Growing TeamMalaysia | Steemit Community Building in Bangkok

Sunday, 11th March marked the first time I've ever ran a Steemit event - or any community-based event for that matter - outside of Malaysia. Over the years of community building, my events had always been in my home country. So I guess you can say it was quite an experience for me.

The 100degrees Steemit Intro Event was in Bangkok, and because we only had five days to promote the event, on a Sunday afternoon, at a place kinda outside of town, I was lucky to have 8+1 people turned up. Being an intro event, you know you had tremendous support when more than 20% of the audience are existing, established Steemians! Thanks @heartscally, @travelling-two and my better half, @deborism.

SO HOW WAS IT DIFFERENT?

Well, for once, was the language barrier. Everybody spoke English, which was great, but there was a couple of Thais in the session who were not native speakers, so it took me a while to understand their questions.

Of course, the audience size was a big difference too, because my smaller 100degrees event so far was 30 people, up to 80+, but I try not let the low turnout rob me of the excitement of the sharing Steemit. Heck, the group was quite mix because we have two Singaporeans, one German, one Indian, one Brit, and a couple of Thais and Malaysian. Ironically, the smallest gathering of Steemit was also the most diverse!

I used my usual slides, but realised that I had to go a little slower. For one, my Malaysian jokes didn't really worked anymore, and I quickly had to find a high stool to ground myself. I wouldn't say I was nervous, because that was what I felt when I was delivering my TEDx speech a couple of years ago. This was, well, different.

It had been 24 hours, and I really couldn't pin point it yet. Probably gonna keep up for a few nights… NOT!

OVERALL…

It turned out quite well, actually, because comparatively to my other sessions, I got the most questions from this session. At first I figured it was because of my poor explanation, but when I started noticing the questions were actually outside the scope of my presentation, I realised it was beyond that.

You see, one of the Thais, Han, was already an established writer on anything blockchain, and couple of them in the audience were either working on blockchain based projects (https://charity-apparel.com/), are crypto miners, or/and are crypto traders. So the questions they asked were rather technical, and I was stumped on a few of them, which we manage to sort out. Phew!

One thing that surprised me was while I always get questions of skepticism in Malaysia, in the little Bangkok gathering, there were more questions of curiosity. When I was explaining the overview of Steemit, already I could see dots connecting and light bulbs going off, as they started seeing the practical side of Steemit, and I'm sure the potential too.

The organiser, Flo aka @salamandea came up to me after the event, and said that we should do another session (probably bigger), which I know @bitrocker2020 and myself would be glad to fly up to host. Just like any new persons who were exposed to Steemit, combined with his busy schedule, he really did not see Steemit for its full potential until during the presentation. I don't blame him, because seriously, when @bitrocker2020 first intro-ed Steemit to me months ago, for the first two weeks, I was pretty skeptical!

@salamander had been running blockchain based events (he just hosted Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum the weekend before), and this was one of the first where he realised, while most of the cryptos and blockchain apps are geared towards the tech or finance crowd, Steemit is truly the first that allows everyone, especially the creatives (writers, musicians, poets, artists, videographers, photographers, cartoonist) to be part of the exciting world of crypto.

I told him it was certainly the case for me. @salamandea mentioned if I'm open to run other intro events and maybe even the workshops for the university students in Thailand, which I said, "Heck, if you can get us the crowd, our asses will be here!"

Yeah, as you can tell, I was pretty enthusiastic, and I'm pretty sure with the Steemians from teammalaysia too. Looks like we're gonna be growing our family real soon. :)

THE IMPORTANCE OF OFFLINE EVENTS

Midway through my talk, another Steemian (@nichanank) joined us. She joined Steemit way before I did, but it think back then it wasn't very active, so she just left her account dormant. I think after seeing how vibrant the Steemit community is in Malaysia (1000 Steemitans strong!) she got excited again, and remarked/joked that she's so gonna migrate her blogging activities over to Steemit! You can check out her exciting, amazing blog here.

But it was after talking to @nichanank that I realised how offline events are crucial in connecting people on a kinesthetic level. You see, both @bitrocker2020 and myself have pondered for a while whether to have our 100degree events as a webinar format. I think one of the reasons we were hesitating was, since both of us were community builders (he has his Google Business Group before Steemit), deep down we know it ain't gonna replace the feeling of people actually coming together, off the platform, and meet face-to-face.

Also, sometimes we may get intimidated with Steemians with higher reputations or Steempower. @kevinwong was one, for me. And yet, when you connect with them over drinks, you'd realise they are just as human as you. They have their own ups and downs, which you may or may not read on their blog. They have thoughts they don't share online, they have relationships outside of Discord. Yup, one layer of onions peeled off!

STEEMIANS IN THE FLESH

@heartscally was one of the first few friends @deborism and I made on Steemit, and then met in real life. I can only imagine we will have more of such encounters as we travel and spread the Steemit Love!

CRYPTO CREATIVES

One of the community builders that helped me connect with @salamandea and The Knowledge Exchange, but couldn't make it to the event was @somcity (Sivalee Anantachart). This hyper lady ran more businesses and community events that I could count with my fingers, and as we met up over two split coffee sessions (yes, she's just that busy) and I gave her a quick run down of what teammalaysia had been doing for the past few months (charity drives, my junior events, bootcamps, tours) I could literally see her eyes twinkle with delight, excitement and possibilities. A lovely combination, really!

