tomorrow at noon I fly to Lisbon for Steemfest², and I am currently preparing myself for it by recharging all my equipment. This time I will take all 5 chargers with me, in Amsterdam I only had one USB charger, that was definitely not enough.
When I travelled to Amsterdam in 2016, the mood on Steemit had worsened steadily in the run-up to the event, as since the all-time highs in the summer of 2016, the Steem has steadily lost value.
I entered the Volkshotel in Amsterdam with mixed feelings. On the one hand I already knew some Steemians through the steemit.chat, but on the other hand I hadn't got to know any other users of the platform in real life.
It's just a difference to read only avartare on the screen and their comments, or to talk to real people and listen to their pronunciation.
The big topic for the Steemfest 2016 was the planned change in the Steemit economy. The powerdown period should be shortened from 104 to 13 weeks and at the same time the existing hyperinflation should be stopped. These changes were rolled out with a hardfork in December 2016.
SteemFest 1 was organized excellently by 
I found the session most motivating on late Saturday afternoon, when the apps of busy, steepshot (ex steemstagram) and steem sports were presented.
The roadmap for 2017 was then published on 17 January 2017. It was very ambitious and, unfortunately, some of the targets for 2017 have not yet been met. For example, the "World Class Developer Documentation" planned for Q2 is far from being "world class". Just for fun, try to install Steem-Python on a naked Ubuntu exactly according to the instructions, it won't work. For Q3 the communities as well as the rebranding were announced, but we haven't seen any of them so far.
Last year's absolute low point for me was the departure of Dan. I can still remember that day. I thought: okay, that was it. I drunk a lot of beer this day with my brother 
@beersIronically, the steem price has risen since dan's exit.
In spring the BlockShow took place in Munich. All in all it was a very funny event.
On the eve of the block show I was with ned, mrs.steemit, charlieshrem, timsaid, furion and svk in the Hofbräuhaus, and on the evening after that we were on tour again.
Unfortunately we celebrated too much, so that ned was not fit enough for his speech. And also the exhibition stand of Steemit has to look better in 2018, I have some ideas, ned: -)
The relinquishment of voting by the large accounts with more than 400 MVests in spring 2017 was very well received at the base, finally the votes of smaller accounts also had an impact on the author rewards. Unfortunately, the experiment ended and the linear reward curve was introduced.
Since then we have been struggling with self-voters, voter-sellers and SP-lenders. The honest curator is the fool right now. He spends a lot of time rewarding good content and receives Curation Rewards. While the other 3 can make a bigger profit without any time effort. There is an urgent need for action here.
My only expectation of SteemFest² is to finally find a convincing reason to buy STEEM. Because so far I don't see any, except the speculation that the Steem-Blockchain could one day be used by a lot of users.
I have planned to do a Steemfest post every day, which is constantly updated, kind of a ticker. Otherwise, I am looking forward to meeting a new country, because I have not yet made it to Portugal.
And don't miss my other posts regarding SteemFest²:
