STEEM JOURNEY WITH @ROELANDP

This is the eleventh in the series of posts about me getting together with a Steemian for a chat about crypto and their life on the Steem Blockchain.

Today I am writing about @RoelandP – and I have had to show some true discipline to keep it to a sensible wordcount - as there was simply not much~room to talk about it all!!

Roeland is a time served web developer and app builder who lives in Amsterdam and joined Steemit on 7 July 2016 just a few days after “payout” began on the Steem blockchain. There were less than 40,000 registered accounts and so life was very different in those early days, with all users capable of earning significant rewards.

A feature of the immutable blockchain is the permanent blog history here on Steemit and I have used one of the cool tools built by @eroche to interrogate this. The tool called SteemAnalytics shows you the plotted history of posts and how much they earnt in rewards: https://eroche.shinyapps.io/SteemAnalytics/. So now, you too, can have fun finding out about some of Roeland’s legendary posts: including the male makeup tutorial, the Steem pitch he gave to Oracle executives, SteemFest 1, SteemFest 2 and his own Witness intro post in October 2016 which is here.

This was a really useful tool to learn a little more about Roeland but because I was so busy embroiled in writing an article landing page on the topic of why the Steem blockchain is a great opportunity for an investor I didn’t research some cool topics of conversation until after we had spoken!!

Next time I’m going ask him about the makeup tutorial, kitesurfing, and the amazing steemwhale.io but on this occasion, we talked mainly about:

1. Websites, Tools and Apps
2. SteemFest 3
3. Mushrooms in Dutch Parks!!

I met Roeland back in April and we have planned to catch up over a coffee ever since. Here we are in London – where we met a little randomly at the #promo-steem / @steem-ambassador initiative which totally rocked the London Cryptocurrency Show.

Websites, Tools and Apps

It’s difficult to know where to begin…..Roeland has brought his skills of website/app building from his pre-blockchain career and whilst the first few days of his journey on Steemit might have been about content creation – it soon tuned to the technology side.

”Looking back through a “data lens”……those early days were so different on Steemit – the ability to earn from content was huge, and everyone made some decent Steem back then – it looks to me that Roeland fell quickly into the mindset of applying his skills to the requirements and benefit of the community” @cryptocurator

Having been on the blockchain for just 7 days Roeland built the web application called SteemStream and published it on the 14 July 2016 with his post here. The post made it to the trending page- and he was one of the pioneers and catalysts to the community of DApp builders. Roeland recognised that his content didn’t need to be a random photograph to earn a reward instead it could be the announcement post about bringing some new tech that would bring value to the blockchain. And so this was the way it continued…………

I’ve presented below a table – it’s a bit like a RoelandP Tech Roadmap – but it is looking backwards on the journey instead!

Look at this mini-table of tech initiatives he has brought to the Steem Blockchain:

Tech or Web or App	Type	Month	Status
SteemStream	Live Stream Tool	July 2016	Live
Street Fighter	Fun App	July 2016	Live
SteemStory	Tool/Fun App	July 2016	Live
Steem Tools	Web Database	July 2016	Live but superseded by Steem Projects by @noisy
Steem-o-Graph	Tool	Aug 2016	Live
SteeM.V.P	Tool	Aug 2016	Live
Soliciting Power	Web Database	April 2018	Live
SteemWhale.io	Uber Cool App Art Statue	July 2018	Live
Steem Wallet	Wallet App	August 2018	Live

Look at this image for a bit of nostalgia!!:

We are blessed with DApps on the Steem blockchain – and it was Roelands "Steem Tools" which tracked all of them and was referred to on the menu bar of Steemit for over a year. It was at Steemfest 2 when @noisy introduced "Steem Projects" as an enhanced development and improvement of the database/registry that Roeland identified this should be the new link on the Steemit website. There are now in excess of 440 sites and tools registered on Steem Projects this is maintained by @noisy and is a permanent link on the side bar on the steemit homepage and is also found here and this the summary of Roeland's dev work Here.

Soliciting Power is one of Roeland’s 2018 projects and was borne out of the fact he personally gets a lot of requests for delegation. He uses Soliciting Power as a central register of projects requesting delegation of SP. Roeland uses the website himself to determine that his delegations are congruent with his missions and ideals. Roeland is currently delegating over 55% of his Steem Power to projects.

SteemWallet is another project borne from a problem – it started from a conversation in Amsterdam with @pharesim where they discussed the absence of a simple wallet app just for the monetary transactions. Being an experienced mobile app developer Roeland took on the challenge and quickly built the App for both Android and IOS. On its next release it will include some alternative language options to include German, Romanian, Spanish and French.

It was important for me to understand Roeland’s views on tech development on the Steem blockchain – I was keen to know how much of a pull the Steem blockchain might have so we can market to more developers:

“Development on the Steem blockchain can be pretty easy – I just use my existing knowledge of common codes and programming languages, you don’t need to learn anything new like you would do for Ethereum forexample. The entry barrier to making Apps on here is low. It is a great feeling as a developer to see people actually using the Apps you build, and this is especially cool to see this happen in this community setting. It’s a really good feeling.”

I don’t know if you have noticed but with Roeland you don’t get many posts about forthcoming tech projects he definitely likes to announce his projects upon delivery rather than building expectations. It might also explain sometimes why you might find a quiet blog for a few weeks whilst he is building and developing. I personally don’t need to see bland weekly updates from all my Witnesses on the technicalities of their node updates.

