Thanks to the efforts of a group of tireless Steemians led by @jacor and sponsors including @sportspodium, QuadroIT and Norton Rose Fulbright, last Saturday was a red-letter day in the calendars of many Gauteng-based Steemians and some from as far afield as Limpopo. The event was live-streamed.
Steemians are real life people
This is what some Steemians of South Africa look like in real life. I had the privilege of meeting several members of @teamsouthafrica, and realising there are far more connections between us than I had previously known. There I am, flanked by @cheeto.blue and @marcel1965, two of the most faithful Steemians and expert "herders" of @teamsouthafrica.
There are brothers, sisters, sons (not that many daughters - hmmm), friends, husbands, wives and all manner of other connections already active on Steemit or looking to become more active. So @marcel1965 and @rynow are brothers, and @jacor is related to the Bear clan of South Africa's South Coast. So much to find out about this group of intrepid travellers into the crypto-unknown.
We realised we knew each other by our Steem handles, but not necessarily by our real names, so scribbled our Steem handles by hand under our names on our nametags.
Fun with geography
For non-South Africans, Gauteng and Limpopo are provinces in South Africa; Johannesburg is situated in the heart of Gauteng. That yellow star just to the north and a bit to the west of Johannesburg is Fourways.
The map above shows where Fourways is located relative to Johannesburg and Pretoria, while the one below shows you how Gauteng is nestled between four other provinces. Limpopo, where @cheeto.blue hails from, is quite far north but not that long a drive on our excellent highways. We were so glad he could make it in person!
The programme
The day started bright and early on a typically stunning Joburg spring Saturday. After some get-to-know-you-in-real-life coffees and breakfast bites, we kicked off with a bang with Steemit Inc VP Marketing, Mitchell Loureiro (@zurvanic) providing the keynote speech.
From there, @gavvet gave us a thought-provoking perspective on whither the crypto-future, followed by BTC maximalist Lorien Gamaroff (@gamaroff) giving us some insights into the potential future of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.
The next round really was a gift to entrepreneurs - Matt Brown, podcaster extraordinaire, and Natalie du Toit, South African swimming Olympian, both spoke to the hearts of entrepreneurs with the kind of reality check that reminds us it is all worthwhile.
Next up was @SportsPodium speaking about their soon-to-be-launched platform, then we had "The Legal BIT" from Norton Rose Fulbright lawyer and Smart Contract/Social Media law expert Rohan Isaacs.
Finally Mitchell summed up the day for us briefly before we headed off to a quintessential lunch in the Indaba Hotel's renowned Boma.
Quick recap of each talk
Caveat: if you want great photos, have a look at @cheeto.blue's post here. Since I'm more of a note-taker than a photographer, I'm relying on the rest of the crowd to give you an idea what the event looked like. I'll give you a quick summary of what the speakers said.
Mitchell Loureiro
Mitchell spoke to us as Steemit pioneers - he emphasised, "You ARE early adopters!", and focused on the short to medium term challenges facing the Steem blockchain and the Steemit platform.
- The user interface (UX)
- Scalability
- Adoption
UX
Most of us regular users have gotten used to the general unfriendliness and difficulty of use of the platform. It's when we try to introduce someone new to the platform we find ourselves saying we'll carve out a couple of hours to help them get started understanding how to use Markdown, how to insert images and how to set up a post for Steemit.
According to Mitchell, Steemit's ultimate purpose is to provide proof of concept of the Steemit blockchain. The Steemit platform is not the ultimate end goal of the Steem blockchain, and the Steem team is actively seeking ways to help creators of applications interact with the technology.
Scalability
It's terrific that there are currently about 100 000 active users on Steemit daily now. One of the reasons people are attracted to blockchain transactions is the security.
However, there is a significant cost associated with the security provided on the blockchain - transaction verification makes it slow. Bitcoin is throttled, and Ethereum is capped. Steem currently does some 1 million transactions per day, the most in the crypto world. The next biggest in terms of transactions is Bitshares.
This is a significant challenge for Steem - if it wants more users (hundreds of millions rather than the already impressive few hundred thousand users it has today), it will have to be able to cope with far more than 1 million transactions per day. To the moon, Alice!
