Steem Saturday, Johannesburg (2017) - feedback

in #steemit7 years ago (edited)
steem saturday

Many of you (South Africans, anyways) are probably aware of Steem Saturday that took place this last weekend at the Indaba Hotel, Spa and Conference Centre in Fourways. For those who could make it - it was an absolute pleasure to meet you guys!! For those who could not, I certainly hope you plan to be there next year - it is definitely worth it!!

We kicked the day off at 7:30 (super early) with some freshly brewed coffee and snacks, trying to mingle and figure out who is who... I must admit, it was great finally putting some faces to names ☺️

We then started the conference a little after 8:00 and were blessed with the following presenters:
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ROBERT MARSHALL
@robertm

Continuing from last year, our MC for the day was no other than Robert Marshall, one of the co-founders of SportPodium.

Once again, SportsPodium sponsored the whole event - from arranging the speakers to paying for everything (the venue, food, drinks etc).

Thank you SportSpodium for being so amazing!!


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MITCHELL LOUREIRO
@zurvanic

Our main speaker flew over all the way from Portugal! Mitchell is the VP of Marketing at Steemit Inc. What an honour to meet him in person!

Mitchell spoke on a high level about the current challenges that Steemit is experiencing - the UX, scaleability and adoption. He also enlightened us on how Steemit is approaching and solving these challenges.

We were briefly introduced to Smart Media Tokens (SMT) - but we’ll have to wait a little longer for the ins and outs on how this will work exactly.


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GAVIN VETTEN
@gavvet

Now what would Steem Saturday be without giving Gavin the podium? For those who don’t know - Gavin is our largest whale in South Africa - by far!! 🐳

Gavin gave us some insight on the 4th revolution (which is making banks run scared) and he also coined the term Vinternet (the internet of value). He also let us know his thoughts on the often spoken about Bitcoin bubble.


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LORIEN GAMAROFF
@gamaroff

Lorien must be South Africa’s biggest fundi on Bitcoin! He is the founder and CEO of Bankymoon, a blockchain and crypto consultancy.

He explained (in layman’s terms) the hard fork we recently saw with Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash and also gave his personal opinion on the two separate coins.

This guys really is a visionary - I love how confident he is that his 2 year old son will never own a bank account!! I certainly hope he is correct and that crypto will be the only way forward.


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MATT BROWN
@mattbrown

Many of you might know Matt from the Matt Brown Show. If not, he is a podcaster here in South Africa and often talks about crypto.

Matt made it quite clear how he hates futurists - haha 😂

It was quite interesting to see how many inventions have come about simply by asking a better question.


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NATALIE DU TOIT

For those who like really don’t know - Natalie is a South African swimmer. She has won numerous gold medals at the Paralympics and at the Commonwealth Games.

Natalie has recently joined SportsPodium as an executive team member.

She gave a motivational speech focusing on her childhood, her career and progress as an Olympic swimmer.


image

CHRISTIAN SMIT & PIETER BOTHA
@christiansmit

SportsPodium’s Natalie du Toit did an interview with two of her colleagues - Christian and Pieter. Christian is head of marketing and PR whilst Pieter is their CTO.

Their interview explained some details on exactly what SportsPodium is trying to achieve in the market. They also briefly spoke about their current ICO.


image

ROHAN ISAACS

Rohan is a Director at Norton Rose Fulbright - a global law firm.

Rohan has a lot of knowledge about law on contracts, smart contracts and crypto. Something I found quite interesting was the importance of having an actual, separate contract in place when implementing smart contracts (on Etherium for example).


If you'd like, you can watch the speeches from the day here and here.

After all the speeches, we were thoroughly spoilt with a superb meal and drinks at the Chiefs Boma. We had quite a bit of time to chat with all the speakers as well as to network with our fellow Steemians.

It was great to meet with people who have soooo much more experience on Steemit than myself (I really am a newbie still) and even to see folks who aren't even on the platform as yet but came along to learn more (I hope they have all signed by now).

image Marcel @marcel1965, Linsey @kiligirl and myself @cheeto.blue

image Marcel @marcel1965, Linsey @kiligirl and Cillie @pjcswart

image Natalie du Toit, myself @cheeto.blue and Mitchell @zurvanic

image Jaco @jacor (the other co-founder of SportsPodium) and myself @cheeto.blue

image Non-Steemian (who has hopefully signed up by now) and Natalie du Toit

image All of us concentrating real hard and soaking in all the info we can

Again, thanks do much to @robertm, @jacor and all the folks at @sportspodium for arranging this Steem Saturday!! It was an absolute honour to attend the event and I certainly hope to see you guys next year again 😎

I most certainly am not a great writer, so for an absolutely superb write-up of the day, do yourself a favour and check out @kiligirl’s post on Steem Saturday here!!

cheeto.blue
Team South Africa banner designed by @bearone


Please upvote if you liked this post, follow if you want to see more, and let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Equipment used:
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Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM


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The problem for the non-steemian people is that the signing up process is such a pain in the rear, that most of them will probably give up after a long wait period and then they won't end up using it.

