Interestingly, the other day, I got the answer I’ve been searching for this month and I muster up the courage to write this entry to #hf25giveaway; Anyway the quote on that heading was from a person I consider a mentor.

Here’s a little background story before I want to tell why I want to attend HiveFest.

Out of the blue, I applied to be a speaker for Hivefest. Technically, I had this idea for so long and I got especially excited after organizing my first offline Hive event in the country.

This was one of the snippet of it, in case you're interested in Hive Offline Event indonesia

It was really fun to learn something new, to take up new roles, and tell people about the benefits they can get by joining Hive. I truly believed in Hive and its ability to shape an individual and how being a part of a community can empower us and help us grow in life.

Take it from me. I grew up here and I started my adulthood journey in this chain since I was around 20 years old. Now, I am old enough to be called aunty, I already have nieces and nephews 😂

Some years ago in Kuala Lumpur and I hope I can see them again this time around!

So, when I heard Hivefest is going to be organized in Malaysia, I got even more excited. It’s closer to where I live and finally it’s going to be my first Hive fest I can attend offline. And voila, I somehow applied to be a speaker. For a moment, I was overjoyed then fears & anxiety took over for maybe some obvious reasons.

But once I applied, I forgot about all of it.

I decided to put it on my back burner until I found out I was chosen as the speaker. I didn’t know about it until Hive account@gtg showed me the picture on the website. It came as a surprise and I was pretty much sleepless and having impostor syndrome.

I got even more anxious and I even prepared myself in several ways.

Since I am a perfectionist, it’s only fair that I have done these things in the past 4 weeks:

• I talk to strangers a lot to muster up my courage to speak in front of the public
• I reflected a lot what made community thrive and died
• I expose myself to difficult and uncomfortable situations in case something happen when I talk in public, I won’t be too ashamed of it 😂
• I am showing myself a lot more to strangers and being comfortable with it.

But again, who knows after all this preparation, at least I come a bit prepared.

This is going to be my first Offline Hivefest

Hivefest, to me, offers the opportunity for me to share ideas, opinions and especially as a community builder to learn what’s working in each other’s community and what keeps it alive. In my opinion, seeing the passion that everyone will have there is like refueling the reason why we’re still on Hive and believing in it all these years.

And even more so, Not only to talk about the fun of building, running a community and growing through it but also meeting the people that I only got to read online. While I might have seen a lot more familiar faces, I am sure there are people that I have only known through their hive account and have worked with that I never met. So this Hivefest will be a great opportunity to meet them too.

I also want to share my experiences being curator since 2017 to especially through OCD where I had the chance to discover many amazing authors and creators on this chain. While there were many changes and we adapt throughout the years, our core mission is still the same. We want to empower newcomers and undervalued authors to thrive. We were once new to this ecosystem and felt like our voices weren't heard. And through many OCD initiatives, they have a chance to get discovered. That’s the thing I wanted to share with many there.

I am aware that the Hive ecosystem is so big that even for me, I couldn’t keep track of things. And among the vastness of it, I come from the social value side rather than the technical side of it all.So, being able to attend it will be a great honor to share my experiences being a community member in this chain.

Last but not least, my bag is packed and I travel light.

What’s missing now is the golden ticket that will get me to be able to meet everyone of you and sharing my experience being a community member in this chain for 8 years now 😊

Wish me luck everyone & thank you to the sponsor @splinterlands for organizing the giveaway of 2 Hivefest tickets!