STEEMFEST 2017
Steemfest was an amazing event which brought together some of the most talented individuals on the platform, put important names to faces and redefined the playing field for Steem and Steemit. It was great to meet the people and great to hear what is up coming and new on the Steem blockchain.
Prior to the event I had my doubts about what Steem was, especially with the price drops over the last 4 months. It really felt as though value was leaking from this wonderful platform that we have all put so much of our time and efforts into. However, following steemfest, I have a much clearer view of where Steem is going and how we can all contribute to creating the sustainable value creation system that will be used by millions for years to come.
So here is my take on what steemfest was and what I have taken forward from attending. It is by no means exhaustive, as I spent a lot of time eating liquid lunches and did not attend all of the talks and events, there were just too many people to meet. However, I did get a lot from the event, and provide here below some of the amazing initiatives that are already being developed and others that it is clear the community needs in order to better focus the communities' efforts and accelerate the rate of development and value creation on Steem!
I have summarized what I think is next for Steem and Steemit in this video discussion with @stephenkendal and hope you can spare 30 minutes to watch, as I think there are some important points for Steem and how it will progress within the discussion.
IMPORTANT INITIATIVES FOR THE COMMUNITY TO DEVELOP
1. Communities
The Steemit users need to decide around which locations on steemit.com we will congregate. We will do much better if we create specific communities toward which we will each contribute. For example, we need a promotion community, an app developer community, a blogger community, a witness community, a steem delegation community etc. Should we be able to get these implemented into the site, we will be better able to concentrate our efforts towards important goals that are steered by the community. Currently steemit is a bit of a mish mash and peoples efforts are not focused, therfore there is the possibility of double work and wasted resources.
This could be solved by auto populating the most popular tags so that everyone can see where all of the content is being posted to when they are filling the tag section of their blog out. (Like youtube does for its searches)
2. Dash Style Project Proposals
Could Steemit redistribute some of its emissions from witnesses, content creators and curators to revenue or value generating projects. Imagine if we could fund new projects with new steem. The community would vote on which projects got funded and the new steem would be automatically allocated to the project that the community would like to see implemented.
3. Project Funnel
Coming from business and industry, the best companies I have worked for in the past usually always have a project funnel. This list of key projects would be made available to all within the steemit community. The community could suggest new projects and the projects that the community wants the most would be voted to the top. We could then list the projects by priority, resources required, % complete. This would get the whole community focused onto what is important right now and allow the right people to allocate their resources to help in the completion of these projects.
4. Steem Delegation Process
As we vote witnesses in and out of steemit, could we assign 80 (or what ever number the community decides) steem delegates. People who are voted in by the community who are delegated steem from the largest whales and are dedicated full time to going out and manually searching for the best value content, initiatives and projects. This would provide steemit with the eyes that it needs to find all of the highest quality, wonderful content that goes unseen on the platform.
5. Steem Bonds
Use an SMT to allow steem investors to lock in for a longer period than 13 weeks in exchange for either a higher interest rate or higher voting power with higher curation rewards.
I know many steemians who would love to lock in for 5-7 years, I certainly would. This would be a vote of confidence in the steem blockchain and would massively reduce price volatility, further attracting new investors.
VALUE ADDED INITIATIVES ALREADY ONGOING
1. SND BOX
https://www.sndbox.co/
@sndbox are doing great work on steemit. there first major project was the steemit park, which was a gerat success. However, they have taken their value creation model much further and are constantly on the look out to support value on the steem blockchain. Their moto is: "We are a multimedia incubator that utilizes blockchain technology to empower impactful and creative projects worldwide."
2. SURFER MARLY's SURFING CHARITY
@surfermarly is doing wonders to use the blockchain for charitable initiatives, It looks like she will leverage SMT's to further her charitable work going forwards!
I have a very close family connection to a premiership football striker at Watford United. @surfermarly's work has inspired me to use her model at Watford United and see if we can use steemit for charity in conjunction with the professional football community!
