Hivefest 2023: Why This Is Important

We are basically 24 hours away from another Hivefest. This one is taking place in Mexico.

After being virtual for a couple years, we saw the return to it being live last year. Now, for the first time, it will be held in North America.

For anyone who is around Hive, this is nothing new. There is a lot of discussion taking place. There are some things worthy of bringing up and what I am watching for.

We made a lot of progress over the past few years. That said, we still have a lot more work to be a viable ecosystem that makes the impact that many of us expect.

Here is where we will, hopefully, gain some insight into the direction of things.

Infrastructure

This is crucial for the future of Hive.

We are dealing with a technology which means infrastructure is the key component. Without this, not much can be accomplished as we are seeing.

A big gap for Hive is the last of a robust, scalable smart contract platform. Fortunately we have two that are being worked on that we have a few details about. During the event, this should provide a great deal more information regarding where things stand.

This might not seem of interest to the average person, what this does is open up the door for token creation, NFTs, and swapping tied to Hive. These will occur on sidechains that use Hive as a settlement layer.

It also could be a huge use case for the Hive Backed Dollar (HBD). We have two projects, VSC and Honeycomb, that are targeting that.

Another focus will be at the base layer. There are members of the core development team there. Looking at the schedule, we see a presentation time for them to share what is taking place.

Perhaps we get a timeline on the next hard fork.

Business Building

This is one of the key components, not only for Hive but all of cryptocurrency.

We see the main focus being on "price go up". There is very little business building in the traditional sense. How many times have you heard about crypto projects focusing upon revenues, profitability, or other metrics that are commonplace in every business?

The answer is it doesn't happen.

What this tells me, and Hive is guilty of this, is that people are not focusing upon growth in the business sense. The tendency is to build something that gets a bit of hype, watch the token pump, and then sell at a profit. This is the extent of the thinking of many.

Of course, there are others with a different mindset. The question there becomes can these people pull it off? It takes a lot to develop a successful business. Many feel it is simply a matter of building it and they will come. Sadly, this is not the case.

Business success requires a lot of talents pulled together. In the digital realm, the technical side is vital. However, that is only one piece of the puzzle. There is marketing, customer service, and ongoing business development to consider. Are the skills within a project team. Also, funding is crucial as revenue streams can take loner to materialize than anticipated.

For this reason, I will be watching the presentations to see who is bringing business concepts to the table. It is time to start focusing upon the keywords that most business enterprises use. If they are absent, this is an indication of where the project is focusing.

To me, this will be a signal to avoid giving it much attention.

Hivefest Spaces And Threadcasts

There is going to be a Hivefest Spaces along with a threadcast each day. The idea is provide a forum for those who are not at the event to engage with each other.

To start, Spaces will allow us to express our thoughts and comments throughout the event. This will be done in between the presentation along with during breaks. Hence, during lunch or other lulls in the event, we will hop on and talk about what struck us. Perhaps some of the speakers will join in.

Equally as important is the use of threadcasts. This will be a way to engage during the presentations. I was told it will be streamed on YouTube. Thus, I will be able to embed the link right into the threadcast.

In other words, we will be able to watch the presentation from the same page that we are threading.

This is a new addition to the Hivefest experience. So far it has worked out well for AMA and the CTT episodes. We will see if this can be expanded to a larger scale.

A great deal of work went into the technical side of threadcasts. This means we are now operating with a page that automatically refreshes along with providing flexibility on how the comments are arranged (latest showing at the top).

We hope that people not able to attend can interact and bond around the event.