Educators and Developers Discuss Steem and Future Educational Applications [Podcast Included]
I've been waiting for Kieran to post it, but since he's been real busy, I'll post the podcast he made at the Melbourne Bitcoin Center with educators and developers. I couldn't make it, as their studio had feedback issues with call-ins, so @kdnolan @blakemiles84 and I are meeting at some point this week to talk about it all:
Podcast
I'm real excited at how much passion "outsiders" are displaying towards Steem. They certainly have their hesitations, but you can tell that there is legitimate curiosity and interest towards what we're doing here. For an alt coin project that is just months old, this really gives me chills thinking about the potential.
We can do massive, world-changing things here, but let's be patient and not tear ourselves down as we build some great.
We can often get caught up in what's going on here in the present and lose sight of the bigger picture. We see a blogging platform and immediately jump to the conclusion that this is Steem. We compare Steemit to our immediate competitors, thinking that is the realm we are competing with. However, I suggest looking at thing a little differently.
First off, these platforms aren't necessarily broken in their current forms. Granted there are flaws, which some may perceive as being critical, but millions of other people tend to disagree on a daily basis.
People can live with flaws they may not even perceive. What they really want is something better. Facebook supplanted MySpace, because it did what it did better than MySpace did.
Do people remember when many thought Amazon was doomed to failure because it didn't do shopping better than traditional big stores? What happened? Amazon did it better. In each instance, people flocked to the service that gave them positive reasons for switching.
Here at Steemit, the incentives are obvious. However, they aren't necessarily good enough to get people to switch, since what we do here is different. We aren't Facebook. We aren't Twitter. And we are not Reddit. This site caters to genuine user content creation. That's not what a lot of people on social media currently do. There's a reason why Medium is a fraction of the size of the others.
Steemit, of course, is much, much more than Medium, and applies unique social dynamics into our interactions with content, pushing us deeper, when we otherwise would have closed the tab on a Medium article. Artists, musicians, photographers, all have success here, socially and monetarily, where on other platforms, they'd have difficulty co-existing aside bloggers. It's a unique environment, but still not going to be everyone's end-all-be-all social media platform, since the others still have their uses and all do some things better than Steemit. They won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
To think that Steemit is on the same level, or in direct competition with the establish market outlets, is rather shortsighted. Snapchat didn't compete with any of them. It did something different, something better, that people wanted. That's what we're doing. It's just a much smaller niche currently than something like Snapchat, but it can grow into something much bigger and more diverse.
This is why it's important to remember that Steem is not just Steemit. Although there are certainly some issues presently, nothing is broken and all of the potential is strongly in tact. The applications are endless and we have one of the best communities in crypto working together to make it happen.
If anyone would like to join us in the future on hangout or podcast, just let us know.
SBD will be sent to Kieran since I'm posting the podcast for him
Steem Highway v. 1.1 Chrome Extension
Thank you for taking the time to share a very powerful perspective on what our community is creating.
I've had a difficult time getting others to sign up, though they are all highly intrigued, and I am starting to wonder if it is because it is geared at content creators? I know the curators have incentives too, and I've even earned more curating a post than the post did itself once, but newcomers don't see that right off the start.
Do you have any suggestions for helping to bring others into the community?
I think that we need to build Steem outwards, and start to think of Steemit as our sign-up/log-in hub for the other applications around the Internet. Steemit is great, don't get me wrong, but we need more stuff like @picokernel built with http://squeek.io Essentially, it's a twitter on the Steem blockchain, an example of what I'm talking about.
These alternate apps are what's going to make Steem massive. This will enable Steem-based comments sections around the web.
Think of it this way. What Steemit really wants are the best content creators out there. Well, what are they doing? Most of them have jobs, or businesses, where they...create content. Why would they leave their current brand that they have likely spent years building up to join a separate platform for their unique content creation? Not going to happen. Sure they may pop in and say hey, but they'll continue building their brand by pushing their best content through their personal portals.
The thing is, we can integrate Steem into their portals. What if an ESPN article was available for upvote? What if the comments below utilized Steem's mechanics? This is THE gamechanger in my book, the rest doesn't really matter. We can make that happen and we can make it much better than their current monetization models, and even add it in alongside their ads and data collection. It's a complete win/win for the site and its users.
If all Steem ends up being is just Steemit, then I think we will have failed.
I went on a bit of a tangent there, and realize that I probably didn't help you at all, so I wanted to show you this post, where I show how I talk to others about Steemit:
https://steemit.com/howtotalksteemit/@derekareith/having-the-talk-with-outsiders
Hope it helps :)