You can read more about Surfer Marly's work HERE
Credit: @exploretraveler
3. APPICS - NEXT LEVEL SOCIAL MEDIA
Appics made a presentation, the quality of which blew most people's minds! Everyone I spoke to about this is really excited and out APPICS as it is the first full use application of SMTs on the blockchain. They will be a social media platformand it looks like they will target the Instagram market initially and expand from there. What a team, well organized, great marketing approach and with the right people.... this is certainly one to watch going forwards!
APPICS intro video HERE
4. HARDFORK the Movie
The first Hollywood quality production funded by Steem. It will be a series of feature length episodes (I think they are planning on 13 so far). The trailor was amazing and really showcased what can be possible using the steem blockchain in terms of movie funding!
5. IMAGECONOMY
http://imageconomy.com/ is bringing the art, image and photography world together with blockchain technology and is currently looking at the steemit blockchain as a place where it may use SMTs to bring its business to the blockchain world. They will be one of the first existing companies to do this and I personally am excited to see how we on steemit can help them develop and grow on steem. The operation is headed up by @leotap and is a great example of the possibilities of how steem can help businesses going forwards.
DAPPS PRESENTED IN THE HACKATHON
1. Bit Art Futures
Developed by @bluabaleno this app is attempting to return value to undervalued artists while allowing established steemians to specualate on the potential future price of said artwork and make a profit at the same time!!
For example, when a minnow posts a great piece of art work, and only gets 0.1 Steem for it, a Steemian with a larger network, who knows he will get 100 steem for the same piece can bid to purchase the rights to the artwork from the minnow artist by paying, say, 50 Steem to the minnow artist and then posting it to his network in order to make 100 steem.
The interesting thing about this idea is that it does not only apply to art work! As we go forward, it will apply to any undervalued piece of work, be it art, poetry, writing, news, or otherwise... I will be watching this one with a keen interest!
2. Phenom
https://ico.phenom.team
An ICO platform that helps with smart contract generation, pairing venture capitalists and private investors with ICOs and assists with bounty payments for ICO promoters. This really has my interest with all of the SMTs that will be released over the comming year!
3. Utopian
https://utopian.io/
A place where open source projects are proposed, crowd funded and where contributors can find projects with which they can lend a helping hand! Furthermore, this is all built on the Steem blockchain!!
This is a HUGE development for the Steem blockchain. This will be a place where projects that require funding and resources can find users who are happy to contribute either Steem, resources, or other funding, it will focus a lot of our efforts over the long run onto highly productive projects that are moved forward y the community on Steemit! I understand (You should check my research here) but Ned has delegated 1M Steem to this project, so really positive going forwards! I will be watching this one with a keen eye!
4. Steemit World Map
http://www.steemitworldmap.com/
An app that identifies locations of travel blogs and displays them on a world map! This allows the user to see where steemians are travelling and who is in your area. it is also great for promotional work as we can now see where there are not any posts, and thus target these locations with promotional work!! Great app!
DEV TEAM COMPARTMENTALIZING THE BLOCKCHAIN
I am not a techy, so I probably don't do this part much justice, however, from what I gathered, the steemit dev team have compartmentalized the Steem blockchain in order to make it much more efficient during updates and forks. This means that if one section of th block chain need forking or updating, where as in the past they whole chain would need to be forked, now only that section needs the fork, which means much lower risk and a quicker more agile update process.... Cleaver boys those devs are ;)
SUMMARY
I am now incredibly excited about where Steem is headed, if you want to know more, please watch the video above!!
STEEMON!
I'm strongly in favour of this. There are two ways it could be done.
I'm strongly in favour of long term Steem bonds as well, where you sacrifice rewards influence and make a long term commitment in exchange for higher return.
Elected curators sounds similar to what is done with elected moderators on Stack Overflow. If the largest whales support it, it could be done without any consensus changes. It's just a matter of organization.
Nice post! What will happening, if someone resteem your post?
@demotruk, great to hear this feedback! Excellent suggestions! I like the way you have thought of the nuances of delegation allocation, long term investment reward and how to split the reward pool should we end up allocating some to projects. I think it is important to be clear with people that this method of funding projects is NOT the same as eutopian and is a community driven directive. It looks like we need to spend some time together on these issues, rip them apart a bit and come up with several suggestions / options as to how these changes can be implemented. Additionally I know that u and @eroche had some other great suggestions for improvements. It would be great to find a way of capturing these into one place... maybe call it the steemit project funnel or something....
How about #project-funnel for ongoing projects and proposals and #business-platform for discussing Steem as a platform for running co-operative but for-profit businesses?
Edit: Or #business-blockchain, #bb
great names, tags already updated ;)))
This is exactly the sort of thing I would like for @minnowmentor and my new dev project for #promo-steem. (which I have spoken to Matt about in depth) which I am hoping will create an on-board for promo-steem (and potentially other things) with a clever guild curation system for ensuring that members can assign an amount of their voting power to upvoting posts which fulfil specific criteria (in this case, they are promoting steemit with a view to raising the price of steem). Using a kind of manual guild system, with a streemian type of auto-vote system, and a new way of visualising the promo-steem (or whatever) tags, it provides a solution for those of us who are wanting to put our voting power into places where it will ultimately support Steem and the Steemit ecosystem. I'm already on with the designs, which I expect to be releasing to the community next week, but what will really help me, and others, is something like this.
awesome, I am really looking forward to this!
Another way we could do ongoing projects, without requiring a hard fork:
A quirk would be that the project could get more delegated SP than it needs to fund the project. We'd need to determine what the right thing to do with any excess voting power the account has. We could make the excess power overflow into a 'Steem Bonds' fund, if such a thing doesn't happen via hardfork.
As long as we stick to the rule of never powering up the account, the project is 100% accountable to the stakeholders that support it. If/when such a project begins to misuse funds, stakeholders can remove support immediately.
Yes, this is certainly an option! Although this pushes it more along the lines of eutopian. Certainly a great suggestion for avoiding hard fork. Another way to fund would be to lobby witnesses to donate a certain amount of their rewards to this type of community driven project. This would get them more votes in the long run. I know Jerry banfeild would be interested in this type of funding solution
It was really great meeting you at SteemFest, and I look forward to learning more about the projects you're involved in and supporting.
Hey Luke! Likewise, great to meet u! I was a bit star struck at first ;)) there are so many things to get involved in. I certainly want to start the discussion around where we go forward as a community. The points above are some of the keys ones; setting up communities, dash style project proposals; project funnel, improving the delegation process; steem bonds and promo-uk are looking at how we can create a better on boarding page for investors and new steemians. I really hope to include key members of the community such as urself in these discussions and work out a way to get the word out and get input from the community on where it wants to proceed. Ultimately the goal is to better focus the community on being excellent at working together to create value and profits that can provide a demand for the steem price over time. Looking forward to being in touch with u going forward!
@starkerz I really appreciate your support today from my post regarding the idea to add an "invite a friend" button. Your support is very valuable to me considering you like the idea.
At the same time I finished reading this great post you made about a summary of things discussed on steemfest, and it shows even more all the potential of steemit. I appreciate you sharing all this with all the community.
And to @lukestokes I wanted to let him know I mentioned him on my latest post about the invite a friend button, and that its surprising he can speak spanish. I will say some words in spanish:
@lukestokes , si tienes oportunidad de ver el post que hice donde estas mencionado, seria excelente obtener tu feedback. @gold84
Muchos gustos senior ;) me gusta hablar tambien en espagnolo ;))
@starkerz sounds good. I can speak both well, english and spanish! I would appreciate your thoughts regarding the invite a friend button. I am following your posts closely and learning a lot of what is coming for steem and steemit. Thanks for all your contributions. @gold84
Thanks! Invite a friend button is a great idea. U need to find out who the developers are for steemit.com and cleaverly / kindly ask if this feature has been considered ed. Also blog about it. Start a tag called invite a friend or similar. There are other steem blockchain apps like busy.org and others... that may have the invite a friend feature already built in. Find out what they are and write about them. If they could be improved, let the developers know
@starkerz you are welcome, thanks to you and for your support. Do you know some devs that could be interested on this? I will follow up later with a few more potential design improvements. @gold84
It is wonderful to here from you again. This is a very great relief to know what has been going on and why they have.
