Source: pixabay.com
TL;DR
Hi all! In the last month, I have been structuring an idea that I find very interesting to implement and that could bring quite a few benefits to Steem. To keep it short, my idea is to promote Steem in my state (Nueva Esparta) making use of chess, a sport that is well known nationally in my country Venezuela and has a big community.
By this I don't mean that the idea will only be limited to chess in my state, thanks to this sport I can make Steem appear in international pages like FIDE (International Chess Federation) and newspapers of my state (like this: elsoldemargarita.com.ve.
What's this all about? How I will do this? What's the scope? Benefits? What is the problem? What do I expect from the community? I'll explain it briefly in this post.
What's this all about?
As I mentioned in previous posts, I am a competitive chess player and throughout my career as a chess player, I have met incredible people and participated in dozens of official tournaments at state, national and even international levels.
I study in a school called Unidad Educativa de Talentos Deportivos (Sports Talent Education Unit), a school where academic classes are combined with practicing a sport discipline to become professional athletes while we study like in any other school. In my institution there are internationally recognized coaches, in chess, we have 3 coaches, 2 of them from Venezuela and one of them is from Cuba, this is to ensure that we develop optimally and become professional players.
One of my coaches is named Ulises Hernández, a currently retired expert chess player dedicates himself to being an international chess tournament coach and referee/organizer. He has several international titles endorsed by the FIDE, these are:
- FIDE Arbiter (2015)
- International Arbiter (2016)
- FIDE Instructor (2010)
- International Organizer (2012)
Currently, he is also vice-president of the Venezuelan chess federation, actively coordinating national tournaments and also in my state. He is the one who is going to help me promote Steem at the state level (in the first phase of this project/idea). Now, the second question:
How I will do this?
It's very easy to say "promote," but how can we promote Steem?
First of all, you have to understand how chess tournaments work here, so I'll explain it:
These tournaments are completely competitive and respective prizes are awarded to the participants, are high-level competitions (although the level varies depending on the type of tournament), like any sporting discipline. An example of this is one of the most recognized tournaments in my state: the annual Sambil tournaments. This tournament is held in October of each year and always has more than 80 participants. This year there were 88 participants in total, being the event number 10 (yes, 10 years doing this tournament annually in the same place). Here is a photo of the winners of the open category:
This is a list with the names of the winners in their respective categories. I participated in the open category and came in third place. I'm García Benítez Jeancarlos José
Each of these tournaments is endorsed by the FIDE, that is, they are official competitive tournaments and can be consulted anywhere in the world. As you can see in the image above, logos are representing the state chess organizations in my state. One of the ways we can make Steem known is by adding the Steem logo to each of these documents, and by adding a text explaining very briefly what it is and why we published it in the document.
We propose to give talks about Steem before starting each tournament, in this way we motivate participants to join the community and also explain why they should give importance to cryptocurrencies in general and what Steem represents in the field of community building and also participate in a social network where you can be rewarded for it.
How am I going to get Steem into the newspapers in my state? Chess in my state has an association called ASOAJEDRENE (Chess Association of Nueva Esparta). This association is in charge of promoting the tournaments and talking to different public institutions for the promotion of these, my coach proposed the opportunity to talk about Steem every time there is going to be a journalistic article about a specific tournament this is an example of a journalistic article about a recent tournament, made by one of the journalists who work for the chess association in my state: Juan Lyon won the Sambil Tournament. We can add a paragraph talking about Steem and why we are supporting the blockchain.
In summary: What do we offer?
- Mention of Steem and/or projects that are interested in being part of the advertising campaign in each of the official documents of the association.
- Talks about Steem in each of the events organized by the association, motivating people to join the community.
- Mention of Steem in state newspaper articles
- Mention of Steem and/or projects that are interested in forming part of the advertising campaign on international websites such as FIDE (when organizing a tournament we can mention our sponsors on the official FIDE website).
- Mention of Steem and/or projects that are interested in being part of the advertising campaign in all social networks of the association. Links: Twitter vice-president of the Venezuelan chess federation (FVA), Nueva Esparta Chess Association Facebook Group (ASOAJEDRENE). Website of the Venezuelan Chess Federation (FVA)
This is only at the state level, for now, I structured everything according to state needs first before moving on to the national level (which I will continue to describe in other publications as this project progresses).
What is the scope?
