It's always a pleasure to support our community around the Steem blockchain. What better than to accept the request by a few fellow Steemians theycallmedan, mindtrap and acidyo: "How Has Steem Impacted My Life Initiative".

Road to Steem/Steemit

By chance I stumbled upon Bitcoin more than 7 years ago. My interest was drawn immediately. But for some reason, only for a month or so. I was quite sceptical, to be honest. Did investigate the possibility of mining, but then abandoned that idea very quickly again. No crypto for me since then, until sometime in 2016 when I was told about Steemit by someone who became a dear friend (Mammasitta). Still being very sceptical, now not only about crypto currencies, but also about the possibility to earn crypto money through a social network. Took me another 3 months or so, and some dull moments hanging around, waiting for something or somebody with nothing to do, before I finally read the Steemit whitepaper and got myself a subscription. Since then, no day goes by without doing something around our blockchain.

Back to the question behind the challenge: "How Has Steem Impacted My Life". As you may know - or not - Steem is a crypto currency (kinda like Bitcoin but also quite different) that saw its daylight almost 4 years ago. To bootstrap this crypto currency, the team behind all of this (Steemit Inc) decided to launch a service on top of the Steem blockchain, in fact: a blogging service, a social platform if you will. The name of this service: Steemit.

First ever Social Network that stuck with me

It is Steemit that impacted my life the most, not Steem itself (although the later is possible through the revolutionary blockchain which will be a technology that we will become part of our lives more and more as time progresses).

As many others, also I'm member of a variety of social networks we all know, various of the major ones. Until Steemit my social networks in the digital part of my life where a direct reflection of my real life social networks; Friends, some Family and added to that Acquaintances. Strangers had a hard time to become part of any of my digital social networks. Except maybe for Linkedin, although also at Linkedin I'm not easy to accept an invite and most of the recruiters I ignore.

_{"Steem is like a steam powered train; Powerful and Unbeatable"
image published by Pixabay at Pexels (source)}

And then Steemit arrived at my doorstep! Although I was introduced to Steemit by a mutual friend in real life, my entire network at Steemit consists of - mostly - anonymous users I never met in real life. I never thought this was possible, to build something with strangers, be inspired by them and last but not least to even have trust in people I never met. How wrong was I!

Source of (crypto) information

Now, a little more than 3 years after my first ever post, I'm still quite active. Maybe not always visible, but behind the scenes I am. Within my first year at Steemit I was approached by one of our most respected members of the community (Kevinwong) to support a new initiative - launched by one of Steemit's earliest curator teams "Curie" - to support undervalued posts and users by using Curie's vote power to give some extra Steem love (in short: money); No rules I had to obey, just the one that the content shall contribute something and the rewards it'll got before discovery is next to nothing. Since then, I never stopped supporting those who bring interesting content onto our blockchain; Mostly through curating; Still with Curie vote power ("big thanks to Curie for the trust in me"). Throughout the years colleague curators came and went, but I never was able to stop these activities or to hand over to somebody else. I think the daily curating activities keeps me connected to Steemit and the Steem blockchain; It keeps me updated on all the changes and evolvements in technology as well as social behaviour; Much nicer this way then to follow one or more of the crypto news services out there :) And most importantly, I do very much like to contribute to the distribution of the daily minted Steem to those that deserve it!

My Revelations: Trust, Freethinkers and Personal growth

I mentioned I was quite surprised I was able to trust people that I never met. I think Steemit was able to give me this new experience because the way Steemit works. It's not just a social network. It's focuses on blogging; Long form at first. Added to that, many Steemians who in Steemit's ups and downs remain active, do spend serious time reading, writing and interacting. Generally these are the good ones! Ok ok, ok...that's maybe an oversimplification, sorry about that, but why not framing when the media does it all the time! :)

All in all, I've encountered a variety of Steemians I like to read whatever they write about; Triggering me to research other crypto initiatives; Giving me food-for-thought on many different topics from how this world is made, to living off-grid and fight the establishment. Now, don't get me wrong, some of the establishment we have is not evil, rather a necessity, but I do like the free thinking of some of the anti-institution members in our community. In real life I consider myself much more a freethinker than the average Jo. In real life I like to go places where the freethinkers gather. But unfortunately this happen way to little. Steemit gave me another - and maybe much more efficient - way to connect with freethinkers. Something I was not able to find at any other social media. Steemit is fantastic to break away from whatever we believe, to evolve ourselves, to embrace the world with open arms, to become more openminded.

Maybe this is the largest impact Steemit had on my life. It supported - and in some ways excelled - my personal evolvement to become more like a freethinker, to become (even) more openminded. I'm not sure what would have happened without Steemit, but I like to believe it supported me to grow in a direction I wanted to grow further into.

Distributed Model: It Works!

It is really interesting to be part of a network - a community - which is entirely run in a distributed model. Steemit Inc is the founder of the Steem blockchain, the creator and main developer of the first service on our blockchain, and the party that spends most of their effort to evolve and implement new blockchain features and rules. However, they have very limited means to manage what happens around the blockchain. The eco-system is - primarily - evolved by many independent initiatives. Many initiatives, apps and services saw its first daylight because of the Steem blockchain and its ability to connect just any service. Some of us are spitting out new apps continuously, while others concentrate on some larger project, service or app. We see apps come and go almost daily by now; Fortunately more come than go! :) We have keepers, like Steemhunt (like producthunt), Steempeak (blogging service), 3speak aka Threespeak (media network), Dsound (audio network), Fundition (crowd funding) to name a few. All these service were created by independent teams and minds, without the request by some manager or company.

It is simply super cool to see how people spot opportunities and turn these around in solutions, services and apps; Even when - at first - no money is available and all on the believe Steem is here to stay and the possibility it's value will grow over the years. How cool would it be when it will explode at some point in time! :) But that is not the reason why to do things at and around the Steem blockchain. To me it provides more value, much more value, then the Steem that I earn through blogging and interacting. Steem is just a bonus :)

_{copyright: De Correspondent (source)}

My Dream: Onboarding De/The Correspondent

One thing that I would like for Steemit (Steem) is to become the home of independent journalists. In my little country the Netherlands we have a new style journalist platform De Correspondent (english version here) which I love to see be on-boarded in our community. De Correspondent is a next generation research journalism platform, 100% digital, publishing part of their work for free; Allowing free reading and even re-use of their content is free. Their revenue model is entirely based on subscriptions; About 60 Euros per year. Within no time they gained 50.000 subscribers (who said content on the internet needs to be free to get consumed/read!) Advertisers don't have a place in their business model, therefore their work is not compromised by external factors.

How cool would it be when they start an account in our community? Start to cross-posting their work? And wouldn't it be super cool when at some point in time they use Steem(it) as there primary channel cross-posting to Facebook, Twitter and other social media? The focus of Steemit as a blogging platform makes it the perfect home for journalists and reporters of any kind. These groups create great content; And great content drives adoption. In the end, this will drive the value of Steem!

I'll need to evolve my initial high level idea to something solid to persuade De Correspondent to come onboard! I'll definitely will spend some more time on this and hope I can come up with a plan! BTW, I love to hear suggestions you may have! Maybe we can work together to make this happen?

Nough about all of this; Need to attend some other activities this evening. Hope you'll have a great weekend ahead of you. I know mine will :)

CARPE DIEM

at least this weekend :)

_{qsounds music library with more than 300 entries | A...K | L...Z |}
^{steem blockchain curator for @illuminati-inc and @qsounds}