Some journeys are physical. Others live in our imagination. But penning down your thoughts - be it in a book or in a virtual world - it is a bridge for your thoughts to touch reality. This is story of my bridge and journey on steem.

Me finding the tunnel to steem universe
Image Source | CC0

Let there be light

It was May 2018. It had been over a year since I got exposed to crypto. I was trying to understand how hash functions work. I was playing with the code on python. Which got me further interested in binary rotation and bitwise XOR operators. While reading about math behind them I landed on steemit. I had no clue about steem cryptocurrency at that time. I don't even remember the articles I landed on. But what I saw was people on the platform are getting interactions, votes and steem for sharing knowledge. And that too technical and scientific knowledge. Like wow! This sounded wonderful!

Without thinking twice I clicked sign up. It gave me a 3 weeks worth of waiting time, and to be honest I forgot about it. 3 weeks later, I got a link with ticket to travel in the steem universe.

The tree of knowledge

The curtains of life and layers of knowledge. Knowledge comes in layers, everytime you draw curtains there is another world of depth, with its own curtains. The faces, the perspective, rhe life everything changes as function of your understanding of the depth you are in.
Painted by Hive account@scienceblocks. Also my facebook's cover picture

Being clueless

So I logged in, and I swear to God Particle SE I was fucking lost. What is SBD, what is steem power, who delegated me 15 SP - nah! completely clueless. I would read one article every now and then trying to get a gist of it. And mark up language what in the world was that!

So after few more weeks, I thought why the hell not. I published my first article related to the discussion I was having on Facebook at that time. It was titled - Writing your behaviour, your skills and your fears on top of your genes and passing it on to your kids - Epigenetic inheritance. Sadly, it didn't gain much traction. It got like 14 votes! Bad pilot run, I suppose. Maybe I didn't frame it well, maybe I didn't put pictures, maybe nobody is interested in the "epigenetic" tag that I used, or maybe it need promotion to be seen. I had no clue.

Staying motivated

No worries, I enjoyed writing and documenting my thoughts. So I really had nothing to lose. I thought I will just write, frame my thoughts here and then share it in my groups on Facebook. Because, there I got much more interaction to keep me motivated. So I wrote another article about neural stem cells and the dilemma of consciousness. Yet again, a mere 7 likes. I was like, ok, I guess it's time for me to rather start reading and interacting more on the platform. Perhaps, I need more followers.

The interactome matters at all levels

I joined many telegram and discord groups. In the meantime I tried to stick with very simple posts - photography, pictures of my dogs, creating art on matlab and all that stuff. By this time I have realized that for people to interact with your content you either need support of big votes or you be a whale yourself. I am not saying content did not matter, sure as hell it does, but it was more like promotion, I guess.

One day, someone in telegram was talking about bid bots. I happen to read the conversation. What then, I played with bid bots a bit. But then somewhere I also realized that they don't pay off much - neither in terms of interaction, nor in terms of value. Though, it does make you posts visible so it kind of a promotion. But then there are promotion bots. To mention a couple I liked at the time the most was - Hive account@treeplanter. Hive account@minnowsupport was another great platform that supported minnows like me. But I needed more, I wanted to talk science. I needed to understand what makes a good science post and what gets interaction. I needed a community of other science authors, who can help me improve. And I found exactly that on steem.

Discovering Hive account@steemstem

Image courtesy steemstem

In the meanwhile, the best thing that happened was that I discovered Hive account@steemstem. I noticed that many other science authors whose posts were popular with votes and comments also had #steemstem tag in common. I followed the account, read their posts and landed in their discord server. And I must say what an amazing place it was. It didn't only have enthusiastic science writers, but also actual scientists and grad students like myself maintaining that community.

The knowledge is incomplete without a guru, a teacher, a mentor.

There I met this amazing person Hive account@katerinaramm who welcomed me and even guided me as a me all along. From suggesting me to make reference section look prettier to eyes to telling me how to delegate, how to properly use images etc. After some initial motivation I published my first article in steemstem titled Bacteria caught live in action while smuggling genes from their surroundings.. Only to figure out an hour later that someone has published about the same paper around same time. It was none other than the great Hive account@effofex. But I will honest I did feel the dread of publish or perish. But that post was wow, way better than what I had written. So I knew I have to be more creative. Anyhow, there was also a joy that came with all the comments and interactions pouring in my post from steemstem team members. Though it was majorly to make me aware of image use policy. Given that I wrote my science stuff majorly on Facebook back then, I had no clue about the copyrights terms dictating image use for commercial purposes and what in the world was Creative Commons, what are different licences and what do they even mean. Nah! I was dumb in that territory. Hence I turned to my mentor once again and she guided me through image use policy.

