gm frens!
And welcome to the Decentralized Creative blog on HIVE, where we talk with musicians, designers, music producers and any kind of creative human to learn how to incorporate privacy, decentralization, self-custody and peer-to-peer value exchange to our creative passion.
Let me share a #BEER
and a bit of my story!
Florida and my no-coiner period
I grew up in South Florida; in a city called Coral Gables. @taskmaster4450 's alma matter, University of Miami is there. I used to skate, walk and drive by it all the time.
When I graduated from college with a business degree, I decided to move to Latin America to start my career as a corporate employee as a project manager. I didn't have a whole lot of jobs, just a handfull. I mostly stayed with the same companies for many years and moved up the ladder.
2019 The beginning of my web3 journey
In 2017, after dedicating many years to a regional company in Costa Rica, I felt like something was missing in my life. I decided I wanted to do something more creative with my time and figured it might be a good idea to open up a recording studio, so my butt got to painting walls and building sound panels.
After a few months of painting, cutting, drilling and hammering, my recording studio was finally complete. It wasn't much, but it was about to be my very own startup.
in January 2018 Recording Box was officially open for business. As it often happens with any new business, you don't have a whole lot of clients at first, so I started going to live music shows to hand out business cards and reaching out to local musicians to invite them to record in my studio; or at least rehearse. One of my very first rehearsal clients was a band called Jogshuttle. They'd come in every now and then for a 2 or 3 hour rehearsal session. One day, they asked me if I'd be willing to accept cryptocurrency as payment, to which I responded "??????" What the hell is cryptocurrency? I knew nothing about it, so I started doing my research. I started learning about Bitcoin and Ethereum and seed phrases. Sure enough, I eventually made my way to HIVE (It wasn't called HIVE back then yet) where I met some amazing folks like @ijatz and @djlethalskillz.
After a very vague idea of blockchain technology, I thought why not?, let's do this cryptocurrency thing and decided to record a live in-studio session for Jogshuttle.
This was for a Musicoin series called Musicoin Originals:
https://youtu.be/ez3xFzgCMGU?si=0IT0der5mYP4jsKl
Since I'd already been bitten by the cryptocurrency bug, I decided to give HIVE a try and open my own account. I figured I'd use this place to upload the music I produce, live sessions, recording tips and tricks and that sort of thing. I went ahead and created my very first @recording-box account.
This was my very first post back in April, 2019. We recorded a little music session with @jfmusic31 who was an active member of HIVE back then:
https://youtu.be/qG-AX4HFb_8
I slowly started learning that HIVE was much more than a place to post videos. It was an ecosystem made up of humans. Some wanted to know who you are! I didn't know about these #introduceyourself posts until about a year later, when I decided to make this introduction post. This is from May, 2020:
Some Hiveans also visited the studio! Here is a chat I had with the amazing @buttcoins and @starkerz right before Hive Hub Hotel in Lake Atitlan became a reality: https://3speak.tv/watch?v=alex-rourke/tcxocjrb
Here is some more recent ones taken by @ninaeatshere upon arrival to Guatemala City on their way to Lake Atitlan:
Please visit her blog and show some support.
Recording Box has its own name and purpose. It's a recording studio. I didn't really want to put my face or name all over my studio's blog, so I decided to create an account for myself to share more who I am.
2020 - MY first personal account
I came up with the name @alex-rourke and started posting with that name. Fortunately, it wasn't a ridiculous name like Bacon Double Cheeseburger, I know some folks regret the name they chose in the very early days of HIVE. I did, however, start wondering what I could do to change my user name, but I was never presented with a solution other than creating a brand new account.
2025 The Decentralized Creative brand
As time went by, my personal brand, Decentralized Creative, started to take shape. I started using this quite distinct color scheme and then started working on my avatar.
You can see some of my ideas here. I knew I wanted to go with a duotone PFP and ideally with yellow and magenta.
I eventually settled on this one and added it to my newly created YouTube channel, X Profile and website, all with the same name and avatar and username. I really feel like it's starting to come together!
My plan is to continue being an active HIVE citizen, learning, spreading the word, using the tech and contributing to the growth and adoption of this amazing ecosystem, now with a name I use across all my interweb channels.
Please feel free to check out and subscribe!
https://www.youtube.com/@decentralizedcreative https://decentralizedcreative.com https://x.com/web3creative_
I also I started powering up my HIVE to spread the love:
Feel free to leave a comment and I'll be sure to reply!