Why watch 28 hours of video, when I'll do it for you?
Welcome to Centro Cultural de Belem. In Part 1 we had just wrapped up with the opening words by 
This article covers talks by:
- Michael Vandeberg - Lead Blockchain Developer - The Scale of Steem
- The Future of Steem
- APPICS
- Jeff Mazer - CFO of Steemit - ICOs and the Democratization of Finance
- A Surfers Point of view (presenting
)
Michael Vandeberg - The Scale of Steem [46:00]
Roeland introduces Michael @Vandeberg as one of Steems lead developers, a C++ master, and a dedicated participant in the Steem Github.
He introduces himself as the lead blockchain developer, and that he's been with Steem from the beginning. He reviews a year in the life of the blockchain. At the end of last year we went to Hardfork 16 (to remove hyperinflation), then early this year we switched to "Steem Simplicity" which removed a lot of the esoteric rules of the blockchain, and then to HardFork "Equality" which brought the linear rewards. Now they are working on "Appbase" which restructures the application framework, so everything is plug and play, this will allow steem to scale and he is hoping for it to be released in the next few weeks. Also coming soon is HF20 Steem Velocity. With velocity they are bringing back the ability to mine accounts, there will be subsidized account creation, and removing the vote dust thresh-hold. All of those rules in the new hardfork are to ease account creation and to make it easier for new accounts. SMT's are getting very close, there are now 7 developers who work on the blockchain. The SMT testnet is going to be launched incrementally so that Steem Developers can start getting used to how it works before it officially launches.
At 50:45 Michael pulls up a graph that shows how in June, Steem became the most active blockchain in the world. We are now up to an average of 700,000 transactions per day. Our daily comments count are up and are continuing to rise. Now we are also seeing a big increase of required storage space for a witness. It's now up to 16 gigs. In order to face the issue, before it becomes too difficult to run a witness because of expense and server space required, the plan is to Modularize the Blockchain. Essentially they will make it so that when they want to upgrade a particular part of the blockchain, Witnesses won't have to re-index the whole thing. Also, we will be able to re-index in parallel, and allow nodes to be run as a cluster of machines working together.
Around 55:00 Vandeberg continues with a lot of high tech blockchain speak, explaining updates and features that will be coming out after the next hardfork. A lot of this is going over my head, and I'm not going to go over all of it here. I highly recommend this is you are wanting to learn about how the blockchain works, and what is to come for Steem in the future. He takes questions around 1:03:43
(Jefferey Paul) - The Future of Steemit 1:12:00
Lets try for the general overview.
[1:19:00] #1 Priority is site performance, but we are victims of our own success. He goes over some technical bits here. A priority is offering support to third party developers, and ideally in the next few years the 3rd Party Devs will overshadow the work of Steemit Inc. Over the past year we got SteemConnect that allows safe handling of keys for 3rd party apps, an image hosting service that allows us to drag and drop images into our posts and comments, development of a lot of backend services, it's all open source and reproducible. Steem.io has been re-launched, the website for our blockchain. The communities feature is to be released this year (very very soon). He relates how awesome the Steemit Dev team is, and how there aren't many teams that work as well as they do together.
around 1:25:00
Without you we are nothing. We need to build together into the future. -
He also introduces us to the Steemit Mobile Wallet. In the coming month this official Steemit Wallet App will be available for IOS and Android.
He did say also that his e-mail address is sneak@steemit.com and that's an AppleID so you can facetime him or imessage him. Please don't abuse this address, but he has made himself available.
and the APPICS TEAM from: @soldier - Steemfest2 Conference Day 1)@Mrs.Steemit APPICS [1:44:39]
APPICS is the among the first Smart Media Tokens that will be released once it is ready. They are working hand in hand with the Steemit Dev Team to create this future. Mrs.Steemit has been blogging on Steemit since July 2016, and was present at the first SteemFest. The intent of APPICS is to bring the Blockchain to the masses. More and more people are connected to the internet, more people are using social media. For the first time, Social Media is being put into the hands of the masses. People can mine cryptocurrencies with our creativity.
APPICS is a cryptocurrency, as well as a social media application, as well as a global movement to push forward the benefits of BlockChain. Not necessarily to teach people what blockchain is, but to get them to use it. 5% of APPICS tokens will go to Steemit Users.
APPICS is a mobile application that focuses on instant sharing and fast consuming of visual content like pictures and videos, as seen on one of the fastest growing social media applications in the world, Instagram. APPICS targets mainstream social media users who spend countless hours on centralized platforms and yet struggle to monetize their brand - whether those are influencers who don’t receive a fair share for the value they bring to the platform, or even users without a large following who have never experienced any form of monetization. - Announcing Appics
In the questions section around 2:00:00 
Jeff Mazer (CFO of Steemit)- ICOs and the Democratization of Finance [2:12:00]
This year has seen 3 Billion USD in ICOs. 65-70 hedge funds investing in ICOs. There are a lot of opportunities. The Crypto Market is growing very fast, and there is still a lot of room to go. Jeff gives us a comparison to traditional markets, where Toy's R Us just filed for bankruptcy totaling 7 Billion in debt.
