In the first place, I wanted to give another title to this post, but I was worried that someone could be "offended"... The idea was to name it Why was #HiveBeeCon so successful?
This event was my second biggest HIVE IRL event after last year's HiveFest in Amsterdam and I have no idea which Hive meetup in total... I met many Hivians from all around the world, some of them in Spain, others in Italy, Serbia, etc. and I hope soon YOU who-knows-where! 馃檪 And to be honest, none of those meetups was bad! Sometimes, I would meet people that I wasn't even engaging with on HIVE (my wife's HIVE friends), but we still got along fine IRL!
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Is HiveBeeCon better than HiveFest? Or it's vice versa? I wouldn't pick sides here as I liked both! Also, these two events are different... HiveFest has "educative" and "informative" lines inside as it promotes apps built on HIVE, promotes different ways to use HIVE, and you can find a lot of news plans and developments for HIVE... It has a "networking" side implemented too, but the emphasis is on the stage and its "conference looks"... All that is important if you are undecided in which part of HIVE would you like to dive and focus!
On the other side, we had the first HiveBeeCon, which was planned to be a small HIVE meetup that could grow in the future... The idea was to have another HIVE "event" that is an addition to HiveFest, and not a competition! It has a completely different approach and it can't be compared to HiveFest at all...
In my opinion, the HiveBeeCon was a success and there are some important reasons why:
There was no stage! The whole meetup was a stage! No highlighted person was talking and everyone else was listening and clapping... No, everyone was talking with each other, everyone was sharing his experience in HIVE and out of HIVE... Some people aren't on HIVE at all and they were part of the event too... Nobody was convincing someone else to join, to do this, or do that...
No crypto talk! Somehow, we are always forgetting that HIVE is mainly a social media network... Because of that, our talks are based on the cryptocurrency side, talking about rewards ratio, resource credits, when the price will go up, speculations, etc... While I did hear one guy (who wasn't on HIVE) asking about the "tokenomics" of HIVE, all the other conversation on the HiveBeeCon were about different communities, experiences, how to support others, and how to be better! Not on a blockchain level (that's what those developers are taking care of), but on the human level... How to improve the communication, how to "show the way" to new Hivians...
HiveBeeCon buzz This is probably one of the most "visible" things about the HiveBeeCon... Almost everyone who attended the event is a "hardcore" content creator and everyone understands the importance of sharing "the good news" with others! Especially in times when all that we can see is the bad news... Not just that, everyone who attended understands that the social network isn't successful because of ME, but because of US! That's why you can see a lot of posts where people show appreciation towards other participants, as everyone learned something new from his/her fellow Hivian...
All that made me think about HIVE and whether are we doing things as we should, or we are doing it wrong. I do understand different approaches for onboarding, "advertising" HIVE, trying to onboard big influencers, or trying to "lure" businesses to HIVE... Is it the right way?
On the other side, after attending this great meetup, I noticed that I'm much more "pumped" to spread the word about it, to talk about my point of view, and build a stronger community of "action takers"... The same happens with other participants after getting the "motivational injection" from others! If we create a healthy community and a healthy social media network, we will be more attractive for others to come and "sell things to us", or to build tools for us... Maybe HIVE growth has to come from the INSIDE and not from the outside.
That reminded me of my grandfather... Even before buying a lottery ticket, he would already have a plan for spending the money... 馃槂 Also reminds me of myself when I was creating my first website with the idea of earning money from advertisers... The first thing I did was to create a space for advertisers, instead of building a plan to attract visitors in the first place! We need to make a strong network first, and the businesses will come... Like that saying by Marie Kondo... Life truly begins when you put your house in order!
We don't have to wait for someone else to onboard people to HIVE... We don't have to promise newbies big money to onboard them... What we can do is to show them the way, invite them to specific communities in which are they interested... We can add value to the community where we create, we can support other creators by upvoting their content and commenting on the posts... Showing by example that we appreciate hard work and valuable content... If we do that, we will attract "right" people to HIVE... Those who will continue with building this place!
What do you think about this approach? Do you like meetups? Did they help you (if you attended) in some way?
Thank you for your time,
ph
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