Why on earth did I get a slot to speak at Steemfest?

Honestly, you'll have to ask Hive account@roelandp why.

At the risk of repeating myself, this is who I am. I am a father, a husband, a dog caretaker, a software developer, a former skydiver, a Grateful Dead fan, and just for the moment, a fence builder. Compared to many coming to Steemfest, I'm somewhat of an old guy, which just means I have a head full of useless trivia on top of everything else. Nonetheless, I am humbled and honored to be given a presentation allotment.

Generally I am a quiet person, which is why you don't see a lot of posts from me. Further, most things I would have to say have already been said by others, and an occupational hazard for people in my line of work is an abhorrence of redundancy. So I tend not to post on events because I know that someone else has, or I know that some authority will have something to say soon enough, so by the time I would get around to posing something it is redundant.

Why did I ask to put myself on the stage in front the lot of you? I did it because as a software developer I have a long history of developing open source software, particularly in the domain of distributed computing. Both of which are concepts that also define the SteemIt application code and the Graphene blockchain at its core. Of course there will be many Steemians who are far more knowledgeable than I on the details of the SteemIt software. I have no intention of trying to one-up any of them or even pretend I am part of their club. Rather I intend to show more of an outside-in view of adopting SteemIt for use in developing other blockchains. Even this topic - in general - violates my "don't be redundant" guideline, but from the perspective of "What did Phil learn from using SteemIt" it is unique.

Ultimately this boils down to my desire to go to Lisbon for a fantastic vacation, but given the forum, and my opinion that I have something of value to contribute, lead me to make a request of Hive account@roelandp. He obviously agreed with me and granted me twenty minutes of presentation time. So please join me for a little show-and-tell.

Of course if you would like to talk about dogs, skydiving, the Dead, or anything else, that's fine too!

P.S. I would like to say "hey" to my fellow Steemfest speaker Hive account@opheliafu and her husband, whom I happened to encounter at an event in London this past Tuesday. Also, I would like to apologize for admittedly not hearing her name clearly over the din of the crowd and the music, and therefore initially mistaking her for another speaker. She handled my babbling with grace and I appreciate that!

P.P.S. My wife and I are very excited about coming to Steemfest but neither of us speak Portuguese, I hope that kindly Steemians who do speak the language will be interested in joining us on jaunts around the city after the informational portion of Steemfest is over. I have no doubt there are many of you planning to attend, so I am certain this won't be an issue. Still it's worth putting out there.