How to reward the effort and not the post - real-life interactions that are just as valuable as posts

Since I wrote the first post about the value of real-life interactions and how we might go about rewarding them (and not just for posting and curating content on Steemit), I had some interesting conversations with people who are doing exactly that but haven't really received the reward or recognition other than the actual post.

If you are interested in my proposal you can read the initial post here:
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@plushzilla/how-to-reward-the-effort-and-not-the-post-a-proposal-for-real-life-activity-reward-systems

What I want to talk about in this post are the examples that I have seen and how I think the proposal will help make those activities more rewarding for the people who carry it out selflessly, and also provide an incentive for more people to do so. If you want to find out more I would suggest having some conversations with those involved.

In that first post I talked about these main elements of real-life interactions:

WHO are the steemians that you interact with in real-life...
I mentioned that we can identify people with their account names, and I think @mudcat36 has been very proactive in reaching out to people in person, thus building trust and credibility within the community and also helping to grow it. I also recently came across a post by @pennsif talking about creating courses and teaching them, and this is also a great initiative that deserves more than just upvotes on the post but more people who have been thinking about it to do the same thing.

WHERE are these interactions taking place...
It is interesting that we have tracked travel posts on @steemitworldmap but I feel like there is just as much value understanding where interactions between steemians are happening as most of the travel posts tend to be about individual experiences. So next time you have a real-world interaction with another steemian it would be great to just put that location information and so we can start working out areas that require more attention. Again I don't think we reward people enough for venturing out to new and exciting territories (I know that online this happens often enough), so if you have been thinking about it then it is time to put those thoughts into action because we want to reward you for it.

WHEN and how frequently are these interactions...
I think this is done quite well with various meetups and of course the all important Steemfest, so no real need to discuss this further.

WHAT are the things that you are doing as part of these interactions...
Since I am personally involved in some of the teams and projects that are happening in the real world, there have been efforts invested into how we can reward people for contributions that are not covered by major initiatives like @utopian-io. We can see these popping up all over the place gradually, so if you have a creative idea (and possibly unique to Steemit) then I think it is worth producing more and making them available in the real world and once we figure out how SMTs will work then you will already be in a position to take advantage of a system designed to reward you for it.

And if you would like to be part of the discussion for how to get involved in various initiatives, there are people who are very interested in improving the way Steemit works so please reach out to them. Some of the people I know (not mentioned in this post) include: @davemccoy, @lestatisticien, @meno, @son-of-satire and there are plenty more that I don't know that I would like to reach out to as well.

Let's work together to make steemit great again, and play your part by supporting some of these worthwhile initiatives or start your own!