A couple of weeks ago we made the announcement about the SteemPH Meet Up Caravan. Our first stop is my hometown in Malolos, Bulacan. The primary objective of the Caravan is to help solidify and grow existing communities of Steemians outside of the main Philippine cities.

This post will be about the very first SteemPH Caravan. The accounts of what transpired in the meet up, what we loved about event, and key learnings to improve upon in future planned events.

Thank You Awesome Steemians

We are starting with this because it is most important for us. We've been able to do this so far because of all your support. We referred to this effort as a way of giving back, but the truth is we are only able to do this because of the amazing response from the community.

We would have refrained from being specific to not make anyone who helped out less appreciated, but there are those who really went out of their way to support us.

• To our @steemph family for your guidance and encouragement.
• To @markjason and @enjieneer who helped us with encouraging both Steemians and Non-Steemians to attend the meet up.
• To the rest of the attendees for spending your afternoon with us;
• And everybody who read, commented on, upvoted, and re-steemed the earlier posts about the Bulacan Meet Up and SteemPH Meet Up Caravan.

The Meet Up & Key Learnings

We are pleased that everybody came on time. Because of this we were able to cover the whole agenda, and even had the time to go around the room and share unique experiences about how each of us got into the platform, what have we learned so far, and our views about how we can improve as individuals and as a community.

Following the earlier communicated agenda, we spoke about these topics during the presentation.

Steemit & SteemPH Introduction

For the Non-Steemians in attendance, we spoke a little bit about what is Steemit is, the Steem Blockchain, how it works, and the many benefits of being a Steemian.

We gave a brief introduction about what @steemph is, our objectives, the core team, some of the projects held, and the sub-communities and their projects.

We highlighted the growth of the Philippine user base as studied in one of @steemitph's analysis, and the role @steemph is playing in that exponential growth rate. We briefly spoke about @steemph.curator, the thought behind it, and its relation to the weekly featured post from the @steemph's sub-communities. We told everybody about the Ask Me Anything session all about the @steemph.curator happening in the evening today (February 18, Sunday) at 6:00 PM local time.

@steemnest Lessons

We transitioned to the @steemnest project of @steemph. We spoke briefly about how it aims to help Filipino Steemians level up the quality of contents. This part of the discussion created a lot of interest from the participants. This was very promising for us. This tells us that everyone has deep interest to improve themselves as content creators.

We touched on the topics around text and image formatting and alignment, brilliant authors for specific niches that the participant can check out. We encouraged the participant to check @steemnest account for these lessons:

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

Vote Your Witness

Here we referred to @steemitph's recent analysis Blockchain Business Intelligence: Slicing The Account Table By Categories where he noted an observation that only 3.5% of the entire Steemit user-base has voted for witnesses.

We discussed what witnesses do for the Steem blockhain, why it is important to vote for witnesses, and how the act of voting for the right witnesses is good for the community. We discussed about the witnesses that @steemph endorse and why. In every footer of posts from this account gives some instructions on how to vote for witnesses, and the witnesses @steemph endorse.

@utopian-io & @sndbox

This is another section that the participants found most interesting. We started with the basics of @utopian-io, what is it about, what are its objective, and how rewarding it is to be a contributor. We spoke about how both @steemitph and @dandalion are regular contributor and cited some other Filipino contributors.

We spoke about what can be contributed, the rules, the moderation involved, and we showed everyone some of our most recent contributions.

We spoke about what @sndbox is and what it aims to achieve for the community as an incubator. We used the @sndbox model to hint what good content looks like. We presented the @sndbox vote weight grid where the upvote is dependent upon the length of the post, the count and quality of photos, the topics and objectives of the posts, the clarity of the message and presentation, and formatting.

We talked about the benefits of being a Sndbox cohort, and the responsibilities that come with it. We also told the participants about the cohorts schedule and how they too can be a cohort when the next batch starts in July.

Powering Up

In this section we spoke about the benefits of powering up, why were doing it, and why we believe that Filipino Steemians should do the same.

We referred the participants to the many posts on the subject from @dandalion and @steemitph. We are most pleased with the response from the participants on this section. This topic is the most important for us to deliver in the future meet ups for the SteemPH Caravan. We all felt like the participants now have a deeper appreciation of the importance of powering up, and how it can help the Filipinos and the whole Steemit community grow.

What's Next for the Bulacan Community

I am from Bulacan and I am really keen on driving growth for this province. I am well aware however, that I will be busy enough going around the Philippines on behalf of @steemph for the SteemPH Meet Up Caravan. We left the participants with a challenge to spend time and effort to help grow the Bulacan community and aim for our very own @steemph.bulacan. This will have to be discussed with the @steemph's core team however, and I really feel we still have a lot of hard work to do as a team before that happens.

We told the group that I am not keen in taking the leadership of @steemph.bulacan if and when it gets created, and that one of them can potentially take the task on, with assurance of all out support from us.

Photos From The Meet Up

The Hosts @steemitph & @dandalion - Photo from @ninjace

Groupie with the Participant - Photo from @ninjace

The Presentation - Photos from @joninacalara

The Venue: Bahay na Tisa, Malolos, Bulacan - Photos from @enjieneer

The Souvenirs As Our Token of Appreciation for the Attendees - Photo from @joninacalara

Next Stop Cavite

We are excited to go to the next stop of the SteemPH Meet Up Caravan. We've already made the announcement and tentative plans and venue in @steemitph post "Cavite Steemit Meet Up Plan".

We feel that this one is more promising in terms of participation since the community in Cavite has been involved from the planning stage. Steemian from Cavite like are actively helping us in gathering attendees and looking for the best venue for the event. Special thanks goes to @watersnake101 and @annazsarinacruz who are both been very engaged in planning the Cavite Meet Up.

Credits:

Cover Photo Group Picture - @ninjace
Thank You Image - Pixabay
SteemPH Logo - @steemph
SteemNest Logo - @steemnest
Witness Votes - @steemitph
Utopian Logo - @utopian-io
Sndbox Logo - @sndbox
Is Powering Up Beneficial - @steemitph

Follow @bayanihan to view the work of exceptional talents from the Philippines!

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

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