First Steem Saturday in Africa

I had the absolute privilege and joy of attending the first #SteemSaturday in Africa this past Saturday 29 October, organised by @jacor, @naomi.louise and @gavvet, ably mc'd by @robertm and held at the rustic Indaba Hotel, in Fourways, Johannesburg, South Africa. We had perfect Joburg weather to inspire and heat up our conversations.

Sharing the day with crypto-experts, seasoned Steemians and newbies

I was there with real world life partner @tim-beck (the fellow in the orange shirt in @rynow's terrific post as well as @aslammotala's equally excellent post on the event, both of which have plenty of great photos of the wealth of Steemians present) and colleagues/friends @gavvet, Bruce and Diane Bouchard, Ceaser Siwale (who was also one of the speakers), Wendy and Hayden Green, Tinus Britz and Jan Uys. We are building an innovative integrated energy solutions business and were inspired by the discussions on crowdfunding and more fundamentally, how crypto and Steem could be used to genuinely empower Africans - fast!

Transforming Africa

We tried throughout the day to come up with a better word for the effect Steem could have on Africa than "leapfrogging"...all we've come up with to date has been "transformative". We'll keep working on it because leapfrogging doesn't begin to describe the sea change that we see coming with the introduction of the blockchain into African life.

A couple of photos

I only have a couple of photos because my cell phone camera and cell phone memory don't get along too well - the one crowds the other out then the phone crashes. I did get a couple of (poor quality) photos of the speakers, so I suggest you go to those other posts if you want to get a proper feel for the event...but here are my two cryptocents' worth:

Ned presenting his keynote address

Ceaser Siwale speaking on the realities of doing business in Africa - far from a negative story

The Speakers Dinner on Friday - meeting interesting crypto "fundis" (South African word for expert)

@tim-beck and I also had the fun and honour of attending the Speakers Dinner the night before. It gave us a chance to meet and get to know @ned a little, although we didn't want to pressure him too much given he'd just arrived on an intercontinental flight that same evening.

I spent some time with the indomitable Adam Meister (@bitcoinmeister) and introduced him to our Country Manager in Zimbabwe, where I hope he gets to spend some time. Crypto and blockchain solutions could be beyond transformative there on social and political levels as well as financial.

I also had the privilege of meeting the energetic and inspiring Lorien Gamaroff, a true Bitcoin evangelist who is working on a number of innovative crypto crowdfunding/Internet of Things solutions.

Takeaways

The organisers commissioned a video of the event and I'm sure they'll be publishing it shortly on the platform, so let me not dwell too long now on the content for now - we can revisit the speakers' talks over time. Of course it was fantastic to have @ned with us to share his thoughts on "whither Steem", and all the speakers were interesting and informative.

I particularly enjoyed Ceaser's talk because of the wealth of genuine African experience behind his words (and okay, I've known him for a long time and believe him to be a benign disruptor of note), and also because he went from "crypto don't know" on Friday morning to figuring out on Saturday that an innovative cross-border financial transfer instrument his company is developing could become groundbreakingly better if combined with a crypto solution. He also emphasised the point that many foreign dealmakers and financiers parachute in, don't engage with local companies and partners, then go back to tell their principals and clients that there are no deals to be done in Africa - when in reality, they don't know how to see the deals in front of them.

Lorien's videos of a school getting electricity through crowdfunding was awesome. All I can say is wait until you see it and you see the teachers and pupils dancing with joy.

Ricardo Goncalves (@steemdrive) gave us some interesting insights into the mechanics of crowdfunding using his examples of getting Steemit billboards installed in various cities. A brilliant idea, well executed.

One of the perhaps small (nobody else seemed to be talking about it) but for me significant takeaways was that at least twice, @ned referred to the platform as "sticky and loving". Love is not a word one often hears in a description of an IT business - not a word we hear often to describe any business. But how else can we work together as a community if we don't do it out of love for each other, humanity and our natural world? In his keynote, he also referred to biomimicry, one of our favourite topics in the sustainability world - using an image of ants working together, he pointed out there is no downtime in their communications and that one of the guiding principles of establishing Steem as a cryptocurrency is biomimicking this ability to keep incentives fluid.

His core message of Steemit "building systems that empower communities" is one which resonates with those of us who've decided to use our time and talents in Africa to not only help the continent deal with its systemic issues, but also to help the continent, well...transform. We need to work on that word.

Let's hope this is the beginning of many #SteemSaturdays in Africa.

Many thanks to the organisers @jacor, @gavvet, @naomi.louise, @robertm for putting on such a smooth, well-organised, content-driven show.