After a lot of presentations on Conference Day #1, day 2 was more focussed on discussions. The day existed of interesting round table sessions, some presentations, a panel discussion about the tokenized economy and an interview done by @andrarchy with @yabapmatt on building a business on the Steem Blockchain.

[Views from yesterdays SteemFest Location, the ICE. @roelandp has done an incredibly job in finding facilitating locations with food and drinks in abundance. There's literally nothing to worry about during the days.]

Round table sessions

A lot of topics were scheduled for the Round Table Sessions, like how to educate people on Crypto, how to close the gap between normies and the blockchain, how to DTube (by DDaily), Music on the Blockchian (DSound), sensorship, Dstors, and lots and lots more. I couldn't attend all of them but I don't even think that matters. What happened is a lot of people were sitting around a table and share knowledge around a certain topic, exchange project names and business cards, and I witnessed a lot of new connections and ideas were created right there and right now.

I accidentally got a seat at 'the table of @felander' who appears to be actively trying to get 'the 99%' into crypto in his country of residence, Switzerland. We and amongst others @ura-soul and @connecteconomy were able to share info on multiple overlapping ideas and projects which inspired me to get some education projects on crypto and Steem in particular going in my own city.

Create communities, #beersaturday

Now, before you think we all walk around drunk at SteemFest, that's not the case, but yesterday I drank beer while listening to @detlev explaining us how he challenges Steemians to share a story every Saturday that somehow relates to beer. The community effect is big in this one - a simple hobby or interest can be the one thing that a person can use to connect people and create a new community that are having fun together and got to know one another better.

Life after Google

This was an interesting and unexpected presentation by @apshamilton, where he laid out the fact that Google and Facebook 'ate the internet' by becoming giants via one specific 'thing on the internet' (social media, search) and then were able to buy up all the little guys, thus becoming the 'sole rulers' of the www.

The strong realization we all must have here: decentralized apps, communities, blockchains can't be bought. This must be a huge scare to the giants. They launched a censorship attack starting 30 januari of 2018 and a week later the crypto markets were down 53%.

In Australia, he told me after his presentation, it's quite normal to launch class action suits. He, a lawyer, has started one of those class action suits to get back the losses 'we' as crypto investors made during these times. If you are interested (and you should!) in getting back some of your losses you can sign up via this link, with all information kept confidential and no credentials ever appearing in court papers.

Building a business on the Steem Blockchain

Even though this interviewed was focused on the success of @steemmonsters, it was an interview that could translate to more general knowledge about building a business on the Blockchain. @andrarchy interviewed @yabapmatt, and they spoke about 'selling products' versus the idea that in crypto 'everything should be free' - basically @yabapmatt claims it shouldn't. Selling products and earning money to make the product better is a better way to go. While this might make sense to most, I also found interesting how he explained we should build more apps that focus on the awesomeness of the app, the game, itself, and use blockchain/crypto as a nice bonus instead of it being the main 'goal to achieve'. So for example, every Steem Monster Card you own is yours, you can never lose it, you can play a game, and the bonus of playing the game is you can earn more, more cards, more crypto.

The time where any project could scream 'Blockchain' and people would empty their wallets to get some piece of the pie is over, he believes. Projects will really have to sell themselves, and blockchain alone is not going to be a success factor anymore. Building good projects and products that are actually working and using the blockchain in the way it should will (finally?) be the main focus.

So much more

As said in the first post there is so much more going on and to write about, and when I'm back home I'll probably even look back some of the presentations that I missed :-) Today is a day where Steemians can 'pick and choose' a part of the program, some have gone to Auschwitz, others do a boat tour, others go to Art at SteemFest. All the gossip and 'shout outs of all the amazing people I'm meeting will happen later in the week - I'm processing parts of SteemFest constantly, part of it through writing to all of you here, part of it through finding a few hours of sleep, and for now I will find some coffee and meet up with some lovely people and chat some more and more and more. SteemFest is a never ending stream of amazing moments and for all of you who have been longing for updates or feelings of 'wish I were there': start saving up today for next year so you are able to attend as well! It's more than worth it being part of all of it.

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