Now am sure steem will come out very soon bigger and better, making thesteemit community a very interesting place to stay and flourish.
The whole projects are amazing and it is great to see how much workand support the community has put in place for tge greatness of this platform.
There are still more to come and more ideas are going to spring up too. I implore that other projects should be accessed too. Am excited about appics and @surfermarley charity, am so glad that the well being of others have not left us.
Thank you @starkerz for putting this piece together. Well detailed.
Thank you very much! really appreciate this comment and your keen interest! I feel something big brewing with steemit, and actually, more so with US steemians, right here, right now. so many things to move forward on, so much progress to make! its all here, right in front of us!
Ver well, I appreciate your effort too.
Shared on twitter. Stephen
Wow great summary thanks! All these ideas are exciting but I'm wondering whether many of them are a little far out. How about something like an auction site (SteemBay) or something like Etsy? That would be great to get Steem used more as a currency rather than just as a social media reward token. The more use cases there are for Steem the better.
Interesting! I certainly believe in supporting practical ideas. Ideally every value creation project we do initially should be set up in a simple testing method (be it manually driven or auto driven from a web server) and proven to work so that the community has a tangible model to judge. Steembay and Etsy are certainly GREAT models that could be run off the steemit blockchain pretty much immediately! Completely agree that the more use cases for steem the better! Certainly agree in going forward with projects that use it as a currency! The suggestions we talked about with users at steemfest were how to get the community focused and pooling it’s resources in one or just a few places, the suggestions I make above are an attempt to try to achieve this. Some may be difficult and we may have to compromise on some. But I think it important to have a strong foundation that make collaboration and value creation easier. I would certainly put Ebay and Etsy type projects on the project funnel so that anyone visiting the funnel could see that the project is ongoing and hence they could offer their services to help with this project... I am open to criticism on this, if u have identified things we have overlooked....
I'm no expert so I don't have any great criticism to provide. It's just it seems like there would be potentially more value in an Etsy type platform than in art futures for example... not that both couldn't be valid and valuable additions to the steem ecosystem. It's just that in these early stages it would be great to focus all the talented and creative people on creating the thing(s) that will have the most positive impact.
p.s is it Troy Deeney? ;)
I agree, and this is exactly the reason we need a kind of project funel so the community can vote and decide what are the most important things going forward, highlight them such that individuals with the means can voluntarily provide their resources to make the projects most important to the community happen
Awesome to speak to you and Stephen last night....Sorry I had to dash, next time I will join you on the vlog for sure....(but to be honest, she's loads better looking than either of you) :)
Its good to see you know where your priorities are ;))
Of course. You know me..... millions of women, only one @anarcotech!!!!!
Excellent, some conferences I had missed them. But you are making a summary of the most important project.
It was a pleasure to meet you @starkerz at the SteemFest.
I hope you keep growing in your promotion projects.
Mucho gusto senior!!! ))) great to meet u and speak some of my broken spanish!! Thanks for the support! I look forward to seeing u pop up in some of the Venezuelan promo posts!!... ))
Great post! My understanding of steem has gone one step further!
Thanks @patrickm - so did mine!! really exciting time ahead! and a chance for much of the community to be directly involved the development going forwards!
Typo: whitness --> witness
Thank you @tumutanzi! Always humbling to have my English improved by a non native speaker ;)) 谢谢
Great work you are doing @starkerz - you should be on a "Hall of Fame" for Steem and Steemit - Resteemed
Thank you @pandamama, I’m very much looking forward to speaking at ur event in Cyprus later this month!!
