This past weekend (Saturday the 5th of August) we had our 2nd big Steemfest for #teamphilippines! It was fantastic!

The Drive There

I carpooled with @haleyaerith @descterity @craftech @olivercuico and @antonette and while in our Uber on the way there, like the boss that he is, @descterity started recruiting our driver! Things were already off to an excellent start!

We arrived a bit later due to parking-lot traffic, but still in time before the event started, thank goodness given I was the first speaker!

The Atmosphere

When you first arrived at the event you could already feel the energy from outside. Once you shake off the weight of the traffic getting there that is. There was another unrelated event happening on the 2nd floor and you could hear the music from outside.

As the venue Rehab Ward 324 Distillery Club doubles as a night-club during the evening hours, you could already tell it was going to be a great time just walking inside. Disco and laser lights bouncing around the room, an amazing sound-system WE WERE IN FOR A PARTY!

For a few minutes after arriving we all mingled, said hello to people we had already met on Steemit and in the teamphilippines chat room at PAL (home of the Minnow Support Project), and then @luvabi and @grazz got the event rolling and invited me on stage for my first talk.

The Talks

I kicked off the event thanking everybody for coming, it was great to see such a great turnout! I then spoke briefly about a few important topics including:

• Plagiarism
• Copy Pasta
• Original Content
• Ethics
• Koala Tea
• The @teamphilippines shirts by @haleyaerith
• The @teamphilippines curation trail
  • The purpose of the @teamphilippines curation trail is to automatically help all of our members to support each other every time the @teamphilippines team upvotes a post or comment. This means higher rewards for those that are upvoted, and more frequent and higher curation rewards for each member that follows the trail. The more people that follow the trail the more successful all of us will be!
  • To sign up for the @teamphilippines curation trail first setup your account at https://streemian.com
    • Confirm and verify your Email Address
    • Confirm and verify your steemit account by following the instructions to send 0.001 SBD with a specified memo.
    • Unlock and Upgrade your account by entering your steemit name and steemit password or WIF.
  • Once you have fully setup your account on Streemian go to Services > Curation Trails
    • Search for teamphilippines or if it is not appearing, look through the pages for the @teamphilippines curation trail, click Follow.
    • You may want to adjust the amount of Vote Power to use within the trail, increase the age of posts you will upvote, and decide whether you will also follow flags, comments, what tags must be present for you to upvote e.g. teamphilippines, etc.. At the very least I recommend you increase the length of time for which you will upvote content.
• The @teamphilippines change in curation style, now to follow a similar concept as @ocd
  • Previously @teamphilippines would upvote and resteem a few quality post every day or every couple of days by #teamphilippines members. While that was giving great exposure, it was not allowing @teamphilippines to grow as rapidly as we all would have liked to better support our members, or feature as many posts as deserved it. From this point forward, @teamphilippines will write one post every day or so that features multiple articles written by our fantastic members, a brief intro and image from their post. This has shown great success with @ocd and we hope for the same with @teamphilippines.

After that @devereei took to the stage and talked about his experiences and successes working as a designer on Steemit, entering contests, and participating on SteemGigs. He also showed off his pre-order t-shirts that were available.

Following him, @luvabi spoke about Whaleshares and Finding your Niche she made a lot of great points and related to everybody in the audience quite well with her chipper demeanor.

I then took back to the stage and went over some basics of what exactly Steemit and Steem is for the new people and those that had not shown up yet. I recapped on what @luvabi had mentioned about Finding Your Niche speaking about writing what you know, what you are passionate about, etc. NOT trying to write content that seemed popular just for the sake of it.

I did a short Q & A to answer questions people had about the Steemit Platform it's self, and then we took a break from the talks for a bit and enjoyed ourselves with the included dinner for the event. It was delicious!

We all mingled a bit more, and the energy throughout was EXTREMELY POSITIVE. We learned about each other and common interests specific people have aside from steemit, such as @luvabi and @descterity's interest in homeschooling, others that shared interest in design, video games, health, and much more.

It was very much like a family reunion. Many smiling faces, everybody there to learn and to help each other. While enjoying our meals we passed the microphone around for questions, answers and brief discussion.

During the intermission Q&A, we had some fantastic questions posed by people such as @chinito, @descterity, @dearjoyce, @antonette, and several others whom I do not remember the names off the top of my head.

We had some great conversation with answers from me @sasha.shade, @luvabi, @surpassinggoogle, @devereei, and @tjpezlo. @surpassinggoogle also gave many words of wisdom during this period about how we are all building each other up and becoming the best versions of our self through steemit.

After the intermission our brand new witness @cloh76 took to the stage to talk about his journey to becoming a witness and what all that entails both for himself, the #teamphilippines community, as well as steemit as a whole.

@surpassinggoogle being the other witness at the event also chimed in and talked all about it in tandem with @cloh76 and about his vision for his platform SteemGigs.

After that we heard from @jeanelleybee who helped people to understand how to convert Steem into Fiat in the Philippines. She had a fantastic powerpoint and also a great Q&A that led to more passing of the mic.

After all of the talks, everybody mixed and matched, met with one another, and there was an incredible amount of positive energy throughout. I was able to meet with a ton of people and we discussed some really amazing ideas and concepts. Any previous tension that may have come from mis-communication/understandings within the #teamphilippines group on steemit or in chat seemed to INSTANTLY VANISH replaced with Solidarity, Sincerity, Understanding, and Hope for each other and the team as a whole.

#teamphilippines has never been stronger than we are today due to this amazingly successful event. I am excited for the next one and hope we continue to grow, and bond with each other like never before; raising each other and the Philippines to higher peaks than we have ever seen before, all due to Steemit and our mission to leverage it to reduce poverty and increase education throughout the country.

^{Photo Credit: @deveerei}

Thanks to all of those that attended: @antonette, @chinito, @descterity, @haleyaerith, @haneun, @dearjyoce, @monkeypattycake, @olivercuico, @jazzybells, @neil, @ace, @surpassinggoogle, @blessednami, @southparkqueen, @carlocojuanco, @craftech, @sasha.shade, @deveerei, @jeanelleybee, @cloh76, @luvabi, @tjpezlo, @wilbejel, @dredridingshoe, @grazz

As well as the newcomers that do not yet have approved accounts: Ace, Rose, Darlin, Patrick, Jacqui, Tiffany, Enrico Jose, Maileen, George Buscagan, Ed Tengco

A Special thanks to several others that helped make this event possible but were not able to attend: @immarojas, @sammosk, @darthnava, @aggroed, @dreamiely, @acidyo, @bearone, @ladyjenny24

Also a shoutout to the guys building #teamphilippines and hosting another event at their university this Friday and Sunday in Cebu, read more here

^{All photos not credited specifically are credited to: @sasha.shade @haleyaerith @olivercuico with explicit permission.}