India Steem Meetup #3—An AWESOME Meetup In Mangalore—The City Where It All Began!

Mangalore is where Steemit started for me. It’s also my hometown. I was raised in this coastal city located on the western coastline of India. The city is situated in the Indian state of Karnataka and is famous for its food and culture. It is rich is its heritage, and has beautiful beaches and places to travel around it.

I’ve conducted a meetup earlier in this city as well as a technical session last year. It felt great to do the 3rd India Steem Meetup for 2018 here. I was expecting it to go really well and it did. As far as our video goes @shenoy thinks that this was the best one so far. Well, I’ll let everyone here decide on that when we release the video when it's ready.

The meetup consisted mostly of my friends but also acquaintances. Participants come from a range of backgrounds. We had business owners, working professionals from varying domains. We also had homemakers, artists, actor, motorcyclists and photographers join us. Participant age group ranged from early 20s to 71 (my step-dad). My mother @geetharao was also part of the group. It was indeed great honor to have her sit in an event I was hosting.

We were just under 30 participants including a few new users who were onboarded on the occasion. Infact we got 3-4 new people interested in the platform as people sat up and noticed the group picture shoot and a few came to find out what it was about. I’m excited to say that this turn out is largely reassuring of the fact that people want to be part of these meetups and more of this is welcomed.

There’s a lot of demand for technical meetups as well as many are unaware of the intricacies of using their accounts, blockchain technology, Steemit’s complex and sometimes impossible to understand algorithmic changes as well as method of encashing. These are some of the pain points for most of the participants. I intend to do some of these in the latter part of the year.

Overall, Steem blockchain seems to be receiving a good response and people seem to love the idea of being rewarded for their content.

The location was Spindrift-Mangalore’s only Microbrewery which also sports one of the best restaurants in town. It is owned by @phoneypictures. They also own Thyme which is located in the same mall and we used both the locations for our video shoot. People really liked the place and many of the participants were regular customers here anyway.

I’d also like to mention that @lifecruiser came all the way from Bangalore to attend the event and it was great to meet him in person. He was spoken about Steem blockchain in blockchain event in Bangalore and I hope to collaborate with him and @bobinson at a future date if such an opportunity presents itself.

Meetups like this provides a unique opportunity to go over some of the basics as well as advanced questions from the audience. I generally ensure I am able to cover the following in these meetups on a 1-1 basis or in a group audience if people have any doubts.

People loved the idea of meeting and interacting with other users from Steemit. My mother follows some of these bloggers and she loved meeting them in person. It was a great experience for her and I think she may write about it in her own words on her blog.

Some of the things we discussed in the meetup are:

1. Basics of Steemit, Steem blockchain and various apps on top of it.
2. Why prices fluctuate and how BTC relates to the change in price.
3. What blockchain technology means and why we are early adoptors to this technology.
4. How Steemit is helping shape social media slowly but steadily.
5. Various ways of utilizing the platform.
6. How to build a following, increase engagement with posts amongs other things.
7. Some issues related to the platform were also discussed.
8. How to trade Steem for BTC and BTC for INR was done.
9. I also informed users on managing their tax burden in this meetup.
10. Benefits of hodling Steem as SP and active curation on the platform.

People find it confusing to navigate. Users such as @geetharao only use @good-karma’s Esteem mobile app. There was a lot of queries for Steemit’s native app and I hope that happens soon.

Overall it was a great event and I can’t wait to revisit Mangalore again the future and I hope we’d have grown significantly larger by the time we get here again.

I want to thank all of you who made it to the meetup in Mangalore. It was great to onboard a few new people at the location who accompanied some of our existing members from here.

@geetharao @shenoy @ninnajji @madnomad @phoneypictures @sanjayjkamath @rjsudeep Vardhan @serenyx Namratha, Swetha, Gayatri, Jyothica, @preethib @srinidhi @speedracer @heelsonwheels @varunpinto Zain, @rogerloren @droidsid @sucheth.shetty @its2bhan Ram, @lifecruiser Ramdas Shevgoor, Lenord.

I’ve forgotten a couple of usernames here and I apologise for the same.

I want to thank @varunpinto for helping with the photography and camera work. He’s been a great help not only in all my meetups but also at Steemfest 2017 as part of my Firepower Crew!

Missed meeting @andreanoronha her brother, Rajat Rao, @oceangirl @wandereronwheels @karthik Sandesh and a few other users from the city.

Delhi folks, expect an announcement in the next few days! The location and date of the meet is being finalised. Will post the details very soon!

This is the video from the meetup I hosted in Jaipur.

You can read about the Jaipur event here and the Bangalore one here! I also made a presentation at Blockchain Bangalore group meetup on the Steem blockchain which you can view here!

I'd like to thank everyone supporting my work on Steemit. This is how I'm able to carry on with my community building efforts. Please stay tuned as there's a lot more in store for the days to come!

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If you like my work kindly resteem it to your friends. You may also continue reading my recent posts which might interest you:

1. Let's Watch This Fun Video From India Steem Meetup #1—Jaipur Edition!
   
2. Crossed 17000+ Followers-A Few Thoughts As I Work Towards 20000 Milestone!
3. Steemit.Chat Contest #14 + Contest #13 Winners Announcement!

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