Steemfest - insights from an outsider

In my previous post I was asking what to write about. I can come up with some ideas but if no one wants to read that then what is the point of posting it? Fast forward to Steemfest here in Amsterdam last weekend.

Apparently I'm not the only one dealing with this question. I talked to some people, attending Steemfest. Some shared good insights when talking one on one and others, like @heiditravels and @neilstrauss, shared them on stage. Thanks for that!

In brief I'm impressed by lot of Steemfest things:
• Commitment of the people attending. People flying in from far away places like California, Arizona, Canada, Cambodia (who I talked to) and heared other's mention Panama, Brazil, Thailand and I think even Australia. Just for the weekend!
• The venues. A whole theater, with several rooms, for the first day. Multiple small and intimate venues for the second day when things were more casual than day 1 (although that day was casual too). All located right in the middle of town.
• Good company and good presentations. Smart and knowledgeable people on stage and in the group. Intestesting conversations with people I've met. Out of the box topics on stage. Out of the box things elsewhere like a small lab where you could have your tears visualized as a crystal. I didn't know that such a thing existed...
• Good food.
• Good and spacious hotel lobby (where we gathered). I didn't stay at the hotel so I cannot comment about that but the place was much better than lobbies of most hotels I've been to.
• Good value for money. Since I didn't have enough Steem dollars I paid cash and wasn't expecting that the meals and almost all drinks were included. That sure was over delivering.
• Talking about value for money, as I heared many paid for the event and travel expenses from the money they made when posting here. Pretty impressive too.
• Great organization! Things seemed to go very smooth and every detail seemd to be taken care of even tickets for public transportation. Thanks to @roelandp for arranging all that in just 3 months.

There was a negative thing though. We should have had a second weekend or an extra day or two. I talked to a few dozen of people attending but there were 200 to meet. Is Steemfest #2 happening soon? Is there a list of people who attended so we can link to each other if we want to?

Now I've met some of you in real life I do not consider myself an outsider anymore (if you don't mind). And I'm looking forward for the next Steemfest. And discussing things online.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post. There will be plenty of other posts here about Steemfest with videos and more pictures. I may update this post if there are things to mention or to link to. The pictures here I took myself but there should be much more to see here.

PS - I need to find out how to add pictures to my post. Any tips about how to do that?