We immediately got into talks of running another Steemit event which she will have more time to bring a bigger audience in, and I got @bitrocker2020 on the band wagon too because we are always eager to expand beyond the Malaysian borders.

Soma is pretty connected to the art scene, have a design community, runs a Crypto Ladies, Google Developers Groups, impact projects (yes, that's not even half of what she does!), and when I shared how Steemit has enabled a lonely writer like me to be part of a growing community that enabled and empowered change, the term Crypto Creatives popped into discussion. And kinda thinking about it, it's true that Steemit is the platform that allow creatives - writers, artist, musicians etc - to join the crypto world, and perform "social mining". We both agreed that since blockchain tech advocates decentralisation, it only made sense that the platform enables fair game for everyone, regardless of your background and stature.

And true enough, I told her on Steemit, it's not so much who got onto the platform first, but rather who puts in more effort in the big 4Cs…

• Creating Contents
• Curating Contents
• Courting Followers
• Community Building

… will have a chance to surpass even the others before them, and succeed in their own right. No monopoly, but rather a win-win-win!

THE POST EVENT TALK

As @deborism and I walked back to our hostel just now, I asked if she thought I was spending too much time on Steemit and community building. She knew I got into some financial burdens before because there's hardly any money to be made in building communities, and she knew it was mostly my passion projects.

And if I wanted to help grow the community outside Malaysia, like in Bangkok and Hanoi (in May/June), it will eat into my travelling costs, among other things. Sure, most of my clients are online now, but still, being out of Malaysia means it may be harder for me to secure new clients.

@deborism looked at me, and basically gave me the cliche answer of "follow what your heart tells you". Ok, maybe she didn't put it that way, but she did ask me a series of question which guided me to discover my clarity.

Questions like:

• Are you happy doing this? Is it within or aligned to your values?
• Will it enable you to grow outside your comfort zone?
• Will you really go broke doing this, or perhaps community building outside of Malaysia will help you grow your business and network?
• Will William be okay travelling with us? (I'm a single dad to a 9-year old)

But one question that struck me was this: She pointed out, and not just because she's my better half, that of all the community builders I know, how many has the opportunity and the platform to grow outside their natural, localised network? Would I want to be like those who just stayed within the comfort zone until their community died a natural death, or do I want to be the pioneer to merge community building, marketing, blockchain tech and creatives?

And the question she got me thinking the most was,

"Will I want William to look at his dad as someone who went the distance, to explore the unknown, to go beyond his comfort zone?"

And that's how I found my answer, and I guess, my commitment.

p.s. My Ma was right advising me to always find a partner that's smarter than me. Then again, she (both @deborims and my mom) was hardly wrong anyway.

p.p.s. So, teammalaysia -> teamasean?

Yes, I was THAAAAAT hungry!

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Hi there! Thanks for stopping by. I mostly blog about Steemit Success Strategies, business, marketing, entrepreneurship, psychology, community and random thoughts.

Talking about Steemit Success Strategies, if you want to 10x your results on this platform, perhaps some of these guides will be able to help you.

1. How to generate at least 365 post ideas for your Steemit Life (and possibly never run out of ideas again!)
2. 29 Steemit Post Types to Attract More Followers & Boost Your Popularity (Part 1)
3. 29 Steemit Post Types to Attract More Followers & Boost Your Popularity (Part 2)
4. Copywriting Magic for Steemit: "How To" Post Titles
5. Copywriting Magic for Steemit: "List Type" Post Titles
6. Steemit Success Strategies #1 - The Law of Requisite Variety
7. Steemit Success Strategies #2 - Batching + Parkinson's Law
8. How to apply the 80/20 rule to your Steemit Life
9. Steemit Experiment Report: 21 days, 21 minutes, 21 posts later, PLUS an 8-Step Guide on How to Write a Steemit Post every day under 30 minutes
10. Case Study on Bid Botting - A Steemit Bootcamp follow-up module, a cheatsheet and why I probably won't use it

At least once a month, I run Steemit community events and training workshops with my buddies at #teammalaysia too. Some examples are:

1. Steemit Bootcamp March 2018 - KICKSTART Your Steemit Success
2. BoilerRoom 03.03.2018 | Let's Huddle, Hustle & Hack Out Awesome Steemit Contents!

I'm also grateful to be part of #steemitbloggers , SmartSteem and the sndbox.

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Wait, why's Mav posting on Steemit nowadays?

Well, unlike other blogging and social media platform, Steemit is the only platform that allows me to earn cryptocurrency when I engage with it. Yup, one Steem is about USD5, and you, too, can earn Steem Dollars every time you:

• Create content (articles, blog posts, podcasts, videos, photos)
• Upvote (like) other people contents
• Comment on other people's posts
• Have discussions, share opinions etc!

Yup, basically it's the very same thing you're doing on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc all along!

The only difference? For once you can earn a nice income on the side!

Sign up for a free Steemit account, and you can thank me by coming back and upvoting this article. And guess what, you will earn Steem too for doing that! #awesome