I eventually had to buy a 2nd account for my brother since steemit lost 2 account creations for me and the cell phone numbers can't be re-registered anymore since it's already in the database.

For people that are little bit more clued up it's not a big deal to buy an account from Steemconnect, but not for non technical people this won't work out at all.

Quite a bit of truth there @diebaasman!! My account took like 4 hours to activate but some people wait like 2 weeks 😳

I tried registering an account for my brother both times waited nearly a month and getting no feedback and when eventually complaining on Steemit.chat just to get told use a service like AnonSteem.

I gave it up as a bad idea and just used SteemConnect and paid the account creation fee from my own wallet.

I don't know why there can't be a more straight forward way of buying, donating an account for someone. I don't mind paying the account creation fee for my brother since it's such a small amount of steem. My problem is they make it such a weird procedure to go through.
Find account creation fee and multiply by 30 to get the amount required type nonsense.

Hopefully it gets fixed soon. Let's just blame it on the "beta" status for now hey ☺️

At least one of us should follow up with the non-Steemian. She seemed very keen, but I couldn't see her after the lunch. Do you know if someone is going to contact her, the app developer and the other non-Steemians who took their Saturday to learn more about Steemit and cryptocurrency?

I definitely think someone should follow up!! I didn't see her afterwards either 😐

Hmmm...perhaps @jacor can help us find her. Gosh, we sound like stalkers, but we know what we mean....

I sat at her table and when she got up to leave she said, "See you on Steemit."

That sounds like a line from a film. How cool.

The whole thing or just "See you on Steemit"? 😎

"See you on Steemit." That line could have been delivered by Lauren Bacall.😎😎

I just googled her what a beaut.

Nobody like her since.

She's also a good actress, especially in these scenes. I don't necessarily agree that Meryl Streep is the best ever.

Check this out. In the first scene, when she walks in and down the stairs, there it looks like there is smoke coming from her, insinuating that she is so "hot" perhaps. It must have been intentional. Bring in things like that in the absence of special effects. Those producers must have been total geniuses back then.

Indeed, she and Bogart used to smoke up the screen together. If you want another distraction, here's one of their most famous scenes, from "To Have and Have Not":

That guy complements her well on the screen.

Hey cheeto, this looks like an awesome event. Nice to put a face to your name too. Did you organise it?

Also, I'm gonna have to start following @zurvanic now. 😍

Haha - I certainly did not organise this - wouldn't mind helping them out next year though ☺️ It was organised by @sportspodium (they did it last year too - last year @ned was actually one of the speakers!!!) 😳 Wish I was there for that!!
Haha - watch all the girls falling for @zurvanic 😜

Oh yeah, that would have been awesome. I'd love to go to something like this.

Ha! Watch me climb over all those other girls 😁

Whahaha 😂

Lol go get him girl!

Your post looks great, no problem with the writing!! The photos are great.

Pity I missed a pic with you @rynow!! Thanks for the comment though - really appreciate it ☺️ Was great meeting you in person!!

Good photos seem to make a big difference in blog payouts.

Thanks for this. My favourite was Natalie and Rohan. I find Natalie du Toit so inspiring, always have.

Glad you liked it man!! I thought Lorien was pretty good too 😉

Yeah but I didn't understand like ninety five percent of what he said

Haha!! Then next time you'll understand a little more 😉

Yeah let's hope so 😎

You just got to read up on the basics of Bitcoin, then it should start making sense. Bitcoin (well, how it actually all works) is just amazing!!

I'm sure it is but I need an intuitive explanation, can't seem to find one 😄

Awesome stuff, Hopefully I can join you guys for the next one :-)

That would be awesome @beetroot!!

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Good report back @cheeto.blue. Looks like a very well organized and supported event. Well done to all involved.

Thanks @bmj!! It was amazing!! Do you guys have anything similar in Aus??

We're all pretty spread out across the place. I'm sure something will be in the pipeline soon, even on a regional level. We just need to round up the troops and get organised.

That would be awesome!! I hope you guys have a get together pretty soon 👍🏻

Thanks for the update and looks like a good time was had by everyone @cheero.blue

It certainly was @joanstewart! Make a plan to join next year hey ☺️

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