creative people. @traveller7761 had me jealous about his Belize project (thanks for using our @travelfeed tag!). And I admired @peixeboi's dedication and belief in the Steem community. Always happy to cross your path!
I had a rough start to Wednesday, for which I blame Tuesday night's open bar. @guchtere and I were a bit behind schedule, but rushed straight over to the old beer depot, in time for the conference's official opening by @roelandp , who was followed by @andrarchy interviewing the Notorious N.E.D. (@ned).
The next speaker was @aggroed, with whom I had chatted about SteemMonsters on Tueday. I was happy to learn that he's also behind PAL and MSP. Yes, I made sure to snatch one of the SteemMonsters T-shirts which were being passed out during this speech.
Next up, were @techslut and @elear, from @utopian-io. I also met Utopian's @espoem on the final day of the conference, and we chatted about the possibility of making Criticker an open-source platform (while protecting our algorithm). It's really intriguing, and I have to say we're tempted!
I was excited to hear @llfarms from @curie talk about curation, and the importance of promoting high-quality content, such as by making it visible under the Steemit "trending" tab: the default entrance of the platform.
After a short break, we were treated to the presentation of BitShares... which went totally over my head. It sounded interesting, but I had a hard time making sense of any of it. And going to their website just made me more confused. But I did love the slide which showed off Steemit's blockchain family -- related projects which use the same kind of technology.
Now it was time for my favorite section: State of the Apps 1. I was happy to see @r00sj3 up on stage, presenting @steempeak and Peakmonsters! This reminded me that I really need to start using @steempeak... (Peakmonsters, I already use).
Next up was @stoodkev from @steem-plus -- I was impressed by all the features of the browser plugin, and I love getting SPP for daily upvotes!
I was impressed by @derangedvisions's introduction of @dstors, which is a storefront to sell goods in return for Steem dollars. We'd love to sell our travel e-books on it, one day! Too bad I never had a chance to chat with @derangedvisions!
@martibis from @steemitworldmap gave us a sneak peak of the dApp they're currently developing. Excited to see the final application.
Next up was @cryptoctopus, who introduced TokenBB, a forum application which we could see as an easy way to introduce our users at Criticker into the world of the blockchain. We have an active forum that might be easy to convert into TokenBB.
The @dsound presentation of @prc was also great. This is a new feature to monetize streams from SoundCloud... during the talk, I felt inspired to introduce dSound to a certain musician I know.
Now it was time to shine for @fredrikaa and @howo from @steempress, which has already helped our personal account and especially @travelfeed with high rewards to give back to our #travelfeed participants.
And the last presentation was from Vikram of @the1ramp, whom we'd like to thank for supporting TravelFeed.
Now, it was time for lunch. While eating, I got to meet @nanzo-scoop, a super cool guy who also introduced me to @surfermarly. We had so many shared connections, that I almost started to suspect we were related! Plus I admire her project, giving kids from struggling communities the chance to experience the sport of surfing.
After a short break in the apartment, it was time for dinner and for the Bear Bowling Cup. Our team was comprised of members from the travel community. Thank you @daveonarrival , @guchtere and @goodwithtravels for giving it your best shot. At least we didn't embarrass ourselves :) Happy to connect with @louis88 who showed interest in helping out with TravelFeed Germany. He happened to be a member of the winning team of the Bear Bowling Cup... congrats again! It was also a pleasure to meet @hashcash (whose username led me to some inaccurate assumptions!)
Bowling was fun but socializing was even better. Man, I won't ever forget the hilarious talk with @nomadicsoul ... I'm so happy we cleared up some things from the past. Hopefully, "that" person will terrorize someone else. And talking of hilarious ... @soyrosa, that bus ride back to the city should have been live streamed!
Another morning where getting up was hard. I managed to get a quick shower and pudding coffee prepared by @guchtere, then off we rushed into the morning fog for the ICE center and our second day of the conference. After just two days of meeting people you feel like you're part of a family. It was great to see so many familiar faces while having more coffee to wake up. And there were still so many new people to meet. I talked to a photographer (I think from Berlin) who does 360° videos... I wanted to give him my contacts from the Tourist Board in Savannah and Valencia who might be interested in his work. But we never crossed paths again and forgot scan our badges. If you happen to be reading this, hit me up!
I then met three rats and an elf ... thanks to @yidneth ! She would also be performing later at Klub 89 for the Night of Steem.
I was super excited to hear about @remyhauxley's project to travel the world for a full year with just one Bitcoin. Ping us once your trailer of the documentary is out so we can promote you a bit on Criticker! It's really a shame we didn't connect earlier, for @travelfeed to give you some support during your journey.
The Blockchain holds so much information and like me, many of us use @ginabot to keep an eye on some specific things written into it. Ginabot is very powerful and they're currently working on a proper frontend but @arcange 's introduction to SteemFlux seems to have tons of potential as well, especially if you're looking into task automation.
After a few attempts to learn about @ultranihilist's project, I got to learn about U.Community, a social media platform which distributes the weight of rewards through reputation and social interaction.
The afternoon of that day was basically set aside for meeting new Steemians and the opportunity to talk about the development of our own standalone platform for TravelFeed. I was happy to learn that @hr1 is a real person and not a bot ... and thank you @lizanomadsoul for supporting TravelFeed, it was great to meet you in person. Then it was time meet up with @the1ramp about a possible cooperation. Thank you for your time and for your enthusiasm in TravelFeed and the hoodie! I gave it to Mike, since it fits him better. Sorry it took so long for us to finally connect!
Right afterwards we had an interesting talk with @noisy from @engrave, which was very uplifting and we're more than happy to work with them on our TravelFeed project. This connection led directly to a talk with @nicniezgrublem and @noisy from the @wise-team, showing us how we can improve our curation work for TravelFeed and showing interest in working with us for an upcoming project. Thank you so much @saunter for making that connection.
Now dinner was served and I had the honor to sit next to @project7 from @steemhunt. I absolutely love their project and the work they do to make the platform more fair and to minimize exploitation. And thank you for the 1k HUNT tokens, that was such a pleasant surprise. Got to talk to the notorious @slobberchops and to @steevc ... where can I send you a guitar pick? I felt like I could totally relate to @luzcypher when he talked about selling everything to travel the world. And also at the table I got to make a Valencia connection through @teodora who is befriended with @dragosroua and @raluca.
After dinner we all walked over to Club 89 which was set inside this super cool abandoned hotel. I had planned to sneak away for an early night of sleep but then decided to push through. I'm glad I did, because otherwise I would have missed out on the beautiful retro interior, great music and an amazing talk with @gillianpearce ... I love Steem, but it was refreshing not to talk about it for a little while!
Sorry for this ridiculously comprehensive article, but this is how basically felt like for the first three days: overwhelmed. Over the next few days, I'll be covering some things we did outside of Steemfest, along with the closing event inside a salt mine. Stay tuned! And sorry if I missed someone, it wasn't my intention but my Steemfest memories are already slowly fading.
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This post was posted from Steem with steem2wls
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