Steemit Meetup with witness @Yabapmatt and Team Philly!

My first Steemit meetup turned out awesome!

Hi, my name is Mello (@mellofello) and I am part of Team BeeYOU. My initial thought regarding a Steemit meetup taking place in the Philadelphia area was “meh, I don’t know if I wanna go.” I was not fond of the idea of merging my real life with Steemit life. As the event date grew closer though, my buddy Andy (@AndyKapps) convinced me that we should go and check it out. We devised an escape plan of course, in case the event was boring or uncomfortable. The code phrase was “hey, we need to catch our train,” which was not entirely untrue, but adjacent to the truth depending upon the time.

We arrived around 6:30 PM. I was a little nervous since mingling with new people is not my forte. I entered the bar with an open mind and the first thing I saw put me at ease. A cat laid cozily in front of a fireplace. Now this is how you relax on a cold winter evening.

I looked up the steps and saw a hand written sign that displayed “STEEM”. I thought to myself, “hmm… classy!” I walked up the stairs and recognized Dan (@hypnopreneur) from his promotion post about the event. We signed in and filled out our name tags and thus began our evening.

The entire second floor was booked for our event. The temperature was a tad bit chilly but the space displayed some memorable characters. Rustic industrial exposed brick walls, a pool table without balls, old fashioned bar stools and bench seating, a saloon style double as the bathroom entrance, and dim amber lighting set the lounge-like ambiance for my first STEEM meetup.

Now it was time to dive in and mingle. I am horrible with names so forgive me as I will mention less names than the number of people that I met.

My first conversation was with Dan, the organizer of the event. He was a laid back guy who made me feel welcomed immediately. We discussed past meet-ups and future event sites.

The next few conversations scratched the topics of AI, cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, the coin market, and of course the attraction of Steemit. Everyone embodied a calming positive excitement about the opportunities of the STEEM blockchain.

After a brief refreshment break on the first level where the bar resided, I walked back up and recognized Matt (witness, @yabapmatt).

What happened next turned my night from pretty good to great.

We discussed his journey into crypto, STEEM, Steemit, open source development, Utopian, voting bots, witnessing, and proper Steemit etiquette. Matt was a humble coder who saw a problem, investigated it, and resolved the issue for himself. He created an extremely popular tracking tool for monitoring voting bots and unintentionally gained massive influence of the bot market. His success of that product lead to becoming a witness for the STEEM blockchain. He takes this role seriously and strives to learn the deeper details of the technology. I was impressed by how humble and down-to-earth Matt was. He is knowledgeable, helpful, and cared about the prosperity of the Steemit community. I really enjoyed my conversation with him and hope we can continue in the near future. Andy and I would love to pick his brain with tech talk.

I also met a sport contest host, @steaknsteem, that I regularly play. He is a funny dude. We joked about all the current sport contests and hosts and he gave me the inside scoops to which are the best ones to devote my attention. We also talked about the lessons learned from his Steemit journey. I received some nuggets of information.

Time flew by fast and the next thing I knew it was nearly 9:00 PM. I truthfully had to go catch a train. I really wanted to catch the next 10 PM train but that would mean skipping putting my kid to bed and being fatigued the next day at my day job. I made the responsible decision and said my goodbyes.

Thankfully, Andy took a sweet snap of Matt and I before we parted ways. He graciously offered to help us with questions or support. I couldn’t help thinking, “this is a really good guy.” These are the kind of people we need as witnesses.

I had a huge smile on my face on the ride home. The SteemitPhilly meet-up did not turn out as I expected at all; actually, I didn’t have much expectations to begin with. I was hoping it wouldn’t be boring. I ended up having a great time and truly enjoyed mingling with other Steemians. This circles back to the a theme that I often take for granted. Life is about people and experiences. They are what makes it so spectacular. Life can we great; it’s all about how you chose to look at it.

This joy made me think about my Newbie Resteem Initiative, #newbieresteemday, that was co-founded by @davemccoy and @mudcat36, and how it would be so cool to have our own meet-up.

Our members work so hard to engage and support new users and recently celebrated our 2 month anniversary. Maybe the big one-year anniversary should be a meet-up of some sort. I realize that it would be difficult to organize an event where people would come from different parts of the world. The Philadelphia meet-up was much more manageable for me as it was within a one-hour radius.

When I finally arrived home at 10:45 PM, I could not stop talking about the fun that I had and the people I met. Excitement flowed through me and I wanted to record it on paper, but daddy duties came first. By the time my day wound down, I was exhausted and fell right asleep.

I woke the next morning with the same grin on my face. Thank you @hypnopreneur, @yabapmatt, @andykapps, @steaknsteem, and the entire SteemitPhilly group for making my first STEEM meet-up a memorable one. I can’t remember that last time I went out on a weeknight since I became a father, but I am grateful for attending. See you all next time.