Application for curie community support.

Hello there. This is an application for the curie community support initiative.
If anyone is curious about that, more details can be found at this link.
https://steemit.com/curiecommunitybuilding/@curie/curie-community-building-support-application-september-7-2018

First I just want to say.. Thank you very much for what you do for the community in general and also for this opportunity for our community as well to potentially receive some additional assistance.

I was informed to tag @randomwanderings
And also here's my discord contact as well apolymask#5473

Let's get straight to it shall we?

Application Information:
What is your community / contest and what is its purpose here on Steem?

Our community is the Information Finding Channel and our contest is the Information Finding Championship.
Logo created by @bitpizza

The purpose of what we do is not just one purpose, I think it is many different purposes.. However, I will try to sum it up in as few words as possible.
In my mind I think the main purposes are to try to work towards a better future, to create a strong community of diverse individuals and to help each other learn and grow.

The idea was partly sparked by me wanting to give back to the steem community and the nature of the community+contest up until this point I think largely reflect that same kind of motivation and mentality in regards to giving back. This community is full of people who help each other and who seem like they really genuinely care.

Whether it be the rewards people get for their contributions, or the feeling of community or the new things that are learned, or even the quests that are specifically designed to assist others, I think in general the atmosphere around here is one of trying to support and build each other up.

The contest itself is a sort of mental challenge, myself or others send the players out on quests to bring back information about a given subject and whoever does the best job according to the judges wins.

The quests are diverse and we can do almost any subject we can think of.
we've done poetry, music, short stories, photography, etc and have tackled individual subjects like politics, conspiracy theories, world hunger.
Our game has been have referred to as things sort of like the "steem Olympics" because we do so many different kinds of quests.

The community started with the game world but in short time extended much further into even a virtual marketplace which facilitates P2P transactions and deals using any kind of currency.

The marketplace right now comes in the forms of tags on steem, but is mostly used on our discord channel where we had around 20 shops spring up and 20+ transactions as well. Diverse things have been sold or at least attempted to be sold, we've had everything from spiritual card readings to drawings, clothes, crystals, jewelry, travel advice, music, games, and even someone attempting to rent out their physical property in the marketplace.

I'm probably forgetting some items as well though suffice to say, it's been pretty surprising even to myself at times just how much potential is here.
In light of that I would say another major part of our purpose also is to eventually foster or cultivate our own sort of eco-system and economy within our unique community and either a SMT or crypto coin of our own is something we would like to further explore some day.

Our community also serves as a sort of micro political system as well as we want everyone to feel like their voice matters and we vote on many if not most of the important issues and subjects regarding our shared virtual world. It's practically open source as well and I've already had at least two people confirm they at least partly modeled their contests off of ours.

I encourage people to do that as well, to use our idea or change it and make their own and I want it to be as free as possible.. Yet there has to be some kind of rules and boundaries for this to work properly in regards to my schedule and time and things like that so I do make some unilateral decisions myself and I act sort of like a "game master" or "quest giver". We do have a team of co-owners as well who I have shared responsibility with.

In light of all that and in a sort of summary as well.. I'd say one of our main purposes is to try to help change the world. This isn't just a game, it's a community of mostly awesome people and also a tool to help improve things. At the very least we can try to show that there are other ways to consider, and perhaps inspire more freedom in the world. :)

How much support are you seeking per month for the two-month period?

We would appreciate as much support as possible, though would also be happy with even a small amount of help. Every little bit helps. If I had to ask for a specific amount I would say our community is worthy of what you give to other similar communities. However I think our potential is unknown.

I think with enough funding we could be something similar to steemmonsters or even much more than that. We had plans of making our own card game of our gameworld similar to steemmonsters but based on our characters and universe before that even came out by the way.. We just lack funds. Our IFC world is.. Deep and it could be mind blowing if we ever get the right funding/support.

How will this support be used?

It depends on how much we receive, though the majority of the support would likely go the contest towards helping with the prizes and also to help pay the judges who do a lot of hard work and who deserve more for it than I can properly currently give them right now in my opinion. It'd be nice to put some towards the marketplace as well, yet the contest is our bigger priority right now.

Approximately how many users participate in your community or contest?

During our first season we had 39 different players score at least one point to get on the leaderboard and I'm guessing around that many who did not score at all.
So we probably had around 80 players, and our discord is close to 200 people now and we also have the support of numerous witnesses.

How will supporting your community or contest help grow the Steem community?

I personally think that if we got enough help.. We could bring a healthy amount of people to steem in a variety of ways in order to play in our game or be a part of the marketplace.

I think one of the better examples to illustrate is.. Some of our quests like Kryptocek's Photo Scavenger Hunt have been very popular and quests like that one get players outside into the physical world exploring their nearby environments to take pictures with a note card that says IFC and the date on it.

This is great sort of "word of mouth" way to advertise both the IFC contest and steem in general as when people are out in their local town or where ever they are they will often run into other people and tell them about the IFC adventure they are on and that usually leads to talking about steem as well.

