To all of my brothers and sisters united in Steemy passion, I give thanks for all that you do, and for just being you.
It's now weeks after the fact, and my mind is still saturated with memories from the first annual SteemFest. The point of this post series is to share my impressions from the journey to Amsterdam to attend SteemFest.
The First Leg of the Journey
November 10th came around and it was time to catch an international flight to Amsterdam. I had never been outside of North America before. With a rocky start to the day (I woke up feeling queasy), after a couple of hours, everything smoothed out, I put in a day's work and made it to my flight on time. I sat next to a woman studying musical psychology on the plane going back to Finland, of whom I happened to indirectly be acquainted her sister through a previous freelance gig in Detroit. Small world eh?
Flying forward across time zones felt like warping through the nighttime, I arrived in Amsterdam around 8 AM (2 AM EST) and was ready to explore. I attempted to take the train from the airport over to Volkshotel, however an obstruction in the track caused everyone to be routed off of the planned course. I didn't mind the detour! Now I could have a leisurely walk to Volkshotel and take in more of the beautiful city.
I strolled along admiring the biking infrastructure for a while towards Vondelpark. The first thing I came across were some block cows. Walking past these made me feel like I was in a Minecraft world.
I had an espresso from a local coffee cart before I entered the park. It was then that I realized I should have spent some time on the plane studying the native language, Dutch. Luckily most of the Europeans I met during my stay were okay with speaking English to me.
I continued along a canal and walked past the Rijksmuseum and Heineken Brouwerij. I would have stopped and enjoyed a beer but I decided waiting a half hour for them to open was not worth it. There would be plenty of fresh Heineken drafts to sample later that night. By now I probably witnessed 2 separate incidences whereby a moped, bike, car, or bicycle narrowly dodged another moving object. I could tell I was going to love this energetic, beautiful, and historic town!
Eventually after walking for 90 minutes, I reached the hotel lobby around 11 AM and started to see some familiar faces. The first person I ran into was @blocktrades and his wife, Donna. We had met once before. It was great hearing about the latest project he has been working on @peerplays. I'm excited for the launch of that blockchain as it will be the first fully deflationary crypto based on Graphene, especially the dividends feature, and look forward to seeing the main-net launch.
Shortly thereafter around noon, the lobby begin to pulse with activity as more Steemians arrived. @saramiller and @everlove were having an impromptu photo shoot and showing off their hand painted gear. @hilarski and @anahilarski were congregating along with so many others already including: @onceuponatime, @kevinwong, @knozaki2015, @kooshikoo, @firepower, @ballinconscious, @steemrollin, @furion, @sjennon, @dan-atstarlite, and @daniel.errey.
Meanwhile you could also see @roelandp, @razvanelulmarin, @foxxycat, @ned, @anduweb and other organizers were running around, coordinating, setting up the registration booth, preparing to make all of the magic happen. The entire weekend was superbly organized, with the intent to facilitate stronger friendships and good conversations. I would highly recommend planning to attend this event next year, where ever it may be.
It was still early, so I decided to go wander around the downtown area with @hilarski and the lovely @anahilarski. One of my stated goals was to check out the coffeeshop scene as I am a fan of the natural herb and wanted to have the experience of buying and consuming it legally. As we meandered down to the center square a.k.a. "Centrum", we came across a talented street performer playing his violin.
I have a soft spot for street performers everywhere, for their unorthodox lifestyle. I've made friends in the past with those types that would wander the states in rail cars, taking secret hobo routes and playing music the whole way in order to buy their next meal or a new set of boots. The performers in Amsterdam were fun and friendly. We also came across a Golden Yoda:
I tipped them both a couple of Euros for their efforts. The guy above is probably actually sitting on a platform that runs through the sleeve and creates a seat under him, but I still applaud the spectacle and the effort involved in building that piece as well as the costume itself.
We continued to wander around the square and eventually found a coffeeshop to duck into. I'm not used to putting tobacco in my joints, and so I immediately learned a lesson: you have to ask for pure if you don't want tobacco mucking around in your cannabis! I smoked the spliffs anyways, while @hilarski, @anahilarski and myself chatted away about LABitConf and Steemit in general.
They filled me in on what was happening at the Bitcoin conference they just attended. One point of interest was that the perception of Steemit to Bitcoiners is poor. Personally following the projects of @dantheman for the past couple of years, that seems to be a recurring theme. Part of me thinks it is due to the imposed threat of a "more advanced" cryptocurrency system, and another part of me thinks that this may be due to the complexity of projects like BitShares and Steem. I think this time around, Steem and Steemit have a more PR driven focus which is helpful in explaining the mechanics of the system better. We had an excellent conversation (this would become a recurring theme for the duration of the fest), and I learned about their marketing startup $200 Social. I think it's really important to have tasteful marketers getting the message out about Steemit and Steem in general, across all of the popular social platforms, thank you for your efforts Randy and Ana. We also dove more into the underlying Steemonomics a little and I helped explain why holding SP is better than holding regular Steem. Eventually around 4:30 PM we meandered back to the Volkshotel, a new friendship forged.
There was some time to kill before the opening drinks started, in the meantime I had a couple of beers with @dan-atstarlite and @daniel.errey in one of their hotel rooms. These guys are fantastic, down to earth, friendly, and fun to talk to. Hopefully @daniel.errey will post more about his 360 degree camera!
and then grabbed a quick shower to wash the traveling funk off. For the rest of this I do not have many good photos because I basically stopped trying to be a photographer when the fest got going. There were many other Steemians taking wonderful pictures, and I did not feel the need to also take many pictures!
Opening drinks was a grand time. I remember chatting with @roadscape @riverhead @arcange @sharingeverybite @shenanigator @ned @razvanelulmarin @xeroc @shla-rafia @liondani @chris4210 @ezzy and @rea, @blueorgy @saramiller, @everlove, @skapeneas, @timsaid and so many others. We all probably drank more than we should have, I know I did. Because of my limited amount of time in the city, I also decided it would be better to sleep when I got back home, and averaged around 3 hours of sleep each night. Our hotel had two lovely parties going on in them all weekend, one on the 7th floor and one in the basement. After the top floor party closed up many would flock to the Doka bar in the basement.
I met some really interesting Europeans dancing and chatting, and I can not remember any of their names! Every one of them wanted to talk politics, I entertained them considering that the general election for POTUS happened earlier in the week. By the end of the chat we were typically friendly, however it re-affirmed that the general emotions and tensions were high. I prefer not to take part in any of it because it can be so dividing. In general, I think people are better off if they can respect differences of opinion rather than shit on it, especially if you want to eventually get any cooperation out of a person. They hold us Americans accountable due to our position in global politics. One positive of the topic was that it tended to be a good segue into explaining Steem and blockchain based currency in general. Politics are controlled by money, so if you can invent a better money that is more democratizing and objectively assured, maybe one day we can use that to wrest control of politics from the influencers with the most money. Politics and other forms of influence bought by massive wealth. Or, maybe the new money just shifts that problem over to a new group of people, and it will be up to the crypto-pioneers to manage that influence in a different way.
Needless to say, I stayed up late. I probably went to bed around 4 PM. @kevinwong and I ended up sharing an Uber down to the Tobacco theater the next morning.
With Love and Gratitude from Detroit,
Rob