Adoption
Let's face it, the UX is not the biggest attractor to new entrants, and it has kept some new entrants from persevering as users.
Big announcement
Smart Media Tokens (SMTs) are on the way. They are Steemit Inc's solution to the three challenges of the UX, scalability and adoption. Mitchell referenced a Blue Paper which came out shortly after the revised White Paper. That sounds like something we should all go and read! It's about us owning the attention economy, rather than Facebook, Twitter and the like. If we produce value, including cultural value through the production of content others want to read/view/consume and share, we should derive rewards beyond "likes" for that value.
SMTs will help make the Steem blockchain easy to build on for any application which involves the attention economy. Previously, building on this blockchain has been difficult because there's been no interface. Mitchell emphasised for those who aren't aware that they've open-sourced the entirety of Steem, and any developer is free to use it. Steemit Inc does not control the Steem blockchain.
How does this address the UX challenge?
My understanding of this is that in addition to the Steemit interface, there'll be multiple on-ramps to the Steem blockchain, built by many app developers. One thing app developers are usually pretty good at is making their apps easy for their users to interact with.
There was a mobile app developer in the audience. While I didn't get a chance to chat with him after the event, it would be terrific to hear from him and other developers (How? Excellent question. There must be a channel on steemit.chat where these guys can air their views - if they know it exists...) on the utility of SMTs as a basis for building their blockchain apps.
How will SMTs help with scalability?
Making it easier for app developers to create new ways for this blockchain to be used means that more and broader audience bases can be reached. With just a few clicks, new players will be able to use the Steem blockchain for whatever their specific purpose might be in the attention economy.
How will SMTs solve the adoption challenge?
These challenges are all interlinked in the end. New players, greater adoption. A White Paper on SMTs is coming soon. Currently, Steemit Inc is in talks with some 10 or so projects which will use SMTs as their link to the Steem blockchain. Every one of these projects will be inter-operable with Steem and each other.
He did another skirt lift by pre-announcing another piece of tech, to be formally announced shortly, which is designed to enhance inter-operability.
Check out @steemitblog for more, sez I.
He closed on an inspirational note, saying that Steemit intends to transform the internet so that all of us go beyond being consumers of value on the net to creators of value.
@gavvet coined the term "Vinternet"
Gavin's presentation was a crypto-futurist archetype.
He coined the term "Vinternet" meaning the "internet of value", which we as Steemians are part of creating. The current internet is a means of exchanging information and to a certain extent, payments. However, the Vinternet will enable micropayments and smart contracts to enable the exchange of value at much smaller scale than currently, unlocking value which was previously undervalued.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
Referring to global conversations at gatherings such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Internet of Things have become coffee talk, Gavin reminded us that whatever we know now, chances are these will change dramatically during the 4th Industrial Revolution.
The crypto bubble
I hope that @cheeto.blue has a photo of the so-called 2011 crypto bubble. You can't even see it on a graph of the USD BTC price through to 2017.
@gamaroff
That was a good segue into Lorien's presentation.
As a BTC maximalist, he gave a terrific overview of the BTC versus Bitcoin Cash (BCH) debate, what SegWit (segregated witness) was about. Essentially, the debate is over bigger blocks versus decentralised smaller blocks, and the fees that miners derive from mining. He explained how bigger blocks are at the root of BTC's current challenges; miners need bigger hard drives, more bandwidth and more energy to mine the fewer BTC available to be mined. Those who've transacted in BTC know that transactions can take up to an hour - unconfirmed transactions are waiting for blocks to fill. In particular, he referred to the constraints of 1MB per block for BTC mining, and miners' thinking in whether to fully populate a block to 1MB or just go ahead and hash it with 500kB of fee-generating transactions.
The small block crowd are the BTC crowd, and the big block crowd are rooting for BCH.
A potential solution, currently only at the concept stage, is to keep BTC in the "settlement" layer and create a "transaction" layer, or the Lightning network. So far, the Lightning network isn't even in production.
His key advice was to watch the BTC/BCH charts rather than the Bitcoin to USD price.
Matt Brown
Matt spoke to us on how to prepare ourselves for the future.
Geez, he was potty-mouthed. And hysterically funny. And inspiring. What a great speaker choice.
