What I think we should do with our 3,000 Steem

When @phillyhistory's #explore1918 project began, we all had high hopes. Steemit presented our class with an exciting opportunity to raise funds that could be used to have a real-world impact on hopefully multiple historical institutions in the Philadelphia area. These funds would be generated with school work we could have completed anyway, while allowing us to learn about nonprofit management and the exciting potential of blockchain. Initially, we hoped to end up with $30,000 worth of Steem, which could be distributed to three different institutions. While there were always risks and unknowns, the booming crypto market made our goals seem achievable.

But reality set in, and we are not where we had hoped we'd be

We likely will end up with less than 1/3 of the funds we had anticipated. While we still have reached out to a number of institutions about applying to use our Steem, many have already turned us down.

The fact is that Steem--and crypto more generally--is still too experimental to catch the eye of most cultural institutions. This is especially the case when the amount of funds we're offering is relatively insignificant.

So, if we cannot distribute our Steem the way we had hoped, the question is,

What is plan B for our 3,000 Steem?

@connellgregg proposed keeping the funds for a class next year, and potentially collaborating with Temple University's Cryptocurrency Club. Various other ideas have come up in class that would involve keeping the Steem in its current form with the hopes that the crypto market will turn around and raise the currency's value.

I think we should sell out.

I was involved with the crypto market long before this experiment began. And while when considering my personal funds I am going to HODL, I think it would go against the class' mission to not distribute the funds at the end of the semester.

The whole point of this project was that we as a class would get to determine what happens to the funds that we raised with our labor. To save them for later distribution removes the Steem from our control, which I think is unfair.

While it would still be ideal to give the Steem to a local historical institution, if one will not accept them, there are options on Temple's campus that do not completely defy our original intent of supporting history and promoting the digital.

I am partial to the idea of using the funds to create a fellowship at Temple's Digital Scholarship Center

The DSC already has a number of fellowships, which means it shouldn't be too hard to create a new one. Plus, because the DSC is also part of Temple, I think that they are more likely to accept our Steem than an external institution that is less familiar with us and our mission. Most importantly, a DSC fellowship would allow for supporting education and digital history--we hoped to do this all along.

Photos of the DSC from its official website

The DSC's official description on their website reads,

The Digital Scholarship Center is a space for collaborative research in digital humanities, digital arts, cultural analytics, and critical making, ranging from web-scraping to textual analysis, from 3D modeling and printing to engineering with Arduinos.

With our Steem, we could fund a graduate student working with the DSC to research and work on projects in digital history, possibly with a specific focus on crypto or Steem. We do have enough money to potentially renew this fellowship for multiple semesters.

While we may not have met the goals we set out at the beginning on the semester, there is still a chance for us to do good, relevant work with our Steem on our own campus.

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100% of the SBD rewards from this #explore1918 post will support the Philadelphia History Initiative @phillyhistory. This crypto-experiment conducted by graduate courses at Temple University's Center for Public History and MLA Program, is exploring history and empowering education. Click here to learn more.