Life has been a whirlwind, because SteemFest! I tend to stay pretty busy on Steemit as it is, but then to "prepare" for SteemFest, have 2 weeks where I wasn't writing, and then come back to the USA to a broken truck, :( and try to cover SteemFest, as well as all the other things that I do here on Steem. Well, I'm wiped!
I'm very grateful to have an amazing team of writers who work with me, to help on certain topics, so I don't have as much that I feel responsible for. There are so many important topics that need to be covered, and awareness to be raised. Steem is still young, and as far as I'm concerned, we require "All Hands On Deck!" It's up to us to make Steem the BEST it can possibly be.
Before we get started. A Moment for Gratitude:
"I always wish to be grateful, regardless of my circumstances. I can't say that I'm always good at it. There's so much in the world to be upset about. Every November, we are reminded to give thanks."
A post for Gratitude. Steem Steemit SteemFest and Beyond.
Welcome to the NewsTeem Digest!
SteemFest was Creamy and it was, also, Delicious!
The slogan for 
"I knew, during the hackathon presentations, that I wouldn't be able to keep up with all of the tech talk, and new information. Luckily
was there recording video. So, I am able to take a trip back in time, and take my notes with the ability to pause, ect."
"The first day of the hackathon I got a chance to sit down with
to better understand what was going on with the site issues I blogged about here and here. Many of the team were sitting there as well and at one point,
turned to me and said, "Do you like how the site's been working the last couple of days?" I replied with, "Yeah, it's been much better!" Justin continued passionately with, "That was 180 hours of my last two weeks!"" -
"My intention is to do a thorough re-cap of SteemFest. I will be going in-depth, giving an overview of all of the conference videos, links to posts that others have made, the evenings, and a personal touch along the way. I will try to remember all of the names of people who I had significant encounters with, and the special times that happened, as well as the awkward moments, and the times when I felt like I was breaking."
However, before I do all of that...
Detailed Coverage of the Conference Days
Why watch 28 hours of livestream when I'll do it for you?
"
opens up Conference Day 1, accompanied by a huge applause. Everyone is very much enthusiastic about how amazing everything is, and we've only just begun. He starts off by introducing me to a new word Jugati(sp?), which he says means: "to make it work somehow". This is exactly what he's been managing with grace and poise. I'm sure it helps that he had a wonderful team surrounding him, but it was easy for it to seem effortless because of how smoothly everything worked from my perspective."
"Welcome to Centro Cultural de Belem. In Part 1 we had just wrapped up with the opening words by
. Today I'm covering the first half of the day in Room 1. These talks are only an average of 20 minutes long, but I can assure you it's a lot of work to relate them. It seems like a lot of work for you all to read, as well. I hope that you get plenty of value out of this."
I'll be getting back to the SteemFest coverage in the next few days, until then, here's some of the other stuff NewsTeem has been covering!
Spaminator
"My goal is to root it out and remove the financial rewards of those spamming for profit." -
"I was really irritated after one too many bot spam comments. I really just made the account on a lark to go and comment anonymously in reply to spam. A couple days later I got a tip on the
/@ecoworld comment farm and decided to use
to report it to the community." -
Utopian.io
"Utopian.io is the only place where you can contribute to open-source projects and get rewarded for your work.
We haven't really had a chance to meet
, the man behind the creation of Utopian.io who continues to drive the effort behind Utopian. In this article, let's find out who
Net Neutrality?
Yesterday 
"It's the principle that you can't be denied access to certain websites or services based on the company you get Internet from.
If I wanted to, I can go to any website in the world right now, and my ISP (Internet Service Provider) can't slow down my Internet Speeds, block my access, censor the content, or anything like that, due to several laws preventing this."
What I wasn't expecting was some people to come and argue against it. I've never heard the other side to so-called "Net Neutrality" and I got to learn a different perspective.
"No, I am not a paid shill for the cable industry. I am no fan of Comcast or any other ISP I’ve ever had the "pleasure" of dealing with. I’m skeptical of large corporations generally and dislike the fact that in this debate I appear to be on their side. While I have no problem with net neutrality as a principle or concept, I have serious concerns about Net Neutrality as legislation or public policy. "
"Your ISP tracks, stores, and mines every bit of data that passes through their network. Just imagine the amount of data that your ISP must collect on you, it's the amount of data the likes of Facebook and Google could only dream about. What the ISP's do with all that data though will be widely down to the repeal." -
I'll encourage you to read these articles and then join in on the discussion so we can get more perspectives.
Thank You for Stopping By!! But Wait!!!!
Newsteem Needs Your Help!
The crew here at 
I don't even want to get started explaining all of the directions my time is being pulled.
The short story, is that we need more writers. Ideally you have a fair grasp on the english language, and don't mind doing some research projects. There are many benefits to being a part of #newsteem, especially if you are new. You get hands on editing by me, writing prompts, and a wealth of knowledge that we collectively posses.
If you like what you see, and think you might be a good fit Find Me in the Discord Chat Application. If you don't Discord, then it's not gonna work out! I look forward to meeting you and getting started on some of the next Articles for our Newsteem Digest!