Thank you - I got a vote for you from @dse on this post and on https://steemit.com/promo-steem/@starkerz/promo-steem-an-initial-proposal-for-the-next-step
14 hours ago Transfer 0.010 SBD to dse https://steemit.com/steem/@stephenkendal/following-on-from-the-recent-blog-explaining-the-importance-of-having-steem-bonds-in-a-short-7min-video-by-matt-starkerz-and-i - a fellow SAfrican giving away the last of his delegated steem
Yes, we are super amped that you are coming to our event @starkerz
Not yet, plan is in the pipe line. Just need to sort a few things out first
It was great to meet you at Steemfest. I now realize I should have spoken to you about promoting Steemit more, because I am in the works of doing so here in Ireland.
But I guess the brain reaches only so far at 5 in the morning ;)
Wonderful!! I am glad you can use your journalistic tendencies to document your steemit promotions! I will certainly be following your work. please post to the #promo-steem tag, as I am checking regularly. Yes, by the end of steemfest, my brain wasn't reaching far at all ;)) steemon!
Are you in the #ireland channel on Steemit.chat?
No. Do I have to drink a dram of whisky to get in? ;);) I’ll take a look at it, I take it this is where a lot of industrious talk goes on??
I was replying to @misslasvegas :-P
Not yet, but will have a look. I think @starkerz should join too, from what I've seen he's part Irish ;)
;)))
Maybe they let you choose between whiskey and Guinness?
I would always choose the guiness! Easy!
Haha, somehow that doesn't surprise me. You would be an awesome candidate for a commercial for them. I can see it now: "Guinness, made for real men with beards." ;)
phhhh! i just spat my Guinness out!
This is exciting stuff indeed. We should also keep in mind that the STEEM blockchain is still in its infancy and another year from now we are likely to me seeing even more innovation and possibilities unlocked by and for the platform.
Very exciting!! It’s newness is what is so exciting, it really is up to us as a community to shape it going forward! @rocking-Dave thanks so much for ur support on the videos. I opened me steemit chat yesterday evening to several hundred messages. I started to work my way down the list. I will be able to get back to u today!! Looking forward to reading ur updates!
Looking forward to it too :)
Absolutely amazing! The possibilities to grow our Steemit community are endless! OH what the future holds in store :)
Oh yeah! its up to each of us to do this however!
Hey @starkerz - you have truly done a great job - seems like there is so much still to learn in this crypto-currency world. Steemit World Map is great
Thanks @leelektrik, yes there really is a lot more to this now. So many value creation possibilities!! I’m not sure where to focus now! ;)) that is a great problem to have!!
You did great in Steemfest @starkerz! Congratulations for a job well done and thank you for your extreme efforts. Commended! :)
Thanks dude! It’s really an honour to be able to mention ur great work there! I am super excited about the future of steem and really glad that u are going to be an important part of it!!
This is very comprehensive, @starkerz. With these beautiful projects, the future of steem and steemit is a big one. Thanks so much for the elaborate presentation. @greatness96
Thanks @greatness96, it’s really an honour to be able to mention ur name at my presentation! U deserved it after all the hard work u did!
Thanks, bro. I'm about doing more. Though I need to keep up with the flow on the new innovations on the project. In Africa here there are some limitations in terms of internet data, but I'll try to stay in touch.
Wow all in one post this is what everyone was looking forward to thanks for all the updates :)
Hope it helped u get a better idea of where steem is going! Thanks for the ongoing support @blazing!!
Great overview to whet the appetite. It was good to meet you at Steemfest and others from the promo-steem team.
So much discussed so many ideas and so much talent all in one place. What a week!
Hey fella! Great to meet u! I’m really looking forward to setting up some data analysis initiatives with u. I think my comment thread with @demotruk above will be of interest to u as well
Great info, now I wish I asked you for one of those original Steem tee-shirts, as they will be collectable with the Logo changeover. ;-)
Yes, price tripled overnight!
I've got a stained one which @ashleypeat spilt his drink down at a pub in Leeds. It's now going for 200STEEM
Great summary! Non-techy people should find it very helpful indeed! Steemit worldmap was the only one i could understand from day 1, with @martibis help lolsss
Cheers!
