I love being in situations where I’m not the smartest person in the room and during SteemFest I felt like I was in heaven. Truthfully, I’m still drunk from it all. The source of the drunkenness isn’t from any intoxicating substance, my cold medication (correct me if I'm wrong @roelandp but I think it's vlierbessensiroop in Dutch), or too many stroopwafels. The source of my euphoria is the flood of positive energy sparked by so many like-minded, creative, and highly intelligent individuals gathered together in one place in Amsterdam last weekend.

SteemFest was more than just fun, it revealed to me how truly powerful our platform is, why it will be successful and even why it has the potential to change the world as we know it. As @nanzo-scoop mentioned so eloquently in his article earlier today, our main strength is our people. One distinct change I’ve noticed before and after SteemFest is people are beginning to refer to Steemit as our platform where before it was mostly referred to as the platform. Judging from the posts I’ve been seeing this week I think we all feel much more optimistic and invested in Steemit now. This, above all else, is what makes Steemit more valuable than any other social media platform in existence.

What is the common denominator of most everyone I met at SteemFest? All of us are frustrated with the status quo and we want to use our talents to change the world for the better. Our current world is controlled by corrupt gatekeepers whose sole purpose is to monopolize all they can and keep things exactly the way they are. Today’s world simply cannot be fixed using the current framework that it’s constructed from. Why is this? The gatekeepers have very deliberately blocked every avenue that could be used to facilitate any kind of substantive change. What I realized is Steemians, at their core, are anarchists, revolutionaries, and visionaries.

Everyone I met at SteemFest, whether their specialties are IT., crypto-currency, or content creators all share the same vision of a new, decentralized, society. This is the real genius of our platform. Every one of us on Steemit are pieces of a very complex puzzle. When the puzzle is completed we will literally have created a brand new, more equitable world of our own design. Together I believe there are no problems that can’t be solved.

Our crypto-tech experts are building an ever evolving new infrastructure which is the backbone of a new world and also a means of an equitable transference of energy. Currency, whether fiat or crypto, is merely a representation of energy. Once earned, we must spend this currency and invest it wisely.

Our content creators are using their specific talents in ways that only they can to create engaging, educational, and entertaining content. When all of these different players collaborate and share ideas a synergy takes place in which the sum of our ideas are far greater than the value of its individual parts. Since we’re all stakeholders is this wonderful experiment the Steemit feed should be awash with constant conversation and sharing of ideas on the best steps forward.

Ideas

A few ideas that sprung up for me during SteemFest were:

• Both a post “draft mode” and a post scheduler that allows you to publish a completed post automatically at a set time of your choosing;
• A symbol which appears next to your name representing your status/ranking on the platform, making status more transparent to other users;
• A personalized ratio of upvotes-to-downvotes that is tabulated in real time and displayed somewhere in your profile. This will clearly identify both those who vote judiously and those users who abuse the downvote; and
• A clear and easily understood path of growth for new users to follow that will illustrate to them what they need to do to grow from minnow to whale.

Getting the Word Out

Now that we are beginning to realize the depth of which we are all invested in our beloved platform I feel it’s important to flood our social media pages with our individual stories (with links to Steemit), as @michelle.gent did with her recent ingenious post. Sharing our individual stories is an effective, authentic, and organic way to grow our user-base.

I've learned to not only listen to the words people say but gauge the level of their passion and also watch their actions closely. I have no doubt after meeting those behind the scenes as well as other content creators that Steemit will prevail. Lots of exciting applications have already been, and are in the process of being, built on top of Steemit and to maximize the probability of success we need to grow the volume of users on the platform.

For now I'll tuck my SteemFest wristband away someplace safe and somehow try to deal with the ache of leaving the beauty and charm of Amsterdam behind. It's time to transition back to regular life after a weekend that just can't be described in words. What great memories we all made. Now I think it’s important for us to look to the future.

I woke up this morning to see that Steem is rising. I feel very confident saying that the future going to be a very bright one for all of us.

What are some of your ideas to make Steemit even more awesome than it is?

Let's keep this conversation going forever.

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