Last week I spent with my wife @ecoinstante in Guadalajara, Mexico at the Talent Land Expo - this was a great opportunity (my third) to represent HIVE in Latin America. It was, without a doubt, the most productive and eye-opening experience of the three, and that is saying something as I enjoyed the results of the last two.
Master of "ceremony"
First of all, not only do I speak spanish with confidence, I was given a VIP wristband by @starkerz. I proved myself useful the first day, when @bobaphet had cut off his wrist(band), and was all like "can't the devs do something?".
I met @bobaphet in Colombia in fact, and we share many fun stories from the two weeks he spent here. And with my super confidence level, I marched with Bob right into the Platinum area and explained, in spanish, that my roadie needed a new wristbrand due to undisclosed sillyness, and that is was an urgent matter for me, Mr. VIP.
It worked! Moments after this picture Bob was marching around the event like he owned the place!
VIP'd @bobaphet right into the event
Human Onboarding
We were large and in charge at the Expo Center, and even though @ecoinstante's and my onboarding numbers weren't quite as good as the likes of the master's, @eddiespino, @manuphotos, @gr33nm4ster and @konchix; we were priming the pump all over the place. It wasn't the credit we were so worried about, we are great team players and had high energy the whole time - the important thing is that HIVE came off looking great.
And we had a great booth, great "swag", a great set up with the selfieapp + distriator combo - people were really loving the pitch.
Sure I brought "We forked the founders" back from CriptoLatinFest, but also new concepts like "there is no boss here, we are 13 leaders from around Latin America selected by the community, each with our own projects" and "HIVE can incentivize anything, and today we want to incentive you buying this beer! (or t-shirt or rootbeer or bracelet, etc)
Passionate about web3 with @gr33nm4ster and @konchix
Business Onboarding
I came to Guadalajara with a goal of seeing @distriator in action to see if I could wrap my mind around it. I had heard of it, I thought that I mostly understood how it worked, on the blockchain level at least, but I needed to see it in action, "touch it" as it were. Oh, touch it I did!
After quickly testing it out before the event with @alex-rourke and making a deal to have his company help out my @deepweb3secrets podcast (by the way, the samples he has sent me so far are AMAZING!), my next real experience was at @elsentidobarsano, a great contact's of @bobaphet, who lives around locally in Guadalajara.
When I got to see @distriator in action, and talk to an actual business owner, work together to identify the important points in the "work flow" of the customer process - this is when I REALLY started getting excited. This is easy, as easy as any other fancy form of payment. Easier even than a credit card sometimes, thanks @starkerz for having my back that one night.
As I wandered around, I started thinking about doing this in my own town. We were on fire for HIVE, and talked to everyone about it, with our branded clothing on! I even talked to Monchi's, home of the best hamburger in town, although he was a bit busy and then I was a bit busy eating his burger, he agreed that we would love to take crypto payments, if it were easy.
Thanks to @gr33nm4ster, we knew that through Swapido, the HBD could easily be converted to local currency through transfer payment, something he has used to great effect around his town in Yucatan.
https://x.com/gr33nm4ster/status/1878950049381748909
I contemplated all this while eating my bacon double cheeseburger - wowzers it was good!
The best Hambuger in town at Monchis
Connecting with @onezetty
I saw this photographer in a hat, multiple times wandering around the borders of the stand once in a while. I think he might even have taken a picture of me!
And then, I saw that hatman, with a post in the Talent Land Community! one morning when scoping it out on my phone to see the new onboards and support them with upvotes. I commented on his post, @onezetty, we need to meet up!
It was as easy as that, next time I scoped HIM out, and we started chatting, this is an OG, been around since the old days, and shared stories and even helped out at the stand!
We offered to take the final shift on Thursday, during the Big Pretzl Beer Bash, and @onezetty helped out, a lot! We are not big beer drinkers, but we will for sure need to visit Berlinz next time we are in Guadalajara, and there will for sure be a next time!
Covering the booth with @onezetty and @ecoinstante during Berlinz Pretzel Vagon Event
Bringing it Home
While it took two full days to get home, we did indeed make it, and immediately began making plans to onboard our entire town. Well, it wasn't exactly like that, we have been making these plans since LONG BEFORE this event. But motivated by what had transpired, and pushed on by the fact that many of our contacts in our town had been reading our blogs, we quickly got "back to work".
We are working with @manuphotos to use his HiveP2P (Colombian Peso now listed!), @eddiespino and @aliento to skin HolaHive, and @sagarkothari88 to skin a local version of @distriator in spanish language. Everyone has been so helpful, and we are putting the pieces together.
@ecoinstante explaining HIVE Keychain to @juan.manuel of Ecobank
Potential Partnerships
Apart from our "whole town onboarding plan", we did lock up a few "follow ups" for possible special partnerships. I met with a few experts around HIVE about the Alibaba Cloud opportunity, which is in follow up; we also have a special community of science writers that we are connected with on instagram and following up to see the best way for them to integrate HIVE.
We learned a ton, we had a lot of fun, we met a lot of people, made so many connections - and above all - we got to party with @josepimpo!!
What more could you ask for in an event?