Wow, hope it all works out for Rupert and his kids!
Sounds like an exciting conference minus people annoyingly trying to get in front of the camera.
I just wrote a piece about steemit and crypto and submitted it to our local, alternative paper after being laughed at for talking about Bitcoin. As you write, it is still sort of clunky and difficult--not only to understand how to use and succeed here on steem, but say, buying alt coins and figuring out wallets. I'm learning and investing in both, albeit slowly. I still don't fully understand using bots or how to find rooms of people in discord, why my reputation score remains so much lower than peeps I joined with on the same day? But, I do believe in and enjoy the foray in decentralized systems.