Davao Steemit Meet Up Plan

As early as January 2018 when the planned Bulacan Meet Up started evolving to be a Meet Up Caravan on behalf of @SteemPH, @dandalion agreed that we will also go to her hometown in Davao City to host a similar event there.

The Davao Meet Up will be the fourth destination of SteemPH Meet Up Caravan. The last three locations were:

The Travel

Since the Caravan started in February 2017, we have been using our old sedan to get to the venues. Davao City however, is more than 1,500 Kilometers from our residence in Malolos, Bulacan. We flew a one hour forty five minutes flight to Davao at 4:00 PM of March 31, 2018 in advance of the planned Meet Up on the 7th of April.

Davao 1.jpg

The above photos were taken from the Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL). In the photo to the right, I can be seen drafting the first bit of this post while @littlesteemitph is watching YouTube videos to avoid boredom. The right photo shows my whole family walking towards the boarding gate.

https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmX7JxwKvne1rSuRUFY7G9Z1xWxeQgpzdiy1ahuUwQjBoA

Here is a groupie from @dandalion, @dandalioncub, and @littlesteemitph just before take off. We got to Francisco Bangoy International Airport at 6:40 PM, took a 30 minute cab ride to @dandalion's folks' place, ware served a delicious meal, and went to bed early.

The next morning, @dandalion's aunt brought one of their cars for us to use while we are in Davao. It was one of our concerns about being away from home, the convenience of having our own car less the cost of car rental. I haven't really driven an automatic transmission and have stuck with stick since learning how to drive. I watched a couple of videos, drove a few blocks, and the next thing we know we are in a nearby Ayala Mall.

I did not expect that learning how to drive an automatic will be that easy, much less that I would learn how to do it using a borrowed vehicle while on vacation.

The Venue

https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmZc5u21a93gqXXpgttARC8edCpZ7AtWLrR95UfU48d5vK

We rented a function room in Cafe Demitasse. The room can fit 36 people, and the rental fee can be used against our bill for food and drinks for the participants. The participants can choose a cake/pastry and a drink.

Like in all the meet ups we hosted via the SteemPH Meet Up Caravan, we are not collecting fees from the participants, thus the limit in food and drinks covered by our budget.

We drove around the venue, and we love the place. It is spacious, not far from where we stay, and have ample parking space for guests. It may well be the best looking venue so far in all of the meet ups we hosted in this format.

The Participants

In our last count we already have 30 confirmed participants. @dandalion's been communicating with the participant providing updates via their channel in the Steemit Philippines discord server. This meet up was first announced in An Invitation to Dabawenyos over a month ago, and the excitement from the @SteemPH.Davao community's been building up since.

Davao Caravan.jpg

Steemit Philippines Davao (Core)

For the time being, @dandalion is maintaining the communal account @SteemPH.Davao. We both acknowledge however, that if this community will grow and prosper, we need Steemians from this locality to lead and work together.

Aside from the usual content of our presentation, one of the main agendas of the meet up is to open the positions for the core member of @SteemPH.Davao including its lead. Both @dandalion and I will continue to support this community wherever we are though.

We are both very excited to finally get to meet Steemians from this side of the country. In my Is It Now a Bad Time to Start or be Active in Steemit? post yesterday, one of the expected participants in the meet up left this comment:

_{"Am looking forward to the meet up in Davao on April 7. Would like to take the opportunity to discuss some of the points mentioned above if time will allow it.}

_{I also just wanted to point out something about your comment on Steemit being overcrowded. Yes, we are over 900,000 plus registered members but for March, only 172,000 or so were active. That's only about 20% activity rate for the month. Could it be we are experiencing a general sentiment among a lot of members to stay away from Steemit because of the low value of Steem and SBD and consequently Rewards earned? OR could it be that there is now a silent feeling of frustration growing among the majority about how difficult it is to earn despite the effort and time spent to do quality content? It does look like that those with enough SBD or Steem use bid bots to upvote their posts and get the majority share of the Reward pool without concern about quality at the expense of those who cannot afford to use them but actually do have quality content.}

_{This is just an observation and I do not know if I am correct or not about it. Anyhow, looking forward, April 7."}

_{~@gems.and.cookies}

This tells us that this community is not only interested with Steemit activities related topics, but are also keen to know more about events related to the development of the Steem blockchain, as well as other more technical aspects of the blockchain. We are already anticipating that this will be a very interesting meetup.