SteemFest² in Numbers

Lisboa

295 people and 38 nationalities attended Steemfest2 over 5 days across 7 locations in Lisboa last week.

What was it all about?

Lets take a look at some stats over the 5 days.

There were 36 talks as well as a Hackathon, 3 dinners, a pool night, a Night of Steem and a #beersaturday meetup.

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How Long have the Attendees been on Steemit?

The following graph shows when the people that attended Steemfest2 joined Steemit.The colour represent the Reputation of the Attendees (Dark Blue is low, light Blue is high) and the y axis shows the stake.

Steemfest Attendees Account Creation Date

A big chunk of attendees were veterns from July and August 2016. This shows that a core of the people that are willing to travel across the globe from 38 countries have generally been loyal and long time members of the platform.
But we also see many new accounts created in 2017 attending. I was happy to see that these new people were represented at Steemfest.

Even if your new to the platform it has somehow created such an appeal that people are willing to drop everything and travel to be part of this event.

Closet Whales

As a general observation we have to take the following analysis with a large grain of salt. There were definately some Whales at the conference dressed in Minnows or Dolphin Clothing. The analysis here is based on Public Blockchain data and the user names people provided at the conference.
As a side note it made for the stangest experience to be at a conference where everyone was known by their username.

Witnesses

The gatekeepers of Steemit and an integral part of its USP are the Witnesses.
If you haven't voted for one yet each and every account has 30 votes so make your votes count, or delegate your voting power to someone who will make it count.

As the guardians of Steemit I expected there to be a big turnout of witnesses. Steemd lists 100 witnesses and of those accounts the following represents the witnesses those that were at the conference.

Steemfest Witness Attendees Account Creation Date

Witnesses that attended are Steem Veterans and seem to come from a wave that joined in mid 2016. It's a little surprising that many more recent witnesses did not attend. For a witness Steemfest was a great place to set out your stall and position to get witness votes, particularly votes from some of the influental attendees. Maybe, like many whales, witnesses wish to reamin annomoyous?

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Attendees

Lets take a closer look at how the Stake of the attendees was broken down.

How much of the Steem world was represented, Was Steemfest a Whalefest?

There was a lot of stake in the 100k+ category, but much of this is in the Steemit Inc Accounts. The most influential whale present was the CEO @ned as well as key members of the Steemit Inc. Dev team. It amazed me how accessible these guys were at Steemfest. You could sit down and have dinner with them, have a chat at the Night of Steem or all during the days these guys made themesleves accessible to the attendees.

Don't forget there may have been Closet Whales present that I haven't counted!!

Attendees	Stake (Steem + Steem Power)	Count
100k+	103,200,718	22
50k-100k	746,541	10
10k-50k	1,117,459	46
1k-10k	433,803	101
100-1k	32,156	64
0-100	813	47
Total	105,531,491	290

Total Stake

The total stake of those that attended represents a whopping 42% of the entire stake of the Steem Blockchain. Of course a large part of this is sitting in the public Accounts of Steemit Inc.

Whales

I would have thought there would have been more present to lobby developers and get some face time with Ned et al. Maybe they were there but wished to remain anomomous...

Investors

It's hard to define an investor. If you put in any money you could be considered an investor but I met a few large investors who travelled to see what direction the platform was heading in. I got the feeling that some of these were not impressed over the course of the few days and indeed @ned in his fireside chat mentioned that the economics of Steem will change drastically with the introduction of SMTs and he has no predictions for what this means for the price of Steem.

There were just 10 attendees in the 50 to 100k bracket, some of which are were large investors. Investors are important as they provide liquidity to the market price of Steem. One investor in particular who impressed me was @starkerz from the UK. He has lots of ideas for promotions developments to increase the value of the platform.

Dolphins

Accounts in the 1k to 50k range represent the bright future of the platform and why I was so enthusiastic after attending Steemfest. These are what I would refer to as the Dolphins. These people were busy chatting and were were brimming with ideas over the few days. Watch this space!!

Minnows

Almost 100 acounts had less than 1k. Some of these were new users but some of these accounts were likely closet whales wishing to remain anonomous.

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Attendee Stake

As I referred to earlier much of the Stake of the attendees is in the Steemit Inc. Accounts but also a large part is held by Steemit Inc Employees. The following is another useful way to look at the breakdown of the Stake of the attendees, witnesses clearly have a large stake which is healthy for the system and the Other category was made up of around 250 inidviduals, many dolphins looking to make connections and brainstorm ideas.

	Stake	Count
Witnesses	5,115,677	19
Steemit Team	97,533,739	20
Others	2,882,075	251
Total	105,531,491	290

Engagement

I met people at steemfest that didn't have a Steem account. Some were there checking out Steem Blockchain to see if it was a suitable platform to link in with their business, others were there on their way to the Websummit just giving Steem a look.
The majority of the Attendees arrived early to attend all the events and make some new friends. In the next few graphs I will show the engagement over the few days.

When Did People Arrive?

This is an indication of how engaged people were. Most didn't want to miss a minute of the activities. This graph shows a distribution of when people registered over the few days. The time of registering is along the bottom and the y axis shows the stake of the attendee. The colour again shows the reputation of the attendee.
(They all got a Creamy & Delicious welcome from @roelandp)

Steemfest Registration Times

Many people arrived in time for the Hackathon with the majority of the rest in time for the party at the Fenix Garden on the Wednesday night.

Follow me..

There was so much going on at Steemfest that it was hard to find time to post but people were making connections and brainstorming ideas until late into the night. I really didn't get much sleep at all while I was in Lisbon.

The following graph looks at the number of follows that people who attended Steemfest got and gave over the last week.

Follows Among Delegates at Steemfest

On the 1st people were travelling but by the night of the 3rd attendees had begun to let thier hair down. As the @steembirds "Don't drink and Steem" played in the background people began following in earnest.

People did their own thing on the 5th with visits to the city and a #beersaturday organised by @detlev. New connections were made and we had some Creamy & Delicious treats while exploring the city and visitng the LX factory in Lisbon to view the Artwork.

People were travelling again on the 6th so activity trailed off. I have also shown the next few days after the event as many attendees had taken photos of usernames during the conference and that is likely what we see driving the number of follows in subsequent days.

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Interests

I experienced a breathtaking level of diversity at Steemfest. There was everyone from people who want to change to world to Gorden Gecko types that just want to make some money.

There were talks which covered this spectrum. Other posts have talked about these but the following WordCloud summarises the tags that attendees at Steemfest regularly post on.

Tags used by delegates

Use of Crypto At Steemfest

On the last day an observer asked me if anyone had used Cryptocurrency over the week. He had not see a lot of it being used.

Tickets

A scan of the @steemfest account transfers show 124 tickets purchased with Steem. I personally didn't purchase with Steem but used bitcoin via a Xapo Debit card and I am sure many more paid in similar ways either using Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency.

Other Transfers

In addition to looking at ticket purchases we can also take a look at transfers that people made during the week to see how much crypto was used.

We see 3,372 transfers among the delegates. That is a large number for under 300 people considering all was paid for at the event including drinks and food. The interesting thing is that this is not all for usual expenses. A whole new economy has developed based on cryptocurrency. If we examine these transfers, many are to services like randowhale, even memos such as welcome memos from @roelandp and transfers to or from blocktrades but excluding these items we still see 98 transfers between delegates at the event. Some Examples:

• "for the steem cap - 26 Steem"
• "listened to your talk at steemfest 😎 great initiative - 15 Steem"
• "uber - 3 Steem"
• "Thanks so much for the Round - 30 Steem"
• "getting organic smokes - 7 Steem"

This for me is huge, it's so easy to use Steem that people are using it to pay for things, split bills and even donate to support projects.

I hope you enjoyed this trip through Steemfest in Numbers and I hope to see you there next year.

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Thank you for reading this. I write on Steemit about Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Travel and lots of random topics.

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