Steemfest Speakers: @almost-digital - Make it Rain Steem; @dollarvigilante - Crypto and Steem Evolution

It's been quite a while since my last post about SteemFest. When I first got back I felt incredible pressure to try to report on my experience there as quickly as possible. However, as my style is "deep coverage", it was all taking a long time to make progress. Meanwhile, I had a number of other projects that had been in the works since long before steemfest. Now that the Welcoming Contest I've been hosting for the past 2 months is wrapping up, I can put my energy back fully into content creation. Meanwhile, I actually started writing this post over 2 months ago, so... what can I say? I'm always glad to be able to close a browser tab for good!

When I started covering the video portion of @SteemFest, the livestream from the event was in 4 long, uncut videos. Since then @roelandp announced both that he had chopped up the video into individual presentations.

"Via the Raspberry Pi minicomputer I also managed to cut up the 4 single file recordings of 20 GB each (2 days, 2 rooms) into 35 presentations / shareable youtube videos of all presentations at SteemFest." - All SteemFest presentations chunkified and ready for sharing, TRFund paid and more.

In the same announcement he announced that the Travellers Relief Fund had been paid out (@t-r-f).

"1.5 weeks ago I wrote the script to pay out all t-r-f funds, there is just one person not being paid out, medicine man, as there is no such user on Steemit. There were many more applicants then last year and a little less funds to share, and many more people from far away applying, so in the end the per-person and per-mile returns where lower for all, but still we managed to distribute about 5000 steem and 4000 SBD to about 135 people if I am not mistaken."

These incredible people donated Steem and SBD to help travelers with expenses, and make it easier for everyone to go to SteemFest! It continues to amaze me how generous, and supportive the members of this community can be!

A Hearty Thank You Goes to:

@knozaki, @benjojo, @blueorgy, @edb, @hitmeasap, @walterjay, @ausbitbank, @jesta, @ericvancewalton, @kevinwong, @firepower, @lichtblick, @mariandavp, @skapaneas, @shenanigator, @gtg, @timcliff, @good-karma, @gringalicious, @arcange, @furion, @ballinconscious, @steemfest, and @roelandp

Steemfest Speakers Series

In the time since I published my last steemfest post, and now, I've had a chance to re-consider how exactly to approach the content. Originally I was trying to cover a few presentations per post. Which makes for super long articles! Iv'e begun to work with a few writers, and together we are creating an overview for each video on the Steemfest Youtube Channel. One of these posts have already come out, and more are on the way, shortly.

The Steemfest conference had two rooms with different speakers going at the same time, each day! It was impossible to catch everything while it happened, and I'm very grateful there are videos. It's very fun to learn more about the people who were chosen to present, and the ideas they share. I'm also grateful to have a little help in the process.

My appreciation goes to @shello, @shinyforest, and @spiritualmax, who are helping with this monumental project, to make the content of these videos more accessable to everyone. I'll share links for some of the other posts that have come out recently at the bottom. I'm going to keep taking them in order, from start to finish, and the rest of the team is choosing videos in a more organic fashion.

Back to the Conference Day 1 Room 1 at Steemfest 2

Jordan Nordberg presents Steem Rain [3:53:00]

This breif presentation isn't in separate video, so I'll leave the uncut video here, incase you want to check it out.

Roeland opens up after lunch, saying "We can talk right now, about the recent spike in bitcoin, or we can talk about how much Pastel De Nata

you ate, or we can talk about the animation which is on the screen right now, and the maker is Johan Nordberg from Steemit Inc."

Above is a still shot of an animation you've seen if you've watched many of the SteemFest Videos. Lets see what he has to say about it:

"This is a Live Blockchain Animation. So all of these dots you see falling across the screen are actually transactions on the blockchain. The biggest dots are top level posts, and each dot size and colour represent a different size of transaction." You can watch the transactions happening live, with profile pictures of the users with bigger paying posts. When a large post pays out, the whole colour of the screen changes! I for one will love to watch this app evolve, over time.

This was a very short demo ending at 3:55:00 but I included it because I think it was so cool, and I know you must agree. I got a chance to meet @almost.digital at SteemFest. He's a totally chill guy, and makes a lot of cool things for Steem.

@almost-digital - Make it Rain Steem This App is also featured in @techtek's SteemPi

Crypto and Steem Evolution @dollarvigilante

Not surprisingly, this one was easily found on Jeff's blog, and youtube channel. Jeff Berwick helped to co-found the first Bitcoin ATM in Cyprus in 2013. Jeff is an anarcho-capitalist who has been doing podcastssince 2012, and has continued to be media personality vlogs, blogs, and poscasts ever since. Another notable fact is that he is a principal propoent of the Perpetual Traveler \ Prior Taxpayer financial arrangement.