For now, the scope of this project is at the state level, that is, covering only my state of Nueva Esparta. This is because the project is still in its infancy and I need to see how things will progress from now on, but, the scope of this project can be expanded nationally, covering practically the entire national territory of Venezuela and creating many more opportunities to attract new users and investors to the blockchain.
What are the direct benefits of this project/idea?
This project seeks to directly promote Steem by making use of chess and the resources available to motivate more users to learn about Steem and motivate them to join the community.
This will be done through talks, newspaper articles, social network publications and also nationally promotion of Steem on websites such as the Venezuelan Chess Federation and internationally on pages such as FIDE.
*Btw, you can see mi FIDE profile here: García Benítez Jeancarlos José
What's the problem?
What is the problem for us when it comes to doing this? Lack of resources.
As I have mentioned in previous articles, the chess activity in my state has dropped incredibly, having only a couple of tournaments in a month and that as long as we are lucky enough to have a free place where we can do the tournament. I will explain this in more detail:
Our main problem is the lack of economic resources to be able to carry out competitive tournaments in optimal conditions for all the athletes, to be able to get places where we can organize the tournaments we have to pay an amount of money with which we do not count (going from 15-30 USD$). Since we don’t have a source of income when doing tournaments of this level, we can’t afford a place to do the tournament, which in the end prevents us from doing tournaments and prevents us from maintaining a good activity.
We have had this problem since the economic situation in Venezuela began to become precarious, something that we have dealt with through contacts and support we have been given, but now it is almost impossible to hold tournaments because we do not receive the same support with which we had before, our only options are to resort to public places (places that are not recommended at all due to a large number of outsiders and that make the experience of play a disaster) or simply private places (which we can not afford due to lack of economic resources).
What do we expect/need from the community?
We plan to publish our activities here, the things we'll be doing and how we're helping Steem get out there. Not only will we limit ourselves to the chess community as Steem is very large and this technology is available to all kinds of people, for this very reason we will do everything in our power to bring Steem to people who do not have the remotest idea of what it is.
Our main problem is the lack of resources and we saw Steem as a potential source of resources that can help us and we give you a boost in our country. We are open to any suggestions or ideas you want to give to improve the project. We will need support with the potential accounts of users who want to register in Steem and it would also be incredible to receive the support of the community to reach a monetary fund weekly / monthly to have a capital to conduct chess tournaments and implement the initiative.
Why Steem? Steem is a great platform, the opportunity to make immutable and incensurable content is simply incredible. Also, to think that you can be rewarded for participating in a social network is just as incredible, so why not support Steem by making many more people aware of the existence of this platform? This way we can give much more vision to Steem outside of Steem and have our community here.
Steem is not just a place where you can make money, as I said before, it's a great community. That's why it would be amazing to have our community here and publish our events, results, newspaper articles and all the chess activity in my country. I think Steem is an excellent place for this.
What exactly will we need? Just support from the community. Whether through delegations, votes, accounts or just donations, what we need is Steem's support in the broadest sense to be able to do all this.
I don't want to take advantage of my country's situation just to earn rewards. I've been in Steem for a year and a half and I've never done that, that's why I want to make my contribution to the community and take Steem to many places outside of here. I will not present Steem only as a platform to earn free money if we do that we would be failing in our goal.
Steem is a great community and we want many more people to get to know it, we will do an excellent job and we will need you to make this a reality and a long-term project.
The first chess tournament supported by Steem
To start this idea we will prepare the first chess tournament in Nueva Esparta supported by Steem (and projects that want to support this idea). I will be the organizer of the tournament and I will be giving part of my funds to start this idea incredibly. Giving cash prizes to the best players of the tournament and thus attracting the attention of a large number of players (since that's how chess works around here). That's why we'll also need Steem so that this idea can be strengthened and thus get many more benefits than I have described here.
I am very excited about this project and I promise you that I will be working on this a lot from now on. All the rewards of this post will be used to pay all the administrative expenses of this first tournament (and also for the elaboration of banners and any illustrative material that I can place in the tournament). This is the contribution I want to make in Steem and I will work hard so that Steem can be recognized in many more places.
Off-topic: If you talk Spanish and want to promote Steem
Previously I did an article on Wikipedia talking about Steem, it has very good information and is perfect to use to promote Steem in Spanish, if you want to take a look at the article, here I leave it: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steem