Sndbox Spotlight 9: Interview with @martibis about @steemitworldmap! [Discover Authors from Around the World]

Spotlights are interviews! @sndbox reaches out to creative individuals and communities of all experience levels. Our goal is to raise awareness towards new users and help connect them with experienced Steemians. (20% of the SBD earned from this post will go directly to @martibis’s account to support his work.)

@sndbox : Hi @martibis! Finally, good to have you here! For those new to your work, tell us all a bit about yourself - where you’ve been and where you are now?

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@martibis : I am a 24 year old student of applied computer science in Belgium. My main focus in life at the point of writing is improving the Steemitworldmap and travel whenever the opportunity arises. I also blog about my travels - among other things - from my personal account.

Some accomplishments I am rather proud of:

• Hitchhiked from Miami to San Francisco
• Won the hackathon at Steemfest with @oroger
• Started an online store at the age of 17

Some facts I am less proud of:

• Went missing at the age of 16
• Failed to start a boat-renting business last year
• Worst high school and university student ever

@sndbox : Life on the blockchain is a roller coaster. We were excited to first connect with you after the hackathon at Steem Fest. We’re big fans of @steemitworldmap tell us more about it!

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@martibis : Steemitworldmap is a web application that allows people to pin their posts on an exact location on the worldmap. This makes for an incredibly cool and unique way of sharing travel content with others. But it can also be used for meetups, photography, restaurant reviews, you name it! You can take a look at http://www.steemitworldmap.com

Adding your own posts to the map is incredibly easy and straightforward:

• Go to Steemitworldmap
• Click the code slider at the bottom
• Click on the map where your post should be (zoom in if needed)
• Copy and paste the generated code in your post
• Congrats, your post is now on the map!

Out of all the posts on the map, we also select the best travel posts on a daily basis. These are curated by us and featured in our daily #traveldigest. You can find all the travel digests on @steemitworldmap.

Some accomplishments of Steemitworldmap after 3 months:

• Winning project at Steemfest hackathon
• 1000+ followers on @steemitworldmap
• 7000+ posts on the map
• 2000+ posts on the Editors Choice Map

@sndbox : Hey, there's Steem Park in Brooklyn! What a great way to discover content! We highly encourage people to use this amazing Steem resource, it’s a fascinating way to discover artists and authors while doing a bit of digital globe trotting. Speaking of exploring things, how did you first make your way to Steemit?

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@martibis : When I came onto Steemit I didn't really know what to expect. I had found it on my own, so I had no one to really show me the ropes and had to teach myself. This includes the technical side of things but more importantly the social etiquette of the platform.

I have no clue how, but I ended up in the PAL discord group, where I got a lot of help on everything Steemit related. