Contest: Help Us Dream Up The Steem Around The World Challenge and Win 5 SBD!

Are You Familiar With The Steem Around The World Challenge? 

We are organizing a gift-chain of enthusiastic steemians who want to send some home-made products to each other, using only Steemit for paying for the shipping. Eventually we want our gift-chain to circle the globe, create stronger ties among each other, experience the arts, crafts, food stuffs, or other types of products made by our members. By writing articles specifically for this purpose, we also want to combine our forces to make each shipment possible, and show the amazing potential of the Steemit platform. Oh, and of course have some fun along the way. Everyone knows, fun always rules!

For more information on this crazy, yet somehow not unrealistic idea, you can check the previous links. You can read them in chronological order, or reversed, or completely randomly, in the end you'll notice that the overall info is the same. Or it should be. 

 Post 1     Post 2     Post 3     Post 4    Post 5

What About the Contest for 5 SBD? 

This contest is an attempt to jump-start the project by having interested participants write articles. You don't necessarily have to take part in the Steem Around the World Challenge to participate in this contest, but you just might get interested... If so, you're always welcome to join. The requirements for this contest are: 

• Upvote this post. Resteeming it or following me are optional, though always appreciated.
• Write a post in which you give fictional account of a particular step in our proposed Steem Around The World Challenge. See below for more details. 
• Illustrate your post with at least one picture. 
• Tag your post with #steemaroundtheworld . 
• Comment on this post with a link to your story. 
• Make the rewards for your post available for the challenge. This means, once you get your reward you don't have to do anything, just keep it in your Steemit wallet. When the challenge is up and running I'm going to ask you to transfer it (that is its current equivalent in SBD) to the person who is going to make the first shipment. 
• Deadline is Tuesday, September 12th at 12:00 noon UTC-5. If by that time there are less than three post submitted, I'm  going to extend the deadline, or republish the contest. The winner will be announced the following day. 

What Exactly Do You Want Us to Write? 

I want a fictional story of how one step of this gift-chain could be executed. You can use names and places of the very real people who have said they would be interested in sending something, listed in my preparation posts. An even better idea is to use completely fictional names of non-existent steemians, think up a place where they are, and some interesting item they would like to send or receive. Make it roughly somewhere between 300 and 700 words, or so. You can also take a look at the examples I provided at the end of this post, and submit something much better! ;-)

Just Easy Cruising? Probably Not! 

Try to think of some type of problem along the line, some challenge, a common concern, something needing to be resolved somehow. What could go wrong, and how could that problem be solved? Or maybe there is no problem at all? In that case think of something else that makes it interesting, giving your story a certain edge. Also, don't forget about all the other members of the challenge. While they may not be actively mailing anything, nor waiting for the shipment, they would certainly be active writing articles, giving upvotes, and eagerly following the progress of the chain.

Deciding on the Winner

I am going to evaluate all submissions according to originality, details, problem presented and solved, as well as any additional quality, such as something funny, surprising, or completely new idea. Okay, I know, this is waaaay subjective, so I hope you don't mind competing at the mercy of my judgment. :-)

What I'm not going to judge your submission by is the writing: spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, etc. So don't worry if English is not your first language. Also, the beauty of your wording is something I'm going to appreciate, but I won't make it a factor in deciding the winner. It's about the ideas presented, not the words you use. I'll just ask for clarification if I don't understand what your idea is.

An Example Please? 

I wrote you an example story so you'd get an idea what I mean. There is another one in this post, the part written in italics. But I'm sure each one of you can come up with much better ones. Enjoy, and I'm looking forward to your own stories.

Source

A Personal Delivery Across the Atlantic

Steve was finally ready to leave. He had delayed his trip to Ireland by almost a week for one single reason: The Steem Around the World Challenge. He was relatively new to Steemit, but found an immediate liking to the vibrant, and surprisingly closely-knit community, especially for people who mostly know each each other on-line. It was his neighbor Lucy who introduced him to it, or rather asked him to deliver one of her pieces to a friend in Ireland, since he was headed that way anyhow.

Having known Lucy for many years, he was more than happy to oblige, but couldn't shake the curiosity regarding this friend in Ireland, and the gift he was supposed to deliver. The piece in question was one of Lucy's originals as a glass-sculptor: a massive glass globe of a good 15 inches in diameter. It even had oceans and continents painted into it, and little dots at irregular intervals, connected by a red ribbon under the glass surface. One dot was right where they lived, just outside St. John's, Newfoundland.

“This is all part of the Steem Around the World Challenge,” Lucy started explaining. “All these dots represent members who have sent something to each other. See these red lines criss-crossing North America? But you can see so much more in the blogs they've posted. It's all on Steemit...” “Steam-what?” replied Steve. 

So Lucy proceeded telling him all about the blogging platform, the cryptocurrency, and the Steem Around The World Challenge. It had been going for a good few months now, starting in North America with the cheapest shipment, then continuing back and forth across the continent, as the group accumulated more funds, but also more members, who had some home-made gifts they wanted to send. Hive account@glasslucy, as she was known on Steemit, was the last one in North America for two good reasons: her gift was by far the biggest and heaviest of all, which would probably be the most expensive one to ship, as she was also located quite far from everyone else. However, she was also a good friend of Steve, and she had blogged about asking him to do the delivery himself. The Steem Around The World group was quite excited to hear. Although their combined efforts had been so successful lately that they could have afforded shipping her heavy artwork by courier across the Atlantic, the alternative of having it hand delivered by a friend of one of their members was too exciting to pass up.

The glass globe was packed up and stored safely on Steve's boat, and he was pretty much ready himself. The only thing he had to wait for was the little package from Hive account@wildfoodnut to arrive, who was the next-to-last member on this continent, before Lucy. He had blogged extensively about his delicious mixed forest berry jam, and Steve just had to try it. More than that, the package also contained the notebook and the USB-drive which had to accompany Lucy's gift, to continue their journey around the world. In the meantime Steve was exploring Steemit.

By the time the package arrived, Steve had set up his profile @3sheets2thewind and had posted a couple of articles. The Steem Around The World community welcomed him with open arms, so by the time he actually set off towards Ireland, he had already earned some impressive rewards. More than he'd expected, in any case. Additionally, Hive account@cloudsurfer who was waiting for Lucy's globe, was promising him a warm welcome in Galway, which may even develop into a big get-together of steemians by the time he would arrive. All it would take at this point were a couple of posts...