I then published a couple more articles - one about structure of Zika virus and another related to work I do in my lab - making lentiviruses to edit genes and control their expression. Though I was happy with interaction I was getting but did not get the steemstem vote. I won't lie, I was hungry for it. And it wasn't just about value, but about that feeling of acceptance and achievement of being voted by steemstem curators.

Anyway, like I said that didn't happen yet. And later another mentor and now a good friend Hive account@dexterdev asked me - why the fuck am I using bid bots. I was sort of unaware of the fact that nobody on steem, leave alone steemstem, appreciate authors who use bid bots. I would later discover that there are bots who everyday publish and praise a list of authors trending because of the organic votes they received. So that was the end of bid bots for me.

The spark

Feeling all enthusiastic I made yet another post Dream within a dream - Editing and inception of memories (Research Highlights) in steemstem. This one got me all excited, because I got an upvote from Hive account@curie. I was in 7th heaven. Though, still a little upset that I did not get that seal of approval vote from Hive account@steemstem.

Nevertheless, by now I have started interacting more with other posts. Leaving comments in any cool science post I saw. Sometimes, these comments would get a vote from Hive account@utopian-io. Ah! That felt great. (Though sadly, utopian stopped that later. But, steemstem now rewards the good comments posted by steemstem.io). Anyway interaction was amazing - getting to know so many cool authors, how they think and all that. Nevertheless, I waited for judgement day, and it was not too far.

And then it happened

First I got a small steemstem vote on my introduce yourself post. But I felt like something really great happened when I saw the steemstem vote and comment on my science post titled Type 2 Diabetes - The gut feeling that you might be a bacteria. Oh my! the motivation was such that I literally got addicted to writing. Oh! and don't even get me started on the euphoria I felt when my post was mentioned for the first time in steemstem distilled 70 . The post was titled Female Orgasm - starring evolution (genre - mystery). Thanks to Hive account@ruth-girl. But, I always think that if something makes you feel good, you should alway pay back the gratitude.

Giving back

The writing went on. But I had this feeling that I should be able to return the favor to steemstem in whatever way possible. So my first delegation of mere 10 SP was to steemstem. Now, I have a rule that 25% of my total SP will always be dedicated to this amazing platform. Hive account@dexterdev also told me that how I can contribute to the community as a honor member and a mentor. So I applied for that as well. Though, I got few mentees but sadly by this time the steem price had fallen and there weren't many new users whom I can help. So now I stick usually to giving my suggestions to whoever asks for or if I find someone enthusiastic struggling with the posts. I really wish that crowd comes back to steem once again so I can have some mentees, I can help around. So, fingers crossed!

Before I talk about other stuff I would like to thank to these individuals for the motivation from there comments and some of these also some mentoring me initially - Hive account@lemouth, Hive account@alexdory and Hive account@mathowl
Hive account@chappertron, Hive account@abigail-dantes Hive account@inshight-out, Hive account@scienceangel, Hive account@agmoore, Hive account@whack.science (for letting me know once every now and then what how much momentum my post got on social media).

Answering on stemq

If you think of steemstem as a budding yeast, then one of the most awesome bud that came into existence was another platform - Hive account@stemq (stemq.io), brain child of Hive account@irelandscape. It is basically quora for STEM related questions on steem blockchain. I also interacted a lot in this platform and answered many questions. As of now because of busy schedule in lab and paper writing, I am not able to answer or ask questions there. But sure as hell, I will resume.

Steem for fitness

Another great platform that I love on steem is #actifit. It's just an amazing idea - getting incentive for staying fit. Tell me if you can think anything better than this. Though I love this platform, I ceased posting on it, because I end up posting more frequently on this than science posts. Then when I look at my blog, I like to see more science posts. I think I would make an alt-account for this purpose. That would resolve it. Just that as of now I can't think of a good name.

Future plans

Well, as of now I am running bit busy with wrapping up my PhD. So you might have seen bit of a reduction in my post frequency. Though this is temporary. In future, I plan to not only keep sharing some science here, but I will also be organising some science competitions. I want to dwell into science of some social topics as well, which I started earlier but then stopped. So, you are gonna see a lot more of me on this platform. But before any of that I seriously want to organize all that content that I have made here in last year in one post. Because I have started forgetting what all I have written. This post is kind of a preface to that.

Final remarks

I have really enjoyed my time and evolution on steem. Esp I fell in love with the steemstem community and I hope and wish it all the success. I hope it grows and motivate more scientists and grad students to share knowledge with people. In the end I would like to thank the steemstem team - the management, the curators and the honor members for all the support through the ups and downs of last year. Also a heartful thank to everyone who ever commented on my posts and brought it to life. With this I will say goodbye for today.

Signing off
Hive account@scienceblocks