There are a couple of people here. But not as much as in Australia...
Been here for almost 11 years. And at the beginning of things, when I found this place and was actually attending a few crypto events, I met a lot of people who were just exploring the crypto space like me, but the level of greed back then was completely nuts... There was almost no room for learning, unless there was money involved. Big money obviously...
And I eventually dropped those events as my mind was beginning to become tired of the same conversation, over and over again.
Never dropped Hive... hence this feels like something special obviously.
I've never been to a crypto event. They seem to be just like their traditional "academic" equiv conferences - big ticket prices to get in, shallow "networking" where everyone is trying to sell you something / refer you to something else, and a warm fuzzy feeling of nepotism.
We have the same experience merely publishing things to the chain, without the carbon emissions, hotel rooms, and foreign cities full of distractions and gift shops.
In the beginning, it was actually nice, but mostly because you would meet a lot of people (some interesting). And that was the thing that would hook me to going into those.
But I was also going to these localised "gatherings" where you would meet with the local city people on a more regular basis. It was fun at the beginning because you would be sharing mostly what everyone was learning at super mega fast paces... and that brought a lot of intel back in the days for people that didn't know where they were going through.
I have always seen it as a place I could share the stuff I knew, but most of the time, I would become distracted by other things I discovered.
It was actually fun at the beginning... but then life made me go another way.
Hivefest is a totally different format. Definitely more like a gathering, family-oriented, with lots of scope for learning new things that just take time via reading if you don't have the time. Also, it becomes super crazy due to the fact that you finally meet the people you have been chatting with for so many years on the chain. And that was not something that often happened with any of the other chains, because of how volatile people coming and going would be.