My first Hive Fest – What an experience

I'm in my hotel room and unfortunately my first Hive Fest is over. Tomorrow, early I will take the plan home and go back to my normal life. I've met a lot of people. What were mere user names before are now real people that I had the chance to meet in real life. I couldn't say bye to everybody, so I do it in this post.

Before coming here, I had no idea what I had to expect and if @ph1102 didn't convince me to come, I would probably not have made the journey to Hive Fest. Even if we have worked together for almost 4 years, @ph1102 and myself have never before met outside hive or discord. It was a good opportunity to meet him and things fell in place quite well so that I could take 4 days of holidays from work to come to Split.

The first event took place in the Paradiso Bar on Tuesday and I felt a bit out of place. Unfortunately the music was very loud and it was difficult to have a conversation. In spite of that, I met @apshamilton, @cryptospa, @elmirabear, @evelynchacina and @ninaeatshere thanks to the introductions of @ph1102. I also had the chance to meet @seckorama who is one of the most committed users of our Liotes community. It was great to meet you man!

On Wednesday, we met with @ph1102 and @ninaeatshere in front of my hotel and we walked to the venue of the first day. On the way we met @arcange, @detlev and @lizanomadsoul to finish the journey together. We had the first set of presentations in a perfectly mythical setting that was offered by Galerija Meštrović. The presentations took place in a big tent which was placed in a beautiful garden. However, the first minutes were very stressful because we were close to the first people to make our presentation for Liotes. I was pretty nervous but I believe we could have done worse. We had a script but decided 30 minutes before the presentation to more or less improvise...

The tent had a transparent roof and the temperatures were climbing like in a real green house. With each presentation, the number of people sitting in the tent dwindled and people sat outside in the shade provided by some trees and followed from there.

As long as there was some shade in the tent, there were some spactators inside lol

The longer the day went, the more I had opportunities to talk with people. The initial inhibitions went away little by little. I met @vcelier an interesting person from BC with whom I could exchange some French words. I had some nice talks with @forykw about witness node related stuff. Then @starkerz explained to me the concept of Distriator and even added my offline business to the app.

After the presentations, we had the Gala Dinner in the Restaurant Gusar where we talked online games with @mightyrocklee. I got some nice ideas from him. After the dinner, we walked back to town with @livinguktaiwan and her husband. The long walk was a great way to start the digestion of the very abundant meal that we had.

Today, was the second day of the presentations and it took place in an absolutely epic setting in the caves of the Diocletian's Palace. The temperature in the caves was more comfortable than the day before and I was really taken by the different presentations.

The day flew by and again I had the opportunity to meet many people in person. I shared past experiences and ideas for hive with @seckorama, @Ervin-lemark and @bil.prag (when they didn't talk in serbo-croate). I even had the opportunity to ask some questions to @yabapmatt co-founder of Splinterlands. I met a couple living in Switzerland and they even once visited my home town. Unfortunately, I don't manage to remember their usernames. Sorry about that. If you recognize yourself, please leave a comment so that I can follow you :-). It was not always easy to remember all the usernames and I'm sorry if I forget some people like the amazing family that runs a hotel in Guatemala. It's great to see that even the kids have their own hive account. The boy of the family actually had the great idea to take a picture of the name tags and hopefully he will start following me so that I can follow back :-). I also had a nice talk with the developer @yozen that works with peakd and lives now in Teneriffe with his family.

After the presentations, we met around the hive rally car which attracted the eyes not only from us hivians presents.

The coffee where I made my very first coffee purchase in HBD and where I got my first Distriator cash back :-)

After that we made an excursion to literally invade the coffee called Anonima Bottega Italiana. Close to 35 hivians wanted to buy a coffee or beer with HBD :-). It was quite funny and for once, we were all more interested in the payment process than in the consummation. I could also try Distriator successfully for the first time. It's nice to get a 25% cash back on your purchase!

After that, we invaded another restaurant and I had the chance to talk with @eturnerx on many interesting topics around a good pizza. There was also an american couple at our table. Please share your usernames in the comment sections if you don't mind :-). Unfortunately, our dinner was cut short by lightening and rain and we had more or less to run back to the hotel before the rain started again.

While following the presentations and talking with other hivians, I felt really great about all the energy and passion that people are pooring into this project that unites us all. What @crimsonclad really brought well to light in her presentation is that hive is different from most other blockchains because it's a blockchain of people. Hive fest is a great place to witness it in reality. People from all over the world meeting in one place to share a passion. I think it's pretty exceptional and I believe this is really a highlight that every hivian should one day have the opportunity to experience.

The work that the organisators @lordbutterfly and @roelandp have done to set this event up is simply exceptional. Thanks a lot for your work and for allowing us to live such a great Hive Fest! A big thanks also to @arcange for the warm welcome. It's very much appreciated. Thanks also to @ninaeatshere for your nice company and often being our GPS guide :-). Finally, I really had a great time also because I could count on the presence of @ph1102. It was nice to be not totally alone to start with and even if we didn't manage to talk as much about the future of Liotes as we wanted, I really appreciated my time with you.

I met several other people but unfortunately I couldn't remember all usernames. Sorry if I didn't mention you. I wish you all a great time for the remaining hive fest days and am looking forward to meet you again on hive or at a future hive fest!

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With @ph1102, I'm running the @liotes project.

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