He shared his personal journey which most of us Steemians can relate to - after all, we're entrepreneurs at heart and need to hear (often) that for all those fantastic success stories we see, there are many stories of failure...and putting in the hard effort is a great way to not be one of those failure stories.
Our journeys will be full of roadblocks, difficulties and seemingly insurmountable obstacles, but persistence and a "never say die" attitude of really wanting our success, not listening to the naysayers and staying cool on the cliff edge might just get us through.
Natalie du Toit
All you have to do is Google her, and you'll find out plenty about this incredibly talented swimmer who at the age of 14 lost part of her left leg when a driver taking a shortcut in a parking lot drove into Natalie on her scooter. She was already competing at top level when this happened and had already gone through a number of challenges. She shared with us how she didn't let those smaller challenges and then the Big One of losing her leg stop her from pursuing her dream of competing in the Olympics. She did, and she made South Africa extremely proud, and now she's supporting SportsPodium.
SportsPodium
Through a Q&A to SportsPodium's CTO and CMO, Natalie helped @sportspodium to present their vision of SportsPodium as a way of transforming sport - "Levelling the playing field". They've written plenty of articles on Steemit already and I urge you to follow, upvote and resteem them. Plus you might want to get yourself some PODs.
Rohan Isaacs
Ah, the Legal BIT. Some of my best friends are lawyers (really!), so I was ready to enjoy his presentation and was not only not disappointed, was keen to chat more with him afterwards. He gave an excellent overview of Smart Contracts and the legal dispensation which governs these under Common Law. The most important takeaway for me was that Smart Contracts don't stand in for real life contracts - they can enhance these and introduce efficiencies by eliminating aspects such as verification. He gave a number of insurance and farming industry examples which should cause most insurance adjustors to start looking carefully at their alternative skill set. They might soon be out of jobs.
Rohan also gave us some impromptu insight into protecting your privacy on the internet (don't have a social media presence at all) and being safe on the Dark Net (it's fine, really, but there are things there which can't be unseen once they've been seen).
Mitchell closing
Mitchell's closing was short and to the point:
- the Vinternet - you heard it here first.
- Study your protocols and do your due diligence when choosing a crypto course of action.
- Ask the right questions.
- Grit is worth everything - if you can take the pain you'll get the rewards.
- SportsPodium is an example of how crypto and Steem may indeed transform the world for the better.
- Smart Contracts could change how the insurance industry is governed.
In fact, thanks to crypto and the Steem blockchain, we could see a dramatic shift in how societies are governed - sooner than we expect.
Many thanks to the organisers for putting together this great event! Look forward to Steem Saturday 2018, and in between some mini get togethers.
Team South Africa banner designed by @bearone
Genial!
Merci, @davidrestrepo!
Great post @kiligirl!!!
So informative as usual 👍🏻☺️
Here is your pic of the so-called bubble - not the best pic, but I hope it will do...
Thanks, @cheeto.blue, you are too kind. And yes, that's exactly the bubble pic I was looking for. Bubble schmubble! As I mentioned to you at the event, it's eerie how the BTC price trend is mirroring global temperature increases. Coincidence? Probably.
Haha!! I hope that's an coincidence ☺️
I was chatting to @gavvet about it - like he said - it can only become a bubble once it is mainstream, and it definitely is not mainstream as yet ☺️
True dat.
a very good post and I really like this post
😊😊
This is great and awesome project guys, keep it up hope to see this coin on top as a result of the great team work.
We all wish @SportsPodium the very best! Thanks for stopping in, @allcoins. 😊😊
Very good @kiligirl
Thank you, @aswad 😊😊
Good post Can you please upvote and follow me that would be very generous from you thank you.
Nice post @kiligirl
Your blog is wonderful. I like it very much. Keep sharing stuff like that.
Thank you, @shaanivc, much appreciated 😊😊
gran post los felicito!!!
Gracias, @juanpe2012! 😊😊
I just got involved in steemit 2 days ago and published my first story crossing the Atlantic, Great to see some South Africans here. Lets take Steemit to the next level!
And that, @simplypositive, is the kind of dynamic positive thinking we need on this platform! @teamsouthafrica is quite active.
Are you South African, or do you have a South African connection? Quite a lot of people train in Cape Town to work on superyachts, then head to the Mediterranean to find a good yacht to work on.
