I sincerely apologize for the lengthy posts, lol. But HiveFest was just awesome. Blame Roeland.
WAKE UP!
It's around 6:00 AM in the morning. Time for bed... o... wait... no, that was my past life. Time to wake up! I asked my friend's roommate to wake me as he had to leave quite early and I knew I would have a hard time waking up that early.
It was quite nice to see the Sunrise, but as I dozed off for a couple of more minutes, I woke up to a grey sky. Hopefully, it won't be raining the entire day. The weather has been quite unfortunate for us during the conference and activities.
Four days of rain, yikes! Did everybody bring an umbrella? I surely didn't, so I desperately checked the goodie bag to see if there might have been a mini-umbrella inside. I didn't even bring a proper jacket, so good chance I'm getting sick. Speaking of chances... we had a 2% chance of rain when I left home. Turned out they forgot to add 96 to that since that would've been accurate lol.
As I've been spending most of my time with Celestal, as he is one of my oldest friends on the chain, and we've met before, I was looking forward to meeting up and going places together and having some fun. Yesterday was already cracking me up, so let's see what's in store for today. We decided to meet up around 8:45 at Amsterdam central station to take the ferry to the venue, EYE Filmmuseum. While the Sun was slowly rising, I took my chances to take some nice shots of the venue and the ferry. So much has changed in Amsterdam since my last visit, wow.
At this point, I'm just waiting for Celestal to arrive, so we could catch the next ferry. There was a rooftop party until 2-3 AM. I kinda felt some FOMO afterward, but hopefully, there will be plenty of more HiveFests.
I'm on a boat
The venue was beautiful. The EYE Filmmuseum is such a nice building, the architecture/design is amazing. This museum holds a huge collection of Dutch and international movies and movie posters. Imagine diving into these old archives and getting a flashback back into time as you find and look at these old posters. Good vibes, right? Or maybe, you'll encounter this childhood traumatized film poster, also fun... But, we are here for HiveFest7 2022! Let's go!
Welcome
Of course, @RoelandP in his gangster pajamas was the first thing that caught my eye. I asked him if this was the location for HiveFest, lol, and of course, the guys from @coldbeetrootsoup were welcoming all of us with their energy. The staff of the EYE was welcoming everyone with a smile, food, and beverages. Oh man, I could go for a cup of coffee. Black, like my soul. Perfect.
As I was kind of the new cat on the block, I buzzed around silently. Not much later, we were directed to "Zaal 2", where the rest of the conference would take place.
Introduction
@RoelandP officially welcomed everyone and played out the intro of HiveFest7 - Close Encounters 2022. He welcomed us with VR, as he slowly "woke up" in reality. After VR, @arcange had a surprise for those who attended 5 HiveFest (physical ones). @gtg, @alpha, @arcange himself (not awkward btw), @roelandp, and @blocktrades. If you haven't heard or seen any of these usernames on Hive, you should be ashamed. Okay... In all fairness, I didn't know much about @alpha, so it was cool to see them all on stage and talk to her for a little bit. Congrats! And Arcange, awkward or not, it is well deserved to get an award as well, Roeland saved you and handed it out :P!
I didn't take photographs of everyone, as I focus on different things when I have a DSLR/Mirrorless in my hand, and wanted to listen to the conference as well of course.
HiveFest7 - Close Encounters - Conference: day 1
Oof... Once entering the first venue, I noticed we were entering a cinema, which is a super challenging venue for photographers as it tends to be quite dark. I knew I had to push my camera and use my ISO. Since my sensor has 40+ megapixels, this will cause -a shitton- of noise. I was a little bit worried about the quality of the results, but with some post-processing, I tried to make the best out of it! I kind of like vintage black and white images for these types of venues, which would've been the easy way to post-process rich-noise images. But I thought it would be fun to push myself and see if I can make something else out of it instead.
It's quite impressive to show up for -all HiveFests! These 5 on stage are hardcore!
Hive.io CoreDev
Howo was opening the conference, which was nice, as I was looking forward to what he had to say about the progress of HF26 and what would change on our blockchain. It was nice meeting and talking with Howo! Don't let his age fool you, because this guy is a genius (and a very kind soul). Unfortunately, I had not had the chance to speak with blocktrades, but I do want to compliment him on the way how he explains things. Very tangible and easy to understand. I feel that he holds a lot of wisdom in his hands when he supports his words with gestures.
Together with @blocktrades, gosh, I love the way how this man is explaining things. Looking forward to HF26!
NFTs for peace
@arcange and @zirochka share a touching personal story about the recent war in Ukraine. It was very emotional. @zirochka; that photograph in the church is incredibly powerful. I wish I would talk to you, but I probably would have just hugged you as I couldn't find the right words to address this situation. Hopefully, I will never understand how it feels to be in a war. Bless you.
Freechain & Marketing
Freechain, a presentation by @lordbutterfly. This one I've been looking forward to seeing. I got to hand it down to Lordbutterfly, the presentation was beyond my expectations and even the raw footage that we saw was already incredible. @little.lamb knows for sure what he is doing! We had a small talk afterward and I'm looking forward to seeing more stuff shortly, in a few months.
Check out the video here, if you haven't seen it yet. REALLY WORTH IT!
Lordbutterfly mentioned and addressed the difficulty and the challenges regarding proper marketing with realistic costs, and how to get the 'best bang for your buck'. Even though the $1 was seen as a waste of money by someone in the crowd, I would like to address this as I disagree from a marketing point of view. The reason why I disagree is that these metrics certainly give you solid feedback on the things that 1) do work, and 2) do not work. This is incredibly insightful and valuable for us as a whole, as we got to a point where we see stagnation, and now see what to address first.
People aren't signing up because the signing up method is -still- too complex. There are probably a few quick fixes that could or should be implemented short term, so we can think about a long-term fix.
For example; let the user who wants to sign up choose to use his/her email address so the keys are sent to his email address, followed up with a tutorial that teaches them how to change the keys and addresses the importance of keeping your keys safe.
Just a short brain fart, but I bet there are plenty of other simple quick fixes that could certainly help with account creation.
Kudos to lordbutterfly for stepping up and being the one who's dealing with this.
Visionary Studios
Jeffjagoe, my man, a new dark & stormy comrade ha! You're way too humble for all the things you've achieved and done. Would love to have chatted about Solana and some business with you, so I might slide in your DMs and show you my showreel at some point! If you're interested that is.
Coinzdense
Pibara is a Dutch guy. So... you know what they say right? "There is always this one guy", and that's certainly right if you're talking about brains. I've not that much knowledge about Quantum Physics, but I enjoyed your presentation where you also come up with grand solutions. I'd love to help you out with a new website.
@pibara: Zou jij mij een bericht willen sturen naar [email protected], met wat jij graag zou willen zien op jouw website? Mocht het niet al te technisch zijn, regelen we de eerste Hive collab website ;)
Beerverse
@rollie1212 was talking about the Beerverse (@cryptobrewmaster). I remember seeing this on the chain, but totally forgot about it (just like @dcrops lol). It looked pretty cool and I most probably will try it out soon if I figure out how! Glad we chatted at BeerSaturday and shared a beer together. It was nice meeting you man!
Lunchbreak
After Rollie's presentation about Beerverse, we had a short break. The food was great! There were beers, juices, coffee, tea, fruit-infused water, and various types of royal sandwiches. Great job Roeland!
I honestly thought the conference was over so I missed @Lemouth's presentation!! That's why I was a bit flabbergasted the next day when I asked him when he had his presentation. I finally know what happened now! Because I thought the conference ended, I talked with @karinxxl outside for about an hour. Afterward, I managed to play the piano for a little bit when the live stream was over! Quite happy to play on that wing. Karin has some proof!