Image taken by @kryptocek

Image taken by @jbreheny

Image taken by @mr-bike

Image taken by @youhavewings

It's cool how we get to see the IFC tag in pictures from all around the world! These are just a few examples of the unique scenes that have been shared in our game world.

Image taken by @wholeself-in

Also this one was from a "power spot" challenge, which was about sharing somewhere you feel "powerful" and one of the players picked the ocean and wrote IFC in the beach which I think is really cool. :)

You could almost look at it sort of like.. Advertising for steemit in that if we were able to get a bunch more players because the rewards are higher then that would be a bunch more people who are out in the world meeting others and telling them about the game they are playing and also subsequently probably talking about steem as well.

I think when more people learn that they can play a free mental challenge game on the internet that has a prize and is set up in a way in which the round winners and season winners are essentially getting paid to play a fun game and that they can become a "champion" of that game as well.. That that will attract more and more people into this new age of rewarding the user more.

I also think we could help a significant amount with retention among numerous other areas. Because.. Over the course of our first season I've had quite a few people tell me things like... That they would have quit posting on steemit if it wasn't for our contest. And also that it helps keep them posting more regularly and gives them ideas about things to post about and some have even said some further things have truly humbled me.

A few extra thoughts to consider.

Our players during the first season have received a number of curies for their entries. In that light I think we would be a great fit as some of our players are already getting rewarded by curie for their entries into our contest.

Here's a list of entries that our players received votes from curie. (Thanks a bunch to @abh12345 for finding this info as it would have taken forever to manually go through all the entries!)

@youhavewings
[https://steemit.com/@youhavewings/ifc-championship-round-forgiveness]
@magicalmoonlight
[https://steemit.com/@magicalmoonlight/not-your-typical-love-story-ifc-championship-round]
@wholeself-in
[https://steemit.com/@wholeself-in/not-alone-ifc-finals-third-round]
@youhavewings
[https://steemit.com/@youhavewings/ifc-s1-r35-catchup-entry-creative-minds]
@warpedpoetic
[https://steemit.com/@warpedpoetic/so-you-think-you-are-free-ifc-s1-r32-entry]
@warpedpoetic
[https://steemit.com/@warpedpoetic/information-finding-challenge-round-21-tie-breaker-a-marie-speaks]
@bengy
[https://steemit.com/@bengy/etymology-information-finding-championship-season-1-round-24-entry]
@mr-bike
[https://steemit.com/@mr-bike/information-finding-championship-season-1-round-22-entry-music]
@bengy
[https://steemit.com/@bengy/information-finding-championship-season-1-round-22-entry-music]
@zpedro
[https://steemit.com/@zpedro/information-finding-championship-season-1-round-19-entry-reading-music-like-a-boss-in-no-time]

Also one of our co-owners/judges got a curie for a post that was partly about the IFC as well.
@charisma777
[https://steemit.com/@charisma777/what-a-long-strange-trip-it-s-been-a]

The above post by charisma mentions a song that was created about our world.
And that's another cool aspect of all this is that much of the game is created by the players themselves and is growing to the extent that we have our own sort of culture with our own story and music and artwork exclusive to our world and inspired by it.

Here are a few examples..
Our official logo was created by one of the players. Some of the quests were created by our players as well as the names of cities and places in the gameworld and story as well. Also many of the artifacts/relics and items were also created by the players and how much the game actually works in regards to the rules. The players also found our first major sponsor as well.. This game is truly a game of the "people" unlike anything I have ever myself seen before and I grew up and spent much of my life as a "gamer".

Here's some artwork based on our game and another neat aspect is how players who achieve special feats or who pay an artist can get a picture of them drawn up to represent them for our world to further add personality and uniqueness to the experience. They can be whatever they want as long as it's not copyrighted or perhaps somehow something too offensive or sensitive.. We try to be reasonable while respecting peoples imagination and freedom, we even have a "plushzilla" and a walking talking tree, though most of the players seem to prefer a picture of how they really look in real life. And.. This I think is a really cool way to further blend the physical world with the more imaginative digital one.

The first image is of our "digital castle" the others will be of members of our world.

Artwork credit - @yeszuzia on steemit and instagram
This artwork of the crystal castle helps represent our gameworld . It's sort of our "virtual home". As a side note our world takes place in a both futuristic and ancient sort of feeling place.. We have a castle, yet UFOs flying around.. There's a very interesting feeling to how many different worlds collide here.

Here's our first season winner @youhavewings

@plushzilla

@bashadow

@apolymask

@charisma777

@kryptocek

There's a lot more artwork by the way from numerous artists, but I wanted to just show a few to give an idea and not "too much".

Also I think one of the greatest things about our contest is how open it is to many different diverse individuals and skills. The way the challenges are set up just about anyone can be a part in some way if they want to!

