Steemfest has exceeded my expectations so far, I am even more satisfy and proud that it's taking place in a city where I live. Some of my first impressions:
Silent disco headphones!
Most of the time speakers were muted and only to listen by headphones(distributed among attendees) - acoustics at the venue aren't really good for speeches so it was a good solution, and what is more it helped with switching between stages. On top of that there was live stream from both stages.
Thanks to setting of the venue it was sometimes possible to see and hear from both stages almost at the same time. That really put even more attention to networking(along with good catering, comfortable booths and networking game) and not so much presentations. I hope the speakers haven't felt too disregarded(by small turn-out by the stages or audience switching to the other channel)
(Both pictures above were taken from the same seat at Balcony stage).
Fun fact - there was third channel on headphones - with disco polo music - very popular in Poland kind of music that people often enjoy as a guilty pleasure.
Bowling at the evening
It was very crowdly but still it was fun. Music and drinks helped to built really good atmosphere
Big thanks to my teammates that carried me through a few matches despite my very humble achievments! It was nice try at least! (;
(Then after the competition, with practise I made some progress.)
Transportation by buses was provided from venue to venue and back to hotels.
Program
Innovations, excitement, development coming at you from all sides. Many promising projects, things to look into and learn more about(with some selling mixed in)
I will just mention Wise - that involves sharing voting power to help in curation of good content, and
Engrave - enabling to extract content from steem based blog to tailor-made website while still having the feature of gaining rewards from being upvoted. It Can possibly help with on-boarding of new users soon.
Looking forward to remaining part of the event.