I'm on another boat
Petanque
Not much later, we went by boat to go to our first activity of the day "Balls of Steel", where we had food and played some Petanque. Which was cool to do in a restaurant! I wonder how Roeland comes up with stuff like this. It's just genius lol.
At this point, I finally was able to talk with more people that I haven't spoken with, or seen on the chain before. @poezio, @loonatic, @rivalzzz, @louis88, @soyrosa, @karinxxl, @brittandjosie, @lordbutterfly, @jarvie, and @sjarvie (who kicked our asses with Petanque, which was perfectly fine since they won :P), and probably some more! But you know... beers eh? At some point, I asked Roeland if he could store my camera behind his desk of operations, as I wanted to have some quality time (sorry for the hassle Roeland) without my camera, and play some Petanque.
And that was day 1 for me!
I had so much fun and I certainly did not expect I would last so long as I'm not used to waking up this early. I used to go to bed around the time I woke up. Quite surprised I did wake up tho. I've met so many awesome people on Hive I never knew they existed or were posting on Hive. We certainly got a bunch of cool cats! Still, there were so many I haven't talked to.
Later in the evening, my feet started to hurt (I got something called Plantar Fasciitis for about 8 months now on both my feet lol), it's as if every step I take is a footprint in little pieces of glass, so I thought it would be a good call to get going and give my feet some relief and stretches.
Cheers,
Ruben
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That looks really cool! I really should attend too some year.
Franz! MAN, lets go!
Ah thank you! Well... it was actually an idea that I wanted to share regarding the topic that was spoken of during the event. I'm not sure if people will read this, but maybe @lordbutterfly can add some juice to that and fast forward that to the right people/or inject this idea with his proposal. I think many people will disagree, and some will agree. Definitely worth discussing more.
I believe if people have a choice, it will be a bit easier for them, but it would mean that we need a retention program that will teach people with follow-ups to that certain mail (like, the first lesson would be on how to change your keys and to not store them in your email). And if that is the case, we need to define a tone of voice, that shows us how to address the tutorials etc. and this would then again include how much we need to share and teach in order to keep the Free Speech level of decentralization intact (we don't want to copy/paste do this, do that, but more common sense/logic behavior, right?). Things like "You can do this, but you can't do this", and "You need to post here, but not here" is kind of hypocrite to execute as it declines the freedom of speech. Ha... such an "easy" solution, which happen to be or become a very delicate matter :D
It has been a pleasure to meet you! Thanks for the nice pictures they are great. May I use the one I am on? Of course you will be credited.
!invest_vote and
!BEER
Ah! I think we spoke for just a little bit eh? Was good seeing you man. And of course, feel free to use it on your blog post :))
Amazing photos, and really enjoyed your story telling. :) You've put so many efforts in this reportage!
Thank you for the kind words! Ah well.. once my fingers start typing and I see the photographs again, I get side-tracked haha!
Thank you so much for mention and kindness and support. I hope we will talk next year!
Hopefully we will see each other next year! I love the photograph of you during the Petanque! :)
That photo is so lovely! ) Although I was really exhausted after so much excitement 😀
Feels like I'm reliving HF all over again. Thanks
Ah yea! Thank you thank you! Next time we really are going to have a chat. Loved your presentation :)
Nice lenghty post right there and it was a pleasure meeting you and talking about... you know....everything!
A tiny bit of proof here, at least now I know I need to start playing again in the winter. You got decent skills here and should put some on chain!
It certainly was! Haha, would love to have chatted with you more. And yes, please practice more on the piano so I can take a shot like this of you at the next HiveFest. Thank you for recording a little bit!
Nicely done, good clean photos.
You know, I clean my lenses, so that's accurate! :P haha
Always down to talk more and collaborate!
Cheers 🍻
Alright man! Get well soon by the way!
Speechless 😍 I feel like I'm there even I'm not. You so lucky to meet awesome Hive people around the world
I hope I can go to next year.
Thanks for sharing awesome Vibes through your photos
You have been very bussy , very nice Photo report
You know what they say, Hive keeps us beezzzy! Thanks Mick!
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