Regardless, thank you for stopping in and sharing your positive outlook! 😊😊
I am South African, I also trained in Cape Town. Thank you for the kind words, have a lekker week :)
Did you train at Ocean Sailing Academy, by any chance?
No, I trained with SYSA! Jason is the owner. Great guy
Cool! A great way to launch a life of exploring the world. Have a lekker week too! 😊😊
Very detailed and informative post. I have to reread to be able to digest all the information. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read it, @team101. I really appreciate it. 😊😊
Good to know that in South Africa steematians are having a get together to discuss about the future of steemit..we are motivated by your hard work and dedication, as new steematians..
Welcome to Steemit, and thank you for reading, @momi5, it means a lot. I'm sure there's a big Steemit community in India. It took us a while to find each other in South Africa and I'm sure there are new South African Steemians unaware that there is a @teamsouthafrica they can join. May I suggest you check the hashtags India and perhaps teamindia to see if someone has set up a group? Keep me posted! 😊😊
Wow awesome post! I wish I could've been there. I'm in the Cape, so it's a little tough for me to get to that side, but hopefully in the near future I can attend thee things.
Talk soon.
Thanks so much, @enazwahsdarb (should just call you Zane - much easier to type). It would have been terrific to have a larger contingent from @teamsouthafrica there, but South Africa is a really big country and it's not easy or affordable for everyone to travel to Joburg.
We're talking about planning (see what I did there?) in between get togethers, as so much will happen before Steem Saturday 2018, so check out the @teamsouthafrica discord channel for updates. Will be wonderful to meet you in person.
😊😊
Awesome words right there :) We are sure to meet sooner or later, so I am not worrying :) I appreciate those words of encouragement too. Very cool of you! :P
See you around. Maybe in my comments section ;D Talk soon.
😊😊
We should engage in each other's content more too. Talk soon :)
Good idea. Have a good night. 🌛🌛
Excellent in depth report back on the events of the day, thanks @kiligirl it fills the gaps when you missed the day.
Thank you so much, @joanstewart, and I can let you in on a secret - it will help me when I've forgotten 90% of what was said on Saturday, so basically writing a detailed post is a form of self-defense...the blockchain remembers forever! 😜😜
I agree!!!
@kiligirl the three of us are looking great on the cover photo!
Thanks for the write up of the day, it helped a lot to do a quick recap of the day
Gosh, and I hate photos of myself. These are actually the first pics of me on Steemit hey - my wife says it's a milestone 😂
😜🤣
Plesier, @marcel1965, and I really enjoyed getting to know you a bit over lunch after the main sessions. Such an interesting career you've had! We should credit @johannvdwalt for making us all look so good as our Esteemed Photographer in Residence.
There are only about 25000 users online on Steemit.com every day
I wish there were 75000 more users using it every day
Well, the good news is that according to @zurvanic, as of last Friday, there were 100 000 daily active return users. I'm sure he'll continue to update the stats. I'm with you - I hope more and more people start to use Steemit. Thanks for stopping in! 😊😊
Let's hope we will have 1 million active users every day soon
I like your targeting! Then 10 million, and 100 million....
1 billion 🔜
You definitely took a lot of comprehensive notes, which served as a very nice recap.
(Just a bit more on the family perspective my dad @bep, my sons, @stormblaze, @starblaze, @nerdking, my daugther @flowergirl and wife @stardust are all registered stemians, but the children are all busy with studies and don't write much, my dad basically gave up as he finds it to difficult. The improved UX might help, at 79 he never worked with computers, while he was working and only taught himself to use it after he retired!!) Nice post.
Hi @rynow, you can take the girl out of school but you can't take the dent out of her second finger from years of taking notes by hand. It's a habit I can't get rid of. 😜😜 Appreciate the kind words about my post.
Thanks so much for pulling the family threads together for me. It's quite a Steemit clan you've got going there.
Yes, it does seem like a challenge to get the younger people onto Steemit, partly because they're busy doing other things but also partly because so few of them use their devices for reading and writing - they seem to use them more for exchanging images and short texts. Perhaps a next generation UX for younger people should be something like SnapChat, and for older people...well, for starters, a much bigger comment box than this 😉. Impressive your dad taught himself to use computers.
