"Journey of a Hivian"

While I generally use the nomenclature "Hiver" in practice - I have been reading through the "Hive Checklist" and contemplating this journey, remembering my own and living it daily talking with new users about Hive. I'm kind of one of the guys here that people end up with when they really want to understand "how it works".

Not everybody does, especially at first, but with our weekly crypto hub meetups we have been meeting more and more people that really just want to understand how all this stuff works, and everybody from @starkerz, @buttcoins, @ninaeatshere, @ecoinstante and me are all learning and teaching about HIVE - practicing talking about it.

Photograph courtesy of @ecoinstante

Above, I am sitting with our new friend @karlasss, the local teacher for "computación". She basically teaches the 'tech' class to the 410 local students here in this region of the Lake Atitlan. She really wanted to understand how many things worked - not only click some buttons. @elpuma was an active participant in the conversation, helping to walk Karlasss through the steps of understanding the fundamentals of what is HIVE and how do you use it. In Spanish, with a Guatemalan Volcano in the background (for those of you are imagining it in your mind).

Back to the Checklist

So any way you look at it - its a process! There is a lot to learn and the truth is, not even many users of HIVE know "everything", because everything is a lot. What makes us Hivians maybe is that we know how to talk to each other and figure out who does know and get the answer, or a link to the answer - some where inside of these blocks. If you know where to find them - the answers are all HERE (in our blocks).

So as I head into week three, I am starting to go through this onboarding material - these missions. It might sound silly but there are things I don't know - I know a lot of technically details about how the chain works but I didn't know that @starkerz and @sagarkothari88 had put together such an onboarding "path" and integrated it into their CheckinWith App! You may know that I am super slow to try new things, but I am really coming to love the CheckInWith app and what it is doing for us here in HiveHubGuate Community

From onboarding to inboarding - this is really important. We need steps, more and better reference lists, because everything is in the blocks if we know where to look. We have to be and train trusted guides, ambassadors - because people have questions. They want to know how it actually works - some of them at least. Nowadays, even the local employees say they know what "crypto" is, many stores around the lake, especially in Pana, already accept bitcoin.

#SpendHBD is a good start - a REALLY GOOD start. The "free drink" from the CheckInWith program - sponsored by @threespeak - works really well. The wallets are easy enough to get, keychain "onboard with a friend" works great, the v4v Payment app works and does it fast. If they do distriator, they have two posts on the blockchain already.

And - then what?

That's about as far as we can get in one sitting. But since we are hanging around here - we get more sessions with some who are hanging in and around the lake, the ATI Hotel. To talk about Hive, to talk about open source, to talk about "money".

#journeyofahivian project is doing really good work with this, and while I still do like "Hiver", along with our recent philosophical discussions, I feel like this is "citizen training", and so Hivian suddenly does seem quite appropriate to me. We need this material, we need "tasks", because one thing you learn living at a Hotel:

Everyone Leaves, Eventually

When they leave here, or we do - will they be empowered to continue using Hive in their daily lives, especially the most important task of all - using HIVE to learn more about HIVE. I think we are improving our "on ramp", iterating with actual people. And when I look at the tag, I see there are people in other parts of the world using it too.

We will keep talking. Keep iterating. Our focus is on the locals, as much as possible to keep onboarding and inboarding them. We also have some techbros. We also have some amazing candidates for travel bloggers, and I have to admit its super inspiring to see all that WorldMappin' has done and continues to do to manage a vibrant community of quality content (and pins).

We are all on a journey, here on HIVE. The #journeyofahivian doesn't end - or at least it doesn't have to.

Freedom and Friendship