SteemSTEM & Utopian.io Meetup in Italy - Updates from our @fundition campaign and more!

in #fundition-ffdnxgdga6 years ago (edited)

As you probably already know, SteemSTEM and Utopian.io are organizing a joint meetup in 2 months from now, in Florence and Pisa in Italy.

One of the main events at this meetup will be a group visit to Virgo Labs. To give you some insight into what that actually is, today’s post includes a short explanation about gravitational waves and why Virgo was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics.

Attendance, @fundition campaign and some statistics

So far, 29 people RSVPed and purchased their flight tickets. Where are they coming from? Mostly Europe, but also a decent number of people are coming from Asia and South America. As some of our members in Asia and Africa have yet to secure visas for the trip, they are not yet included in the statistics.

Moreover, the spread in age is also interesting, with our participant birth-years ranging from 1977 to 2000, with a peak in 1990-1995.

It is not as crazy as the spread of ages at the last SteemSTEM meetup - (our oldest participant was 76 and our youngest one was 18). Since registration is still open, we’re hoping for surprises.

Gravitational waves and Virgo in a nutshell

Gravitational waves are small ripples distorting spacetime and are generated by 'catastrophic' events in the universe. By catastrophic, one actually means huge events like the merging of two black holes or two neutron stars. Such an event requires a huge mass of matter that can only be found in these cosmic monsters present in our universe.

Even though these events are colossal in magnitude, we can only try to measure modifications of space in units of 0.0000000000000000001 meters.


[image credits: LIGO]

Thanks to lasers and interferometry, such tiny changes have been measured at three places on Earth: the two LIGO observatories in the US and the Virgo observatory in Italy. This international experiment yielded the scientists a Nobel Prize in physics in 2017.

Gastrophysics, or the astrophysics behind gravitational waves, in considered innovative state-of-the-art science, and is thus a good reason to organize a crazy meetup of some of the top tech and science brains from this blockchain at one of the places this inspiring research takes place.

Why pick the one in Italy? Various reasons including, but not limited to, the ease of travel for most participants from around the world.

Want to know more about gravitational waves? Our own @lemouth will be happy to answer all your questions in the comments to this post.

Help us get there!

Moving all these people from their home to Italy takes a lot of funding, with some flights from distant locations costing up to 1000 USD. We would like to help our community afford this and this is where YOU come in.

This initiative, in collaboration with fundition, is aimed to help do just that - collect additional funding for the meetup attendees. Every upvote counts and every donation makes a difference.

At the time of writing, we have collected 1243 upvotes on our crowdfunding post, as well as four direct donations from @jakipatryk, @mahdiyari, @electronicsworld and @roj.

Thanks to everyone, we have collected about 25 SBD in donation, and about 285 SBD in upvotes (which can vary until the post is paid out). We are, however, still far from our goal, and more help is needed to fund flights, accommodations and car rentals.

Obviously, this will not go unthanked! As previously announced, you will be able to join our meetup virtually through livestreams, scheduled chats and whatever else we can organize for YOU with the funds we’ll have collected.

Share the message!

Resteem this post, share it on social media and send it to your friends. SteemSTEM and Utopian.io are coming to Italy and you can take part!

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It's always great to see that social media communities making real meetups possible! Hope to be a part of next meeting. Best wishes! I have to learn more about fundition. Seems to be a great project!

Meetups in real life is the best, IMO! Hopefully you will be with us for the next one :)

Voted this comment to counteract some flags you received elsewhere. ;)

Now you should be able to get a lot of flags from tini accounts and still be breaking even.

😊 Thankyou

Of course, please don't stress over some future small flags now :)

Just have fun.

I have seen a lot of accounts getting tiny flags, I don't know what is that about.
Our Romanian community got a lot of flags and we have made a list and investigated, it doesn't seem relevant, or concerted. Some of the ones being flagged were using bidbots, but not all.
Guess time will tell if this is the start of something bigger.

Flags don't matter any more then upvotes do, really. They are a part of the system. People just don't like seeing their rewards or rep go down, but life works like that.

That sounds fantastic, how I wish I could participate!

Congratulations to all those that will be part of this. Happy for you guys and praying you have a hitch free experience over there. Resteemed.

@eurogee of @euronation and @steemstem communities

Thanks for your support @eurogee! Appreciated! :)

I fully expect to see you in the audience of our livefeeds from Italy. I hope to add some African countries to the next update - the guys there need to go through HELL to get a visa. Crazy world.

I can totally relate as the immigration here can be a pretty intense experience.

Crazy world is the best word to qualify our experience here, indeed. We see what happens ✌️✌️

This great event must be a success. And the success story would be told for all to hear.
I've sent a little sbd contribution for this course (more would come later). I know it's small, but if everyone would pull hands together; little drops would make mighty ocean.

Go SteemSTEM!!!

Thanks for your donation. It is really appreciated. Any single penny counts, as always!

Interesting to see the data on the age of participants. Here's wishing our African team a successful visa application. The visa issuers in my country makes getting one similar to winning a lottery :)

I agree age is interesting factor.

The age pyramid is very interesting. I would be interested in knowing what is the steemstem one in general :)

A google form is easy to make and can be present in Distilled.
I think this age range is representative to an extent for the full group, from what I interact as a mentor.. and to all Steemit in general. Young people, the Early Adopters, with everything that this implies (including the lack of trust in the platform and lack of persistence or sudden flight).
SteemSTEM and Steem in general is in what is called pre-takeoff phase in Economic Development:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostow%27s_stages_of_growth

Rostow's stages of growth
Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth model is one of the major historical models of economic growth. It was published by American economist Walt Whitman Rostow in 1960. The model postulates that economic growth occurs in five basic stages, of varying length:
Traditional society
Transitional society
Take-off
Drive to technological maturity
High mass consumption
Rostow's model is one of the more structuralist models of economic growth, particularly in comparison with the "backwardness" model developed by Alexander Gerschenkron, although the two models are not mutually exclusive.
Rostow argued that economic take-off must initially be led by a few individual economic sectors.

Yeah, we may want to do that at some point... Tagging @suesa (I have really no time myself).

Will put something together

This is awesome, really wish I could make it but as @greenrun said getting a visa in my country is like winning a lottery.

I wish everyone a safe trip and an enjoyable experience.

Steemstem Rocks !!!

Resteemed.

We have now two Nigerians on board, by the way :)

I don't have a national ID yet, registered since 2015 and still yet to get it. No way I would get a visa without a national ID. Contributing my little token for this awesome article

This is true. Without a passport, I am afraid you won't make it on time. Too bad :(

Obviously, this will not go unthanked

Good luck raising the funding. You've got my upvotes!

Thanks @tking77798! Any contribution, no matter what it is, is helpful :)

If I could attend I would pull the range of birth year one year lower and add a country to the list ;) Everyone have a safe and fruitful journey!

Note that as long as you are 18+, it is fine :)

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