He goes into a lot of depth about ICO's and I would highly recommend this talk for anyone who's new to crypto. He explains how Steem is safe from the SEC because Steem has a real utility within the Steem platform, where most ICOs are pure speculation, bringing them to the realm of Securities. (for more info on Steem and the SEC see this post)
What to look for in an ICO
- What is the problem that the company solves?
- How big is the problem?
- Is there a sustainable competitive advantage?
- Does the management team have credibility?
- What happens to the money once it's raised?
- Can the company get there from here?
Personally, I came here to be a writer, so all of the ICO and Crypto talk, well, it's starting to make sense to me. Basically, the ico allows you to fund-raise in a way that avoids the governance of the traditional Corporate model, Jeff explains that the markets are even beginning to self-regulate. There are businesses out there that claim to ensure that your ICO is legal, and even guidelines created for crypto by crypto! However, we still need to beware of this, because these businesses are out for a profit, and there is no guarantee that they are going to work. However, the alternative is government regulation. The more internally the crypto market can regulate itself, the safer we will be from the Government.
Jeff takes questions at 2:28:00. A notable comment from the questions by Jeff is that he's been a securities lawyer for a long time, and based upon his experience has a hard time seeing the SEC coming after Steem. Now if that doesn't instill a bit of confidence on that issue, I don't know what does. He also adds that, obviously, it's always a possibility and they are always watching for new announcements from the SEC that could affect steem.
via - @surfermarly - Insight Into My Steemfest Presentation)This is the last talk before lunch, and it's the last one I'll be covering in this post.
- A Surfers Point of view [2:35:00]
She starts off by mentioning how her blog probably looks like a never ending holiday. Marley is living in the Canary islands. She studied computer science and was supposed to become an IT consultant in Germany. But now she is a surfer and a Steemian.
"I guess there are no rules" - Marly
She bought her first surfboard after quitting her last regular job in an office, on July 4, 2016. During this time, when she didn't have a perfect plan for her career, but she knew that she wanted to keep surfing. One of the things she loves the most about writing on Steem is the feedback she receives.
"Money follows Passion" - Marly
Marley sees Steemit as a great think tank. Everyone knows something that we don't know. Another point she makes is how easy it is on steemit to connect with people we never would in real life, the example is of a professional musician that she got to collaborate with her on her surf videos. I must agree, and steemfest made that all the more evident, "in living colour".
Marly shared this video during her presentation, which I was gratefully able to find on her blog. She relates how on her island, which is very small, there are 6000 people who do not have enough money to buy food every day. She started a charity called "Dreams of the Ocean" which is for the children affected by poverty, on her island. She found a surfing school who wanted to work with her, and cashed out 1500 Steem to fund the project. 100% of donations that go to this charity go to the children, none of the funds raised are going towards administrative costs. During the event which she held with the surfing school, these children got a chance to surf the waves, and feel the love that Marly shares with them. For more information on this project you can check out @dreamsoftheocean. Her charity event got tons of coverage in all of the Canary Islands News Outlets, and always with a link back to Steemit.com, so it was also good press for the platform as a whole. CryptoCurrencies are a great platform for charities. The charities offer social proof to the concept of blockchain technology, and blockchain has a lot to offer charities in terms of transparency, and trust, knowing where your money is actually going.
"I believe we are able to change the world" - Marly
She takes questions at 2:55:43. The first question is how can we participate in her project. She points us to the
"do what you love, and always be yourself".
Lunch Break [3:00:00]
So, for the conference, we were all relieved to be able to break for lunch, and recover from the sense of whiplash, having to try to pay attention to two rooms at the same time. Today, I'm grateful to say I've made it through the first half of Day One Room 1 for the Conference. I'm looking forward to getting this published, and move my attention to some other projects I've got going, and then tomorrow, to start going through the second half.
Of course, you'll want this embedded video in case you'd like to dig a bit deeper into some of the talks.
3 hours down and 25 to go :D
References
- @inquiringtimes - SteemFest Conference Day 1 Room 1
- @damnthatbanana - Day one of the Steemfest conference - Centro Cultural de Belem Views and interior.
- @soldier - Steemfest2 Conference Day 1
- @appics - Announcing Appics
- Steem and the SEC
- @surfermarly - Insight Into My Steemfest Presentation
- @dreamsoftheocean - Marly's Charity for Disadvantaged Children on her Island.
- @jeffjagoe - Steemfest2 Day 1
My Previous SteemFest Posts:
- @inquiringtimes - SteemFest Conference Day 1 Room 1
- SteemFest Day 1 Hackathon and Costello Area After Party
- Before I Continue, a big Thank You post to Everyone who has Helped me Along the Way. Obrigado
- A Sexy Street Dancer Show in Lisbon Portugal, that my Friend Joined
- ....and a Creamy, Delicious time was had by all.