I understand how confusing some of this stuff can be, I try to write only in simple terms that the normal user can understand. I hope the blog gave u a good idea of how steem will move forwards and what type of things are possible!
Possibilities on Steemit? I have visions from the moment i signed up...and i have been watching the platform from day 1.
I hope ure enjoying the weather. Cheers!
Hey @immarojas Salamat po for the comment!! Hehe! I can’t wait to c where ur visions will take u in 3 years from now!! Weather is... well, u know I guess same in Birmingham as in London?
Steemit Philippines in 3 years??? oh man, am gonna enjoy every minute till that time comes. Preferrably I will be in the Phiippines than in UK. Have you heard?
It's more fun in the Philippines!!
2 days ago..it was raining, typical weather as anywhere in here :) Cheers!
:) its certainly more fun on Boracay!
Fun yes..Palawan is calmer. Steemfest3 in the Philippines??
nice work in this place brother,you just take steemfest in here that was very very good,
Seems like a lot of exciting features are coming to the community. Just need to sit tight.
Please vote me and follow me
@starkerz Thanks for this post. I have to say after reading @jerrybanfield's whitepaper with a detailed proposal on how to reverse the spiral of Steem, I've reached a conclusion which I've speculated on for a while.
Basically, Witnesses need to become a decision-making board. As is, I consider them a 'multiplexed' suggestion box with little power for real change.
I don't want to go down that path; but, bottom line: I sense that participants of both Steemit and Steem are 'success stories' currently, and in the making.
Again, thanks for this post!
Peace.
Thanks for this! interesting idea about the witnesses, also interested to know your thoughts on how this would improve steem. Would it not be worth electing another board of users to be decision makers?
As is, the decision-making process seems top-heavy. Many noteworthy proposals are being made for improving the Steemit platform in order to ultimately grow STEEM; but seemingly those making the proposals aren’t really being heard.
I think the fewer ‘boards’ we have, the fewer conflicts. Perhaps, you could share why you deem a need for ‘electing’ another board.
Again, as is, without it being mandatory, too few Steemians are participating in the witness-selection process, by personal choice, or proxy. So, the thought of another ‘election’ makes me dizzy, lol, and smh simultaneously. I think it becomes a case of KIS…
Peace.
understood. interesting point! iam intersted to see this dicussion develop going forwards
✌!
What a great summary! So nice to meet you in Lisbon. I look forward to keeping in touch.
Absolutely GREAT @ginnacarr, looking forward to the next one! thanks for all your help at steemfest, especially for keeping @terrybrock in check! ;))
dear @starkerz,
the leaders of #teamGHANA ( @richforever, @tj4real, @anaman, @kwakumax, @mcsamm, @ryankofi and @collinz) love steemit and we have STEEMIT at heart. We believe in STEEMIT to be the LIFE SAVER of the Globe through blockchain technology. We are willing to promote this worthy cause massively in Ghana-West Africa. We are strategically stationed to spread the steemit news across the entire nation.
@richforever is in the capital, Accra, spreading steemit at the South, @tj4real is at the Northern part of the country. He is spreading it there and at his college too. The rest of the crew are at the middle part of the country spreading as such.
The truth is we are financially unstable and lack resources to make this disruptive giant of a social media reach the mass at the speed we want.
We will appreciate any form of help Sir. Just as you mentioned in your presentation at the steemfest.
You can contact me via email on alexanderdjan@aol.com or +233241914025 on whatsapp. And i will gladly relay any info to the team.
#Thank YOU
Amazing! ill be in touch in the near future on this!
alright thank you for your response
I whole heartedly understand your problems, we share exactly the same problem. we are now centralising this movement in the steemit community and should be able to receive more support from there. This will not happen immediately, but over the next few weeks we will role out the support mechanism on steemit. We just have to keep on telling the story and keep up the good work. keep your eyes on us, we will be rolling out some cool initiatives going forwards that should help with your question above!
this is good news. i believe in steemit