Stories, Creativity, and Puzzles. [Sndbox Presentation @ STEEMFEST]

STEEMFEST³

This past week, our team arrived in Kraków [Poland] to present updates and new projects that are being developed out of our creative studio and incubator - Sndbox. We shared a handful of initiatives and ideas looking forward as the Steem ecosystem and blockchain industry progresses into 2019 and beyond. It was exciting to see so many conversations, presentations, panels and workshops this year focused on action and less so on hype. Sustainable business development was a key theme throughout the week coming from a mix of familiar and entirely new entrepreneurs that we had not met the year prior.

We want to extend a huge thanks to @roelandp and his amazing @steemfest team for creating this one of a kind event. It was organized flawlessly from the outside looking in and no doubt the result of months worth of work. The progression of SF's from 1 to 3 have been especially interesting - with SF1 being the early adopter crowd, SF2 the influencers and power users, and SF3 representing the first wave of new businesses.

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Our presentation highlighted a handful of projects our team has worked on over the past year. The talk was titled; stories, creativity, and puzzles. #BUIDLing steem as the leader of crypto culture. In this post, we'll walk you through the slides. Or if you'd like to watch the presentation via youtube you can click here!

Starting off, we shared our "introduction video" that we created alongside Humdinger & Sons. This hand-drawn animation was created in an effort to distill the complexity of the crypto ecosystem (namely Steem) into a digestible narrative that most within the Social Media landscape could understand.

Last year our presentation focused on Steem Park - a public garden designed and funded exclusively through Steemit.com, a social media website that rewards impactful content with digital currency (STEEM). This garden within Herbert von King Park represents an entirely new way to empower community projects and celebrate special places within our neighborhoods.

Since Steem Park, our team has been busy working on a new series of outreach initiatives seeking to set similar precedents around New York City and beyond.

Sndbox is not just a company in New York, it's a global community made up of 23 countries and spearheaded by "Stewards" who are the leaders of new initiatives, @sndbox curation and education all over the world. Learn more about these amazing people, click here.

As we look ahead to 2019 - a big goal of ours is to act more openly and collaboratively with other blockchain apps, guilds and communities as the ecosystem matures. Ultimately, our hope is that Sndbox can tap into Steem as a social glue between communities across the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Towards this goal [beginning December 1st] Sndbox will be retiring our cohort model in favor of pushing more resources towards curating weekly challenges, monthly themes and creative gigs. The Stewards of Sndbox will take on the responsibility of brainstorming and manually curating weekly challenges - similar to recent test cases - feedbackchain, myblock, antipost, smartmediafutures, blocksketch, dpoll, steemorigins and cryptodots.

Just about 6 months ago, we launched The Creative Crypto Magazine. A beacon for the most artful and interesting blockchain initiatives, blockchain app showcases, and cryptoart that the internet has to offer. By way of the Magazine, we have interviewed, teamed up, and worked with the leading artists and companies in the cryptocurrency world and fostered Media Partnerships across New York City to push the conversation of crypto forward.

Despite the pace of the markets, this network of creatives has been growing by leaps and bounds. There is more demand than there has ever been to learn about cryptocurrency communities like Steem and we want @sndbox to become a premiere and more empowering entry point for the crypto-curious out there seeking a network to learn alongside.

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Each of the thumbnails for our featured articles are also original art pieces created by homegrown Steemians like @zsolt.vidak, @carrotcake, @kr-marketing and @aaronhong. The thumbnail is the window into the story and we believe in building compelling windows to draw the crypto-curious into a topic that they might not yet know much about.

Over the last 6 months, our team has published nearly 400 articles and over 150 original artworks. Looking forward, we want to build a much stronger support network for both our artist and dev community who collaborate on incredible content every week. The Steem blockchain is an incredible asset for publications like ours and we are excited to explore new ways of rewarding contributors by way of Steem-backed upvotes and bounties.

We want to publicly extend a huge congratulations to @zsolt.vidak for winning the Golden Pin Award of Hungary. (In the backdrop here you'll recognize a bunch of Creative Crypto artwork.) And this is what we're hoping to achieve - leveraging Steem as a springboard for second, third and fourth lives for creative content. Congratulations Zsolt!

This past month Sndbox + The Creative Crypto were Media Partners at two events in New York City - New Art Academy's NYC ArtTech + Blockchain Connect at New York University and Mondo.NYC in Brooklyn.

Good for crypto, great for Steem. We believe in constructive industry specific events that focus on crypto / art or blockchain / music. All too often, the conference circuit can turn into an echo chamber of Bitcoin believers and hype activists. The events we take part in are - not - about hype, but about action and critical discussion. Ultimately, we want Steem to be at the table, the podium or the booth when these types of events happen.

Stay tuned as we share some exciting new projects that look towards the new year. And keep an eye out for our Discord chatroom which opens on December 1st! Thanks again to all who attended our presentation virtually and in person in Poland.

^{Empower artists, writers, musicians, non-profits and community initiatives - delegate Steem Power to @sndbox (using the links below) or follow our curation trail. Learn more about Sndbox - watch our introduction, here.}

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