Howdy friends, 
Someone had to do something. There wasn't a safe place to work on revolutionary technology any longer. To some degree, you could do your software work in the United States, but news from there gets more and more grim each week. One wonders about dire fates like:
- What if the SEC decides to shitcan STEEM, declaring it to be just equity, despite the existence of steemit.com and the naturally unincorporated nature of our blockchain?
- What if Hillary Clinton actually wins the election? (She seems to really like war...*
- What if China decides to stop producing electronics... for those outside of China?
- What if those electronics are already compromised? (This should make you wonder: Why is it that Mediatek doesn't release source code?)
- What if we don't make it to star trek?
Progress marches on. At least, it should. In the traditional hotbed of technology development, Silicon Valley and environs, I hear from more and more well-compensated people that they have a noose/Damocles sword at their neck at all times in the form of an absurd mortgage payment. Beginning next week, in Siam Reap, Cambodia, steemians from all walks of life will come together and begin building a community. For me, it's a community of technologists. for others, I am sure that it will be a community of bloggers, and for others still, it will be a community of those interested in building a next generation community. I'm pretty sure everyone's going to be concerned with both building a better future for humanity and building wealth for themselves and their communities. But that is kind of the point here: It's not up to me to define steemit.city. In fact that would be more or less entirely against the grain of what we are trying to do there.
Steemit.city is what you make of it. Here's where we're at now:
Stage 0: the beginning:
- Renting an apartment building (we're thinking 10 apartments that will rent for ~$300/mo each)
- Running redundant fiber optic cables to the apartment building
- Ensuring that Ethernet and Wifi work in 100% of the apartments and common spaces
- Helping to coordinate arrivals
- Beginning to run steemit related community events and conferences
- Begin work towards universal acceptance of steem dollars in Siam Reap
- Recruiting steemians to come and join us
- Getting a space set up as the community datacenter
- Making sure that there's a working generator on site
Stage zero is the beginning, and could be extended to include a second apartment block. I expect it to take 6-12 months before we can begin stage one. Stage One is expensive and labor intensive. Stage one is where we find a plot of empty land within 20 minutes of REP: Siam Reap's excellent and efficient international airport.
Stage 1: A new, self-sustaining techno-Urbanism
- This is where we plot out the actual new home of steemit.city.
- We will work with investors at this stage, several leading VC firms have announced their interest in funding new urban construction.
- Solar power plans
- long-term datacenter plans with massive bandwidth direct to Singapore, currently the world's leading IX.
- Rent-control plans put into place (this does not mean what you think it does: we're not going to cap rents, we're going to put systems in place to ensure that rents remain affordable)
- Involvement of technology companies that would find a visa-free place to hold conferences, build teams, and more advantageous.
Another interesting aspect of this is that it is designed so that anyone wishing to remain at stage zero, doesn't need to advance to stage one.
In the short-term, I want for steemit.city to be the best possible place to work on projects related to our software ecosystem. It should also rank highly on global lists of great places to start 21st century businesses. There's a whole future out there, just waiting to be built.
Will you help us build it?
Steemit.city is a project that emerged from the minds of
while discussing their various lifestyle concerns as independent international tech entrepeneurs, and steem users, at the Steemit Souteast Asia meetup after some of Siam Reap's happiest pizza.
We aim to provide low-cost, high-freedom living solutions for anyone geeky or awesome enough to give it a shot.
All proceeds from steemit.city posts go directly to steemit.city costs. We're also funding some of these costs ourselves, because we think the future's worth it.