I sense Roeland will keep finding solutions to problems when he sees them and will enjoy making useful tools for the community. I think he has been a source of inspiration for developers on the platform from the early days and at the end of the day we are still in the early beta days.

I know Roeland has the pedal to the metal on SF3 but I am keen to see what fun and useful applications he brings to the blockchain after the fest, perhaps we will see a forward looking Roadmap and his development time will mushroom.

SteemFest 3

It’s now full steam ahead on the SteemFest 3 train. There is a lot of intense planning that will go into this event, which I am sure anyone who attended Steemfest 1 in Amsterdam and Steemfest 2 in Lisbon will be fully aware of.

I can’t imagine there are many people reading this who don’t already know that Roeland is the founder of the Steemfest events programme, but just in case you need to catch up Steemfest 3 has been announced and takes place in Krakow, Poland in November, it will be the biggest so far and you will need to follow Roeland’s blogs for the all the updates as it counts down to the event.

I’m not going to go over the same ground as Roeland but just to add some things from my discussion:

1) Speakers

There are still slots available for speakers, priority would go to projects who have not spoken at SF1 or SF2 and have an interesting project to introduce to the community.

2) Round Tables

New things coming to SF3 include: a system of “Round Tables” to run in parallel with the “Main Stage”. This will be an extra level of engagement that might be really useful for projects and communities. Hosts will be able to book a table for a timeslot, to discuss anything; forexample;

• Introduction to a project
• Workshops
• Ask Me Anything Session

3) SF3 Mobile App

Anyone thinking of going should download the @good-karma Steemfest App- which will be refreshed with all the latest details for Krakow venues, maps and guides. Please go here for the directions to download Android or IOS App: https://steemfest.com/2017/app/.

4) Are you going to SF3?

If you are going you might like to include this logo designed by @rubencress as a signature to your posts – so you know who to arrange to meet in real life! I’m not sure I can make it yet, myself, so this is just for information:

Read more about that here

There is no other breaking news, as testament to the planning and comms, other than another reminder that ticket prices go up in 11/12 days!!

Mushrooms in the Park!

Whilst preparing for SF3 Roeland had a final couple of fiat projects to finish off under his mobile apps brand Shoudio. Most of his work has fallen into a niche, building digital tour guides mostly for nature parks for Dutch and Belgium park services. They can be navigational, informational as well as having audio and visual features.

There is a slight irony in people taking the effort to get some fresh forest air and re-connect with nature only to plug yourself back into an app. Roeland can see the take up and activity on his apps, and, is excited to see his work being useful – he commented about this being a peak season for people visiting parks - as he said people tend to like to do Autumnal walks in Netherlands, because of the mushrooms. {What! In Amsterdam! What does he mean!}

Ahhhhhhh- we had a bit of fun here, with me commenting, on whether there was an in-built guide on which mushrooms, are Pickable, Poisonous or Psychedelic!!

Quite rightly he set me straight that it was the fourth P – and that people just found them Pretty and wanted to take Photographs of them whilst on their walks!

“The Mushroom Trip App” – might attract a whole new crowd!!

Final Thoughts

So, Roeland is focussed on SF3 now and then he will be even more dedicated to the Steem blockchain, if that is even possible!

“I like Steem for the fact that you can build on top of it and for the community that is here. I got drawn into the platform more and more, and I have now locked myself into this thing by organising the Steemfests too.

I am an investor of time in the blockchain, and I have attained a large holding of Steem, so I am biased, but it will be very nice to see STEEM make it back to a higher valuation, and I look forward to having more time to add value to the Steem blockchain through development and community”

I’ve got to the end of the article without really touching upon many topics like, the responsibilities of being a Steem Witness, the future of Steem, and I haven’t got time to recount the interesting conversation we had about voting power only to simply show that he has a clever way to ensure his vote is well distributed. I didn’t quite realise what he meant until I later ran this graph on outgoing votes on steemreports:

Over 2,500 accounts have received an upvote in 31 days – now that is a pretty cool pie chart!

I really look forward to seeing what he has in the pipeline next and I really have to thank him for all he is contributed to the community so far, including some very generous delegations.

@cryptocurator

Here is the back catalogue of CryptoCoffeeChats:

Episode	Account	Link	Short
Episode 10	@surfermarly	here	Steem Ambassador & Inspirator
Episode 9	@fredrikaa	here	Steempress Co-Founder
Episode 8b	@FutureThinker	here	Promo-mentor & Steem Ambassador
Episode 8a	@FutureThinker	here	Discord Champion & Steem Ambassador
Episode 7	@mcfarhat	here	Steem-Ambassador & Utopian Contributor
Episode 6	@bitrocker2020	here	The King of #TeamMalaysia
Episode 5	@Danieldoughty	here	The Prince of Borneo
Episode 4	@Pennsif	here	The only Dolphin in Wales
Episode 3	@Steemitph	here	Philippines based Red Dayou
Episode 2	@samstickkz	here	Stach hero
Episode 1	@anarcotech	here	Yorkshireman & Blockchain Philosopher

The collection now covers Steem personalities from the Ether, Malaysia, Borneo, Wales, Philippines, Nigeria, France, Lanzarote, Netherlands and the UK.