Yes Finally I was able to Send the Stuff out!!

![20230519-DSC00007.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/hiveup-europe/23tmBFULUF883c5sHhEVL8W2Ge89rVdsLtu5ouS1fqmHYUh6nR5D7q4Sii2AzkcXYwk5G.png) On Saturday I sent the first 3 packages out to meetup hosts in 3 different countries!

	Next Meetup 25th of May 19:00 - 23:00(?) Mariahilfer Straße 148 1150 Wien AT	Austria @schmidi
The Netherlands @coldbeetrootsoup	Next Meetup 29th of May 12:00 - 23:59(?) Sint Janstraat 8 4811 ZL Breda NL
	Next Meetup 3rd of June 19:00 - 23:00(?) Miletičova 27 821 09 Bratislava SK	Slovakia @awildovasquez

All of the packages are promotions on their own because I put 2 stickers on them thehe:

The Hustle

Let me tell you it was a bit of a hustle to pack and ship them all. I had rough last few days with being ill for almost the entire week. But as soon as @coldbeetrootsoup announced their meetup on the 29th of May I knew I have to act quickly to get the packages out to the meetup hosts. I know that @schmdi does the Vienna meetup pretty often but a meetup in The Netherlands is not happening that often. Also @awildovasquez got promised to receive the merch for his attendees on time for the First ever Slovakia Meetup so many where waiting and I had to act. I am still a bit ill but the work had to be done and I think it was worth it.

Meetup Table Display

A few days ago the one and only @rubencress designed a template for our community to create similar-looking displays while still being able to brand them to the specific meetup location. He came up with this amazing design which he was open to sending me in *.PSD format so I can take care of all the upcoming customization. The custom branding may sound simple but let me tell you: Searching for royalty-free images of cities that look good in the design was the most time-consuming task of completing the packages. But after some digging, I found good pictures and I even got deep enough into Photoshop to be able to re-align the images in the different layers a light bit. In case you are wondering: The QR-Code is an https://hiveonboard.com referral link for @HiveUP-Europe redy to get scanned by excited new Hivers!
A huge thank you again @valueplan for making the whole merch even possible and to @rubencress for the outstanding table display design!

They look great in pictures but the shiny surface of the acrylic displays adds so much to the already amazing artwork. I was stunned for a moment by the beauty when I put the first one together. You should attend at least one of these meetups to be able to see the glory in real life!

The Packaging

Depending on the feedback of the meetup hosts I have added various t-shirts of different sizes, bags, caps, and mousepads as goodies and a lot of stickers to the packages and of course the table displays. They weigh 3kg each so there is a lot of cool stuff in it to give out to the attendees!

Shipping was the easiest task (my lovely girlfriend helped me carrying) but I did not imagine the high postage costs of 18 euros each. So I asked the receivers for some HBD in return as a compensation for this part of the costs.

![20230520-DSC00023.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/hiveup-europe/EpJaa9N3uavBP1W7zHYH9fjwoS4KLjEmJeqRzcKUpVWzAGrwa7XDHSDZgWz9u4nwmTr.png)

And now: Some (Critical) Words

Critical Words in such a positive post? Yes because I think that an open conversation is important for growth on a personal and a community level. So I decided to write them down instead of sucking them up and I did not give them a dedicated post so only invested people will read this paragraph...
You hopefully know that all of this is done out of pure idealism with happy meetup attendees and crowded meetups in mind. I think that this community and my work of the past weeks are in the interest of meetup hosts, meetup attendees, and the whole Hive blockchain. Of course, I will not reach people to acknowledge the work I do from other parts of this globe but I imagined in the beginning of @HiveUP-Europe (formally known as @hive-eu) that people from Europe and more important the existing meetup hosts will give me probs for the then following work.
For all the work I have done (including "designing" the shirts, bags, caps, the one hive.io sticker, and mousepads and all the communication needed) I did not get paid by anyone which is absolutely fine for me. I work for the community and not for the money and I will keep doing this.

But what is not okay in my eyes is the lack of feedback from meetup hosts and signs of encouragement by them. I think people believe that I got some money in return or I use the HP of the posts for my own channel or whatever but I simply don't. I transferred at least 200 Hive to the account - not counting all the coding hours and recurring work for the map and tools of HiveUP.

One Example

I want to give you an example of the lack of encouragement. The following post has more than 20 hours of pure work in it (for coding) + the time to write 2694 words and to illustrate the points with many many screenshots: ![grafik.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/hiveup-europe/23tvAJRLo5zccxKbpXBxuiJ9fDqc3wtLChjsHVSzDZe5i19pXUxD3cCiQ8CuMmchs8dAf.png) Now you want to see the comments? Here you go: ![grafik.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/hiveup-europe/23t7AyTgfPwPuGnnoQ39tJZnZnxRHC6orMdGtvbSRUup1JbMvBDN6giWRJz1NcgdxXq3X.png) As you can see: Not a single meetup host listed on the Map commented on it which makes me sad and question the appreciation for my work. Thanks to @growandbow @stortebeker and @bechibenner tho. I will comment back after sending this post ;) So: Some more encouragement and feedback would be very helpful to keep my enthusiasm up for future steps. I don't want to whine or anything but you know the deal. Imagine that: - I scream into the void with various posts - I create and distribute merch - I even create a German video to explain the huge work I have done in the past weeks and all I got are some engagement tokens and not a single word by any meetup host who are obviously benefitting from my work - is that fair and encouraging? I think you will agree with me: "no". I will most probably not keep the amount of work and standards if that will continue to be like that tbh. But let's see if anyone even read this paragraph. I will not ping all the meetup hosts for who I am waiting on feedback. Check it for yourself right now: Do you see any of them in the comments below?

To Still Finish in a Positive Way

I have received some valuable and encouraging words from the community and I am very thankful for them. Also in the online meetups I have heard that people like the work I do. I appreciate every single comment, suggestion, and criticism of you all and try my best to make this community a place for connecting all people across Europe. The appreciation and trust by @valueplan also showed me that I am on a good path. The moment we as a blockchain gain more momentum and onboard masses of new users this HiveUP Europe Community will be very well received by the newcomers who want to meet and share stories with people in real life. I will not stop this initiative by any means in the far future. It quickly became my baby and I just want to hear the "Oh is that a cute little boobiboooo" a bit more from time to time ;)

That's it!

As we have told you before we rely on your input and help to grow the initiative and meetup list constantly. With a more complete meetup list we will be able to serve Hivers all over Europe to find their meetups quicker. We hope to see an organic relation between the meetup organizers and our initiative so eventually a post/cross-post into our community (or a ping of @hiveup-europe from within the post) feels like a simple step of announcing a meetup in future.

Please share our initiative and the 📌 European Hive Meetups - Local and Online 📌 with your friends and followers. The more people know our project the easier it gets to fill the meetup list with European events!

If you have any question, suggestion or you simply want to have a chat with us then feel free to enter our discord server!