For example the openmic contest is amazing and does such great things for the community, however.. If you're not a musician.. You probably won't be participating in the actual contest. And there are some great photography contests on steem, but if you're not a photographer..? And likewise writing contests and other sorts of "specific" contests on steem

Our contest is diverse in the ways in which people can participate, we do music, writing, photography, drawing, research and many more things and each round you can enter using any of those methods you want unless otherwise noted. There were a few contests that only applied to one kind of artform like the logo making round, but MOST of the rounds we do you can enter with whatever artform you want.

It's kind of limited only by our imagination in how our contest can fit almost any subject under it's umbrella.. So just about anyone can enter if they try.

Another thing I wanted to say is that we do have defined rules for our game that players should properly source their entries and while the first season wasn't perfect, we do strive to make it a professional environment and will continue to improve in the ways we reasonably can in perpetuity.

Our first round started back on the 26th of January and here's a link to that round post which also goes into additional details about the contest that I did not cover here if you would like to know more.
https://steemit.com/contest/@apolymask/information-finding-championship-season-1-round-1-150-steem-grand-prize

The first season ended up being 40 rounds and was suppose to last around 5 months yet due to some unexpected things and having to redo one round over and tie breakers, we didn't end up announcing our champion until October 4th.
Despite how long it ended up taking.. (And next season will be much shorter, we're trying to fit the next season in at around 2-3 months) We had quite an exciting championship!

And while I feel like we're all champions in this community, there can only be one IFC champion each season.

(Bracket art done by @artgirl)

@youhavewings was our first winner and here is a post of hers about the IFC.

https://steemit.com/contest/@youhavewings/ifc-side-quest

Also @bengy did a really wonderful job explaining his thoughts of the IFC.

https://steemit.com/delegation/@bengy/informationfindingchampionshipseason1reflectionanifcsidequest-e3p4zpdaru

Additionally to mention the Marketplace one more time.. I think the potential here is very high as so many people seem to be trying to tie digital coins to physical wealth and we've managed to do that already and have people trading steem for real physical items sort of like Steembay or Steempay or other similar efforts of such nature.

Artwork credit - @yeszuzia on steemit and instagram This is a picture of our virtual marketplace. :) It spawned from the game world, but is not limited to it and we have people who buy and sell or who opened up shop who do not play in the game or judge or are a part of it at all.

Our marketplace is also is very open and diverse like the contest in that people can buy and trade and sell anything they want with any kind of currency they want as long as it's not illegal. That's our only rule.

So it's sort of like Craigslist, Upwork, Ebay, and Amazon all mixed into one except a crypto version that supports steem and all currencies as it's P2P and those doing business work it out between each other, we don't get involved unless there's something illegal which hopefully never happens, nor do we take any profit from the deals.

The marketplace also has a gamification aspect where those who complete transactions get "digicrystals" which are sort of like stars on Ebay.
Right now they just offer a sense of reputation and show that a seller or buyer is more trusted as they have a history of doing business, but in the future with more funding we could offer some kind of additional rewards to people who do a lot of transactions and who sort of "level" their accounts up so to speak.

In time it would also be cool to add extra elements like personalization with the shops where they can put up their own artwork and have their virtual characters represent them.

Additionally.. The way both our contest and Marketplace work is sort of like a "Human Google" where people leave human trails and get information from other humans and this could be a whole page in itself in regards to the potential and possibilities though I'll try to finish this up soon here as it's getting kind of lengthy.

One other thing I think is important to mention is that I'm working on trying to bring more people from other social media over to steem to play our game and be a part of the marketplace as well and I have a few ideas.. However I think one of the main things that would help here is just a good prize for people. So if you help us and we continue to get help from others as well I think the bigger prizes will attract even more people over from other places to play in our game and be a part of the marketplace as well and as a result hopefully take a deeper interest in steem and cryptocurrency in general as well!

Whew.. That was a lot. And this in my opinion is still sort of just scratching the surface because this idea has been so rich and deep already with only just one season under our belt that I could talk about it for a long time in interesting and novel ways, but this is getting a bit long, so.. Please feel free to ask any additional questions and there's probably a few things I'm forgetting that I'll wish I would have said afterwards, but.. I think that's about enough for now.

As a final note.. In my eyes.. We're still only just getting started, we've had close to a year of experience, our community and idea has a ton of potential and I think in time awesome things will happen that we can't even properly predict right now. :) So far the response for me has been overwhelmingly positive and I plan on helping to try to take this to the heights it can go. Thank you again for what you do in general and for considering our community! <3

If you'd like you can check out our contest page on steemit here at @ifc and our discord link is here.
https://discord.gg/bKVnKQF

Both are pretty slow right now as the season ended, though in time I feel like we may have thousands of people in our community. It might take a number of years, yet I do think our community has that kind of potential and myself and others who believe in this idea work very hard to see this all work and grow. :) Peace.

PS Apologies for the typos and misplaced words. I just reread the whole thing and fixed it up better. Should read a bit cleaner now! ._.