Two days ago I had the pleasure of meeting up with @go-kyo and her family! A Hive meetup of the smallest variety. Two active users and our inactive partners (@tentententen) just made a quick cameo.
We went for Indian food and I showed them around an area that I'm more familiar with.
We hardly talked crypto at all, we mostly just got to know each other better, which honestly, I think is what has been missing from my Hive life, real human interaction, OFFLINE.
I met her kids for the first time and we went to a few random shops before a flea market that @tentententen was taking part in. I was manning the shop from 4:30 until 7:00 so we had a good 3 and a half hours together. They paid for lunch and coffee so I paid them back in HBD :-D I'm always happy to use HBD!
After luck hwe went to a shop specializing in old Japanese toys like Godzilla and Ultraman and another shop selling South Asian, South East Asian and African goods, mostly Indian. We played with the instruments for a while.
Then we went to @tentententen’s exhibition and market before i had to go work for her:
Same as the first time, we got too absorbed in conversation to take pictures! Next time, I promise!
I hope we can meet each other more often and eventually get some larger groups together.
You might wonder why we don't do something to bring more activity to Hive from Japan, but I think if you spent any time in Tokyo you'd realize how hard it is. There is SO much going on, everyone is busy as hell and very few people feel comfortable talking to strangers or joining random events that they see advertised online.
@go-kyo has absolutely done her best to maintain the Hive Japan community (which is spread throughout the country), and it has not been easy. Recently she started a blog on the Japanese blog site Note.
My friends generally don't trust crypto and don't have patience for it. Some are curious and a few hold some on exchanges, but it's just an investment to them. I don't blame them either. They aren't money oriented people. They like art, and they like community and they manage to crowdsource most things to make many things possible that aren't possible in a dog-eat-dog, corporate environment, plus everyone is banked, censorship isn't as bad as it could be, and everyone prefers face to face over online interactions.
Since Tokyo is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world though, I think at least I/we could manage a kind of "welcoming committee". If you are ever in town and want to meet up, let me know. I can't promise that @go-kyo and her family will make it but I will let them know about it as well as the 2-3 other Hivesters nearby who have been harder to catch in person.
I don't know if I can go to all the popular tourist sites with you but I can show you some less well known places that are worth checking out, catering to your interests if possible, and I will make sure you have a good day or night, and I will try my best to get others out to join us.
At some point I will start organizing my own music and art related events, and once I do, I will invite certain Hivesters from overseas to come and share their art and their stories so maybe it'll spark some interest. I am sure that will work way better than just preaching about "being your own bank" or "web3 is the future" cause that is honestly not my crowd, and it's not the majority of people on this earth. Real stories from real people, doing fun stuff and finding a way to overlap it with the chain, not making it about HIVE, but making Hive available, I think that's really the way this community grows.
Instead of trying to promote Hive, I think we should just be doing fun and interesting things and creating overlap between that and what we are doing on chain. I've been saying this for years, but I've been slow to get active enough to really achieve anything and the lack of physical contact with Hivesters has made it all the more difficult.
And just as a side note, aside from our tiny meetup, there is one other reason I'm excited about Hive again. Snapie! @meno has created an iOS app (and hopefully android app in the coming weeks) that lets you access the Snaps part of Peakd, so finally we have a mobile phone app for short form.
As you may know I have been pushing hard for this for a long time, and it's one of the reasons I got involved with Leo, because they were innovating so much on the short form front. I'll still be involved with both INLEO and Peakd Snaps, despite some recent hive politics drama that I'd rather not get into again. Wherever there are people working on moving the space forward and connecting everyone, I will be. As long as I speak my mind, I will do so and try to be as non-inflammatory as possible.
@meno has made one of the most functional and needed apps on Hive in just 5 months with a tiny team of 3, on a very modest budget from the DHF, more modest than almost any other project out there, so please send him all the love you can and use the app so he's encouraged to keep working on it!
Posted Using INLEO