The Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics in Vienna opened again its academic gates for the practice and its applied fields. Doing so has to be highly appreciated, however many abysses became apparent throughout the evening.

@mammasitta our shining star of steemit austria did a great job! Her commitment and strong engagement from the beginning on explaining how to be a prudent community builder was highly valuable in breaking the academic walls of the evening. Of course this is never an easy task and many knowledgeable steemians like @vikisecrets, @theaustrianguy, @manncpt had not been quiet in strengthening the truths of the system! Thank you all for your contributions, the network is alive!

@mammasitta looked back on her times when she enjoyed interacting with different communities, to connect worldwide: "The whole world opens up for you", she said when sharing her rich pool of experiences and insider knowledge. A side note by Shermin Voshmgir, the director of the research institute, made clear that early adopters of blockchain don't have to be the technological/technical gurus often portrayed in public. The successful steemians of our time can be socially driven by the heart and soul of different communities or just by the shit going on within other platforms like facebook #facebreach. The words of @artpoet, the second "early adopter"-representative at the panel, were very helpful to get an insight of how critical and satirical one can be on the one hand and how important it is to maintain privacy and anonymity on the other hand. Thank you for being with us! We will follow your artistic masterpieces: You are a digital genius!

Jan from the marketing and tourism department at WU describing the mechanics of steemit (not the technical ones) uncovered the first gaps between academia and society which are usually not recognized by the random person. He not really opened up anything new for someone who has embraced the steemit system for a long time. Jan's presentation made totally clear why universities are far too slow when it comes to catching up with the applied knowledge generated within meetings, meet-ups, cryptoparties and informal networking events. One could notice that gap also in his weak critique on steemit's 7 day payout or his so called "missing incentives for controversial topics or politics". Probably he has not heard of Steemit Zombies and has not looked into @artpoet 's masterpieces, yet. However, academic blindness and broken science can be found in many contexts. Some quiet calls, the academics of that evening should have created an account in the first place, at least having first posting-and interaction-experience, before talking about steemit is also not an easy battleground! I had this kind of conversations and quite emotional debates often enough and I don't want to adopt any position, hence a narrow ridge lies in between prejudice, bias, objectivity and armchair scientists. And the big question for me came back again: How far can an academic discipline contribute to a lively and common practice like steemit without being blind on the one side for its genuine methods and on the other side for the unfiltered reality itself?

This should not be a call for academics to create an account before starting to research the field of steemit, cause I've far too often seen how unproductive and detrimental to innovation an involvement can be. Tonight, we saw the other way round and some corrections had to be done in the final discussions. Nevertheless it was very important to give steemit an academic stage in these divided worlds.

The next presenter Guido for his part university professor at WU started his presentation very carefully knowing that in the audience far more experienced people were sitting, waiting to pick ivory tower bones. He begged we should not be too harsh to him. Even if his criticism regarding author's rewards and the growth of the user base was justified, the monotony, vague approaching and long-windedness of his presentation could not be killed and some people from the audience had to leave. Personally, I have to admit, it made me smile when he considered to apply his game-theoretical models to steemit : "It would become too complex to become true." he had to acknowledge.

As we all witnessed the great fun part was the final discussion when armchair academics without steemit account had to deal with the user realities of the practitioners. Emotive words there: the sustainability perspective, the economist view, pyramid schemes, transparency, deflation/inflation, liquidity, nation states, platforms vs. networks and network effects.

At least one thing became clear on that evening:

Steemit Is No Tupperware!