On Wednesday, the 20th of December 2017, I hosted a Steem meet-up in Delta State. Its was a special type of meet-up, I call it Steemit Christmas Special. The idea was to create visibility for the steem blockchain making use of the yuletide season and Santa Claus. The idea was to show some love, share some gifts with loved ones and strangers in the mall and tell them about this new fantastic block chain social media that pays people when they post stuff and upvote stuff. We gave free WiFi and lunch. Anybody who cared to attend was welcome, and there were some people who were given special invitation.

I didn't do it alone. I partnered with @destinysaid who is also from Delta State and @ejemai. The project was a @stach project and it was part of the dream to get 20million Nigerians into the Steem blockchain. #project20millionnaija.

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The Organising Team

This is just a brief outline of the organising team and the things they did to bring the programme to a success.

@tojukaka: Hosted the event steem Christmas Special
@destinysaid: Co-Host
@ejemai: founder of STACH and initiator of #project20millionnaija. Sponsored the free WiFi
@ehiboss: Made a Presentation on: Introduceyourself post.
@gbenga: Made a Presentation on: Steem, Steem Power and Steem Dollar.
@nairadaddy: Gave a brief talk on: Where does the money come from.
@ewuoso: Took care of feeding and refreshments
@casweeney: Did marketing, registration, attending to newbies and did a video recording of the event.
@okoro: printed and distributed flyers and Santa gift cards.
@nmalove: took care of logistics
@mimiomagbe: bought and sorted out Santa gifts.
@michaelcj: acted as steemit santa
@jacobite: took care of registration
@mediahousent: acted as MC

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Online Promotion

Although Steem Christmas Special was an offline event, it was promoted via numerous online platforms by members of the organising committee.

Below are links to my FB page where I made a post about the event. People responded well to Steem Santa. Within hours of making the post, I got 185Likes, 367comments and 17shares. I also got 93Likes and 16comments and 13shares another post I made towards the event. The number of likes will definitely increase as time passes on.

My Facebook Profile

First Post

Second Post

We have created a Whatapp group where new users will be taught about the Steem blockchain and mentored on how to use steemit.

Whatsapp Group

Screenshots of Online Promotion

These are the proofs of the post engagements at the time of writing this post.

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The Event

The event started with Santa giving gifts to children in the mall. All the children that came to shop 28 were given gifts courtesy of the Steem blockchain and STACH.

We had some excess gifts left after the Santa giveaways. We are going to be donating them to "Meet-a-Need"a charity organisation owned by @mimi4dammy.

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Attendance and Registration

After the Santa giveaways and distribution of flyers, the meet-up started with introduction of Steemit folks and new members.
Over 50 attendees were present at the event this is besides the kids.

Presentations

@ejemai made a presentation on: What is Steemit?

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@gbenga did a presentation on: Steem, Steem Power and Steem Dollars.

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@ehiboss did a presentatation on the topic: Introduceyourself posts.

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@nairadaddy did a presentation on: Where does the Money come from?

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New Members Registered and the Creation of the Delta State Steem Whatsapp Community

Here is a list of some of the new members that created accounts.

The following accounts have been approved
@whiteboi
@tegapounds
@pjosa
@arubione
@kkweyinmi
@tessy1234
@tobore2296
@bellasings
@mawumi1
@mimi4dammy (registered before the event)
@mimiomagbe (registered before the event)
@honestaf(registered before the event)

The following accounts are not yet approved. I'll keep updating this post as more accounts gets approved and more account gets created.
@uzziyfrizzy54
@tega1234
@jenifer1
@fredo12
@solaa
@michael9ice
@tori1
@paulinaomagbe
@kandylopez
@mritsnobigdeal
@julietakatakpo94

This is not an exhaustive list. There are some more who have not yet registered or who have accounts yet to be approved. The community in Delta State will continue to grow. This is only the beginning.

We have created a Whatapp group where these users will be taught about blockchain and mentored on steemit.

Whatsapp Group

As time goes on we would have a Steem Accelerator Hub in Delta State to facilitate the spread of Steemit and the use of Steem dollars.

Drawbacks/Criticisms

• There was a lot of noise in the mall. This made us to stress ourselves by raising our voices to talk. We chose shoprite because of the fact that it was a very busy place and we hoped to get the attention of people as we go about our activities, distribute flyers teaching about steemit e.tc.

• Shoprite did not allow us to share flyers and gifts outside of the restaurants. This limited our activities but didn't stop us from making maximum impact to those people within our reach.

• Combining a meet-up, a marketing campaign and a Christmas giveaway is a good idea but it would have been more effective if we had three separate events so that we do not confuse our audience.

Despite these drawbacks, the purpose of the Steem Christmas Special which was to create visibility for the Steem Blockchain and boostrap the Delta Steem Community was achieved.

Conclusion

Attending a meet-up is fun but organizing it could be very tasking. We have very few members in Delta State and we had to put in some extra effort to make things work. I'm grateful to the entire Steemit Community for their superfluous support in the form of upvotes, donations and showing up. Some persons travelled from very distant places like Kaduna, Abuja and Port-Harcourt just to help pull this off. This is something I want to happen every year. Every 20th of December we could have a Steemit Santa event for people but it doesn't have to be in Shoprite. We could take it to the orphanages and homeless people on the street.

This is the report of Steem Christmas Special. The first meet-up, marketing campaign and Christmas giveaway in Delta state and the beginning of the Delta State Steem community.

Thank you for reading.

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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