Meeting more awesome Steemians!!

So, while planning for the @SoCalSteemit meetup in Riverside, Ca I had heard about another meetup that was being put on by another group called @steemitla in Hollywood, Ca the very next day! So I decided why not make it a back to back meetup session and I signed up for the Hollywood event on meetup.com.

After having such a super fun time at the BBQ meetup in Riverside I was pretty tired the next day, but I was determined to go still! I didn't want to miss an opportunity to meet other Steemians. So I threw on a Steemit shirt and jumped in the truck. I left about an hour and a half before the meetup was supposed to start because I thought it would be plenty of time but... L.A. traffic and impossible parking thought otherwise. I'm to mellow for this big city stuff, people kept honking at me... I'm clueless to why... lol! Sooo I was about a half hour late, but luckily for me most people were also just showing up and the presentation had yet to begin.

Driving to L.A.

Arriving at the WeWork Vine office building where the meetup was held

I made it up to the 6th floor where the meetup was being held

I thought the golden skateboarding Pug was cool, had to get a picture. lol.

As people arrived we found our way to the desks where they were getting ready to start a presentation

Alright now, where to sit... I decided to sit right up front.

So I found my seat and they started the presentation. It was mostly just a lot of basics. How to sign up, how to post, what is Steem, what is SBD... quite boring stuff for someone like me who has already been on Steemit for over 8 months now, but there were A LOT of new users there so it was good for them.

Going over the basics

They didn't really talk much about content creation, networking, curation guilds, good tags, or any of that kinda stuff and seemed more focused on getting everyone signing up on their website and signing up to get upvotes from their bots. This had me a little apprehensive, but I listened on as they talked about the different bots and how to use the best bot at the best time. Many people had questions and I asked a few myself. The organizers @woodrow and @cryptohustlin were there to answer them all.

A chart showing the different voting bots

@cryptohustlin answering questions from the group

After the presentation was over is when the fun began! The room immediately lit up with conversations. As a user with quite a bit of experience on Steemit I was answering lots of questions for people. I really enjoyed talking with hip-hop artist @riggsyfort, and I had a real blast being part of @geniuslife's Vlog! I also enjoyed talking to @allsthefoods, @brian.rrr, @virtualgrowth, @flysky and his wife, the organizers @woodrow and @cryptohustlin, and I know there were more, but It was hard to get everyone's names as there were quite a lot of people to meet and it was already getting late so there was not a lot of time for meeting! But we all made the most of it, and I was really glad to make the friends that I did! All the people who stayed around afterwards signed our usernames on a poster board and got a few group photos, and then it was time to go. As I got outside of the building I realized it was starting to rain lightly... quite pleasant actually! And now that it was later in the evening the traffic on the drive home was not nearly as bad.

Me, @genuislife(mid Vlog), @allsthefoods, and @riggsyfort, chatting it up after the presentation
(sorry about the blur)

Signing our usernames on the poster

@flysky holding up the usernames poster

Getting together for the group photo

I got home super tired and fell asleep right away. The next morning I decided to check out @steemitla a bit more and jumped on their website so I could learn about this whole bot thing, because when they explained it at the meeting it was still pretty confusing even for me. I'm sure the new users had almost no idea really how it would work. At the meeting I had asked @cryptohustlin about how he planned to maintain the voting power of the bot as more people joined the group. As I would think more votes = draining the power, but he explained to me that the more people sign up the more voting power the bot will have. I didn't question him much more on it, but then also I remembered that during the presentation they were saying something about giving them your private posting keys... but I didn't think to much about it at the time, I was just having so much fun meeting the other Steemians! But once I was back home and I took a look at their website and their Steemit Guide it all came together for me and I was unfortunately convinced that this was not really something I was interested in. To register for the website you must first give up your private keys (thus allowing them to post, comment, and vote with your account). And using each members SP is how their bot will be able to upvote all the members without draining all it's power.

And giving up my keys is just not something I want to do. So... I might miss out on some money by not utilizing the bot votes, but I'm ok with that. I was really more there to meet and talk with other Steemians! So while I'm not going to sign up, I am following @steemitla now and looking forward to attending their next meetup and meeting even more awesome content creating Steemians here in SoCal!!

Thanks for reading!!

*All photos by @derekrichardson

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#SoCalSteemit is building and supporting the Steemit community of Southern California. If you are from SoCal and are into creating quality content here on Steemit, we'd love for you to follow us @SoCalSteemit and join our group on Discord!