It was so good to see you again in real life and I look forward to a "tween" Steemit gathering, perhaps before the end of 2017, when @cheeto.blue comes down from Polokwane on a client trip....
The "tween"gathering" will be great!!
I'm already looking forward to it! Perhaps we can share e-mail addresses through the discord channel so we can schedule something...or am I being old-fashioned? ;-)
I read cheeto's post and then came to yours. Lots of good stuff here, thanks for writing it up.
It looks like it was an awesome day. I would love to attend something like this.
Hi @choogirl, great to hear from you! Thanks for the kind words. I think there are a few Steemians in Panama - maybe you can find each other. 😊😊
Yes, I already know a bunch of them. We've had one meet up, but we are not as organised as you guys with an event like this.
Well, we have to give credit to @jacor and his team for tirelessly leading the Steem Saturday charge two years in a row. They put in a tremendous effort engaging with Steemit Inc.
A lot more goes into these events than meets the eye.
I couldn't agree more. I've been involved in small scale event management and have worked closely with professional conference organisers, some of whom have become good friends, over the years. The common success factors I've observed are excellent project management underpinned by a maniacal attention to detail.
Detail is key. People notice it. I have been involved in event management myself. When I lived in Germany for my MBA I had a job at a catering business where we worked as waiters at big corporate and other events. Sometimes until 6 am. Was pretty hectic. German managers are quite strict sometimes.
Congratulations!!
To receive upvotes from me on all your posts, please consider delegating SP to me as per this post.
informative and and explained elaborately
Thanks for stopping in, @teenovision 😊😊
Wow ! Killer post, very impressed with what you folks are doing. So nice to see steemit spreading across the globe, very cool Indeed ! Great work Hon !
Read More, Reason More ... JTS
Thanks, @jtstreetman! Gee, what a boost to have someone read multiple posts on the same day. This MUST be Friday. 😊😊
lol, I am NOT a stalker, lmao, just trying to get to know the person I just started following ..(Ummm isn't that the definition of a stalker ? LMAO) wow you have kept me up all night ! it is 5:30 am here. so now I'm going to have to stalk, errr ummm follow Tim, I bet he is Very cool also !
I didn't think you were a stalker - lol. I thought you were a human who'd connected with another human over a piece of software which enables this kind of connection. Yay Steemit! Sorry for keeping you up (can you tell I'm Canadian?) After our morning flurry of exchanges, I've had a two hour plane trip and back to back conference calls. It's now officially wine o'clock. 😊😊
lol, was joking about stalking, just trying to read your post to get to know you better. I have learned a lot actually, but didn't have a clue about you being from Canada until I read it in one of your post. As far as a connection through software ... My first connection software was Sony's EQOA (EverQuest Online Adventure) I bought two Sony Playstations and started playing online with my sons. My youngest son was so awesome I bought two more, and we became online gamers. Very successful gamers I might add ... Right before WoW (World of Warcraft) came out we got a Beta Key, sold our two main accounts ($3,500) he bought a killer pc and we started playing Wow. So I got to sit (Bond) with my son everyday at arms length from the time he was ten until the day he left for college. I have met so many wonderful people, and kids and have watched them grow up, some, talked to everyday and know them better than their parents. Btw, three of four of my kids have IQ's that are off the charts ... those three raised on games talking to "real" people all over the world ! So much for Communication software ! lol "lovin Every Minute Of It !"
And no one can keep ME up, MY choice, was worth every minute, lol
Please forgive me for interrupting your work day. I still have not compared our time zones .. at this time in Hot Springs, Arkansas it is Friday 3:12 pm. And it sounds as if you deserve a couple Wine O'clocks ! "Wine Time" has a nice ring to it, beats the hell out of "Beer Thirty" ..imho
btw I have yet to find your Introductory post ....
Hi again, great to hear about how you bonded with your boys through gaming. Brilliant!
Time diff: 7 hours, which explains the lag in some of my answers. Yesterday I was also travelling then went straight into calls so that meant I was off Steemit for most of the day.
My intro post? I'll find out for you when I'm on my computer (too hard to search for it on my phone). I posted it on July 2016 so it's faaaaaaar back on the Steem blockchain.😊😊