(from: dollarvigilante.com - Steemit and the Crypto Evolution)

Jeff Berwick starts off by getting a selfie with the crowd, and some laughs. He goes over a history of his experience with Steem. Beginning around last June he kept hearing about Steem. "A year and a half ago, everything was weird and new in the cryptosphere", he says. As Jeff was speaking, Bitcoin was making it's first reach to $7000, and the total Cryptocurrency Market Cap about $200 billion. That's up from about 30 Billion a year ago. Of course we've watched it spike since then, and now it's back down around the level it was during steemfest.

When he first heard about Steem and made his first post, he went away for about an hour or two. When he came back to check the post it made $15,000. "What?", he says. Of course a lot of people got mad, saying "you didn't post anything, all you did was say you're here!" He says "I don't even know what this is, but obviously, now I'm going to check into it."

After a couple posts getting equally impressive rewards, he really had quite a bit of incentive to figure it out. He was lucky enough to get both @ned, and @dan to do interviews. After a couple of weeks he started to get his head around what Steem was. At the time, everything was new and dramatic. He relates how he has been promoting bitcoin since it was $3 in 2011, and even then was telling people that it would change the world. However, reality has a way of catching us by surprise, no matter what we think is going to happen. He said even though he promoted bitcoin as a way to save the world from central banks, war, and poverty, he still didn't expect it to take off as quickly as it did, or he would have bought more.

Once Jeff understood Steem, he started to get very excited about it. This is a test case in the free market. There's no one who really owns Steem. There are people who develop it, there are people who run Steemit.com, but there's no real owner of Steem, it's a community. He relates that the decentralized nature of Steem puts the ownership and responsibility into the hands of all of us. This is also a weakness of steem, because we're not as organized as a community, as this responsibility entails. This is one of the reasons, he thinks, that we haven't grown as quickly as we could.

When he got into steem, and he started promoting it, the same thing happened as when he started promoting Bitcoin. People attacked him, saying "it's a scam, it's a ponzi scheme", and he just had to say "it's an opportunity". Marketing is very important, because people have been so indoctrinated by the government, and media, a lot of people don't know how to think for themselves. Because of that, they need maketing, and well known people to present it. Part of the problem is some of the technical limitations.

Jeff believes that we have just seen the beginning of Steem. There are many other applications that are being developed for the blockchain. If we can get the technical issues work out, then we can really begin to compete with sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, ect. He relates that he came to SteemFest just like anyone, to learn and meet people, and figure out what is going on. But he believes it will happen.

(@dollarvigilante - The Steemit and Crypto Evolution)

Questions for @dollarvigilante

What is the first step for Steem to get "there"?

The first thing Jeff mentions is marketing, but actually, the first step is technical. Getting signups streamlined, and some other technical limitations, and then Marketing. Then, the big picture, is all of the other applications that are being developed.

The next question relates to how to make Steem the token really great for investors, especially since many people will earn on the blockchain, and cash out every week. He refers back to the previous question, that relates to technical matters, and marketing. Until investors see Steemit.com blowing up, they are going to remain hesitant, and understandably so. He says other social media sites have "multi-hundred-billion dollar evaluations", and until we can compete with them, we aren't going to see those numbers. The end evaluation lies with how well Steem and it's Apps rise to the challenge.

Resources

• @roelandp - All SteemFest presentations chunkified and ready for sharing, TRFund paid.
• @damnthatbanana - Day one of the Steemfest Conference Photos
• @almost-digital - Make it Rain Steem
• Steem Rain: Blockchain Animation
• @techtek, Steem(it), SteemPi, Utopian, and Steemfest (a History)
• @dollarvigilante - The Steemit and Crypto Evolution
• dollarvigilante.com - The first Bitcoin ATM
• wikipedia.org - Perpetual Traveler
• Steemfest Youtube Channel

Steemfest Speakers Series

• SteemFest Speakers: Neil Strauss Provides Secrets and Insight on Writing Addictive Blogs for Steemit
• SteemFest Hackathon and Costello Area After Party
• @inquiringtimes - SteemFest Conference Day 1 Room 1 - Opening Words by Ned and Roeland [Part 1]
• SteemFest Conference Day 1 Room 1 - Presentations Until Lunch