I celebrated my Hive anniversary last week. for a very long time, I have not joined any community meetups, thankfully, the Hive Cebu community had set up a virtual one on Thursday last week.

This was a Hive webinar for Cebuanos organized by @indayclara, @ybanezkim26, and @glecerioberto, I made sure that I will be able to join. Before this event, there was another one set up for the newbies.

Beyond Blogging: Expectations

_{Video credits: kim ybanez}

The promotional teaser posted by @ybanezkim26 was definitely pumping and of course, quite very beckoning too! I was excited that I made sure I get my baby cleaned up early for bed but he ended up joining the meeting too! Thus, I switched my camera off instead but I am glad to see some mommies during the webinar too together with their kiddos!

Based on the title, I set my expectations that the webinar would be about certain crypto topics other than blogging. We already are in a blogging platform and for me, perhaps the leaders wanted us to venture more into what we can do with our talents and skills aside from writing.

I have discovered that there are members of the Cebu Community who are not just writing blogs but also getting into trading, even mastering this, and others have dived into the world of NFTs too. Also, prior to the event being realized, there were already questions raised as to what topics the community members would like to learn about and that's their basis.

Aside from that, I was also expecting to meet many members of the Cebu Hive community, those with whom I have not interacted. I believe that after the event, I will be able to connect to more Cebuanos writers!

Beyond Blogging: Topics and Learnings

The event started with an introduction and presentation of the program flow by @indayclara, she's very energetic as usual, I have met her during one of the previous meetups way back in 2017 or 2018. Then it was followed by a game! Yes, webinars also need games and it was a fun one led by the game master @glecerioberto who made sure that we would not just enjoy the game but also learn from it.

I personally learned certain Hive personalities during the game as well as cryptocurrency symbols! I also have to acknowledge the great onscreen display, it was pleasing to the eyes!

Blockchain and Crypto

The first topic was very helpful for newbies to cryptocurrency - Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. I know some of the 35 participants were newly onboarded on Hive and some have no idea of how the blockchain works. With the video presentation by @thegaillery, comprehending this topic made it easy.

They also illustrated the blocks made through the hive blockchain through hive block explorer which was very helpful for users to visualize how that worked. It took more or less an hour to finish including the question and answer.

Some questions were:

What are Witnesses?
What are the ways of mining on Hive?
The difference between Hive and other blogging platforms

Basics of Crypto Trading

The second topic was one that I am interested in - Crypto Trading. Honestly, I have been writing and blogging in Hive and other crypto sites but never really thought that trading is for me but late September this year, yes, that's just last month, I decided to look into this topic and give it a try. At first, it was a very complex thing for me but as I try to read and get myself familiarized with the exchange platforms, I somehow slowly got the hang of it and with the talk by @themanualbot, I feel that I am on the right track. I had a lot of nods and yes-es internally during the discussion.

We had to note that these people are not really experts but through the number of months and years that they have been exposed to trading, they provided information based on their success in this aspect. I am super encouraged and inspired!

NFT

The last topic was another very informative and interesting one, this was the reason why I made sure that I can join the event - NFT. Just like trading, I have heard of NFT for a long time already but I felt like I am not for it but as @anneporter shared her learnings and knowledge about the topic especially that she is affiliated with curate.style, I decided to join the said platform right there and then. I made an account and tried minting digital art.

NFTs are unique, can't be split, can't be duplicated. Minting means putting data in the blockchain, ownership is verifiable, traceable, a transfer is instantaneous and smooth.

Having a question and answer on each topic was very appreciated and more questions were answered at the end of the program. I participated in this segment of course!

As for the closing remarks, Kim's message was truly inspiring knowing that there's so much about Hive that we can tap into for us to grow in the platform.

Appreciation to the Organizers

I am more than grateful to Hive as it is not just an earning site but also a learning platform. The future is bright and I am glad that this event helped me see a bigger picture of what Hive can do to every one of us.

Thanks to the organizers for giving their time and effort to events like this. It is not easy to organize but they made it look like they were well-versed and the speakers were truly informative too!

Recommendation

I am already satisfied with how the event went. Perhaps if there's one thing that I could recommend, that would be to set up more events like this and deal with one topic with more time for question and answer.

The event went for more than three hours I guess and for a mother like me, I can't be on the computer or my phone for that long. Anyway, I didn't mind staying until past 10 PM for the event. I know it is not every day that an event like this happens. But focusing on one topic will for sure lessen the number of hours.

Nice meeting all of you guys! Gwapa ug gwapo jud ang mga Bisaya!