Photo from @ninjace

It was once just a thought that was born out of the desire to meet other Steemians in our locality. From there, the thought became bigger as it eveloved into the SteemPH Meet-Up Caravan, and as of yesterday, the thought is no longer just a thought at all. I present to you the first of a series of meet-ups from the SteemPH Meet-Up Caravan.

Preparations

The Venue

Bahay na Tisa is a Family Style Restaurant located on Independencia Street, Malolos Bulacan. In my early days in the platform, I wrote about our family's delightful experience when we chanced upon this gem of a place one Saturday afternoon. You can find that post here. I found our stay there to be memorable and I immediately thought of the place as an alternative when it became clear that first venue of choice was not feasible.

Power Point Presentation

We had a total of 45 slides in our presentation that covered the topics we believe are important. It covered talking points like SteemPH and its projects, Witnesses, Sndbox, Utopian.io, and Powering-Up. We also had a few lessons on Aligning Images, Basic Text Formats, and Content Creations.

Souvenirs

As a gesture of thanks to the Steemains and non-Steemians who took the time to meet with us, we thought of giving them a memorabilia of their participation. We opted for a fridge magnet that they can just easily stick on their fridge. That way, they would see it everyday and maybe serve as a reminder to Steem on!.

For Non-Steemians

For the Steemians

Ours is already on our fridge

The Banner

We designed our banner showing the SteemPH and SteemNest logos. One of the goals of the SteemPH Meet-up Caravan is to educate existing Steemians to improve their content with the help of SteemNest. @steemnest is a SteemPH initiative that aims to serve as a hub for content creators. It has published 3 lessons since its launch last month. Below are links to their lessons, which were created with the intent of helping newly-signed up steemians and content creators alike.

Lesson Number 1 | Your First Few Days in Steemit
Lesson # 2 | Creating Content
Lesson Number 3 | Witnesses

The Meet-Up

We arrived at the venue about 20 minutes before 3PM to set up before everyone shows up and we were surprised to see someone was already there. Yie is a non-steemian who was invited by @enjieneer. Before long, the others arrived one by one and at 3:30, we started our program.

Photo by @ninjace

Introductions
We started with our introductions. Red and I told our audience who we were, how we found steemit and why we were doing the Meet-up Caravan. We then presented SteemPH and its mission, the Core, and the different SteemPH projects like ArtGuildPH, SteemNest, and the Meet-Up Caravan. We also showed them the different arms of SteemPH, like @steemph.cebu, @steemph.iligan, @steemph.manila, @steemp.davao, and @steemph.laguna which was launched just recently.

We then went to our lessons from SteemNest and delved more deeply into Aligning Images, Text Formatting, Content Creation, and how important creating quality content is to become successful in Steemit.

We also reminded them about Engagement and how Steemit is a social media platform where the need to socialize is ever-present.

Witnesses
Red does a lot of analysis as contribution to Utopian.io. One of them was about the number of accounts that have already voted for Steemit Witnesses, which is dismally low. For this reason, we made it a point to cover Witnesses, why they are important to the platform, and how to vote for one. We also told them about the Steemit Witnesses who we endorse at SteemPH ( @ausbitbank, @surpassinggoogle, @cloh76.witness, @precise), closing in on the reason behind such endorsement.

Most of the private messages I receive in Discord are about @sndbox and @utopian-io - I am a regular contributor to utopian.io and I assume people ask me about Sndbox because Red is a cohort - and so we decided to also touch on the topic too.

Utopian.io

I personally voted for @utopian-io as a witness because I can see how the project is helping a lot of people. Talking about utopian.io meant opening opportunities for the others to earn. We discussed how the project works, the ways they too can contribute, and of course how they should abide with the rules of the project.

Sndbox

Talking about Sndbox is tantamount to talking about quality content, something that is highly valued in the platform. Red shared that he thinks he got into the project because of creating content he can be proud of, and through engagement. He also discussed how the percentage of the upvotes from Sndbox is based on the content and materials on the post, which we can safely say can be our basis too on what good content is.

Power-Up
Red and I are big advocates of powering-up and we wrote a number of posts about the importance and benefits of choosing to put more value into your upvotes. We are not financial advisers and we are not trying to tell everyone what they should do with their own money. Instead, we are sharing our views based on what we have experienced and our knowledge of how Steemit works.

We finished off our presentation with an open group discussion while the food was being served. @oppaniayu, @ninjace, @markjason, @rruubbiie, @enjieneer, @joninacalara, @dombaltazar, @mikel2la1, @jamescarlo, @steemitph, @dandalion, @littlesteemitph, @dandalioncub, @nneljuu, @angelicamaniquis, and 3 non-steemians attended the meet-up. The truth is, this is a very small group compared to the other ones we are in contact with in provinces where the Caravan will go next. This only shows that there is much room for growth here. What I love about this group though is that everyone was enthusiastic about doing things that would improve Steemit visibility in this side of the country. We talked about future projects for Bulacan, one of which was to infiltrate the state university. We want students from Bulacan to be in the platform and coincidentally, one of the attendees, @dombaltazar, knows someone from the student council. I am very excited as to how this bit will unfold.

After eating, each one of the participants were given time to introduce themselves and they shared what they learned from our presentation. If getting our message across was any indication of success, then the afternoon we spent with them was not spent in vain. Their response on the importance of quality content, engagement and powering-up is a validation that doing the Meet-up Caravan is not wasted effort. I found renewed inspiration from this group of Steemians and I am thankful to them more than they would ever know.

Photo from @enjieneer

If you would like to support initiatives on community building and enrichment, kindly check out @steemph, @steemph.cebu, @steemph.iligan, @steemph.davao and @steemph.manila

Consider casting your witness votes for @precise, @steemgigs @cloh76.witness and @ausbitbank who have been adding invaluable contribution to the community.

To cast your votes, just go to
https://steemit.com/~witnesses