I guess I’m as ready to take on a community challenge as the next person… and since this one originated with the beautiful and inimitable 
Those of you who have haunted this place for a while probably recognize the first part of the title of this post, as well...
Anyway, for easy reference, here are the ten questions that make up this challenge:
- How long have you been on the Blockchain?
- What was your background in Cryptocurrency when you first came to the blockchain?
- What was your background in writing when you first came to the blockchain?
- How many people did you know when you first came to the Blockchain?
- How did you meet people when you first came to the Blockchain?
- Who did you look up to when you first came to the blockchain?
- How would you describe your first three months on the blockchain?
- Has being a part of the blockchain changed you in any way for the good?
- What is your favorite memory from your time on the blockchain?
- If you could give advice to a new person signing up to Hive what would it be?
Onwards!
How long have you been on the Blockchain?
Since January 30th, 2017.
What was your background in Cryptocurrency when you first came to the blockchain?
I had been familiar with Bitcoin since its earliest days when my sister-in-law had tried to convince me that I should start mining it... at a time when you could actually still do that with a powerful gaming computer. I never did, alas... (slams head on desk).
I was also peripherally aware of Ethereum because a friend had worked on it.
What was your background in writing when you first came to the blockchain?
Oh my, where do I begin?
”I want to tell stories” was actually one of my more common answers to the childhood question ” so, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
I loved writing essays when I was in high school, and I started keeping a journal when I was maybe 12 or 13 and have been doing so ever since. My first "serious" writing earned me an honorable mention in a national college freshman writing contest in 1981.
Over the years I've written copy for newsletters, been the editor of corporate newsletters, worked as a technical writer in the IT industry, started blogging in about 1997 or 1998, had my first encounter with creating content for a website that paid its contributors in 1999, was an active part of the social blogging movement between 1999 and about 2008, kept as many as a dozen niche blogs at one time — some of which are still alive — and today continue to be practically a daily Blogger here on Hive.
One of my primary professions is even related to writing in that I am a book and manuscript editor. You could easily say that writing "is in my blood."
What I really like about Hive is that it very much resembles the social blogging venues of the early 2000s.
How many people did you know when you first came to the Blockchain?
None at all!
This was basically a blank page in a new adventure. It wasn’t till several months later I came across 
How did you meet people when you first came to the Blockchain?
I pretty much took the same approach I have always done: I posted a few things that I hoped were at least moderately interesting, then I looked around for things that interested me and started leaving lots and lots of what I hoped were meaningful and relevant comments.
In essence, I tried to start dialogues.
Who did you look up to when you first came to the blockchain?
Some of the people I followed early on, and thought were great examples of what the community was about (or COULD be about) included:
Of those who are still here, 
How would you describe your first three months on the blockchain?
They were interesting and educational, in the sense that I felt like I was having to ”start over” in learning how a completely new category of Internet Social worked.
I also felt like I was watching a pretty cool idea ”go down the tubes.” The token was worth about 16 cents and change when I joined, and had declined to less than 7 cents within a couple of months. I figured it was heading towards being worth about as much as Dogecoin by the end of the year.
Doge at that time took about 80 tokens to make one cent…
Has being a part of the blockchain changed you in any way for the good?
In a sense, I am not quite as soured on social media and content creation as I once was… and I have gained a small measure of hope that ”community powered” can, in fact, work in a positive fashion.
My willingness to check out and start up on this venue was related to the fact that I had grown sick and tired of Facebook, and I loathed Reddit and it's petty politics with a great deal of passion... and I was hoping to find a venue that was more about the content than about petty infighting and trolling.
What is your favorite memory from your time on the blockchain?
There are many, but most of them revolve around the number of times where the community of what we might now call ”Hive 1.0” would rally on social media in a massive landslide to gain some kind of mention, exchange listing, recognition or something else… pretty much eviscerating much larger and more established blockchain projects. For me, that remains one of the greatest assets of this community.
It was that same sense of community and "don't mess with us!" that ended up birthing Hive as an independent venue. That was pretty damn cool!
If you could give advice to a new person signing up to Hive what would it be?
If you just came here ”because you can earn money for content,” do yourself a favor and throw that out the window and just have fun and remember this is SOCIAL media, so engage with others and build a network. And be patient; this is not an overnight miracle, but a long term proposition.
If you do those two things, then you’ll suddenly notice — a few months down the road — that those rewards you came here for actually do start happening. However, I still believe that the greatest value lies in the opportunity to build a long term stake in the future of the social web.
And therewith endeth the challenge!
It was fun to do this… just because. And because it gave me a chance to look back.
Postscript
Above — in question 6 — there was a fairly lengthy list of people no are longer active or even no longer with us. They all date back to my earliest days here.
Since then, a few more of my favorite people have sadly gone ”MIA,” and I regularly find myself wishing they were still here.
It wasn’t my original intention to turn this into a tribute post, but so it goes...
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend!
How about YOU? Have you done this challenge? Are you going to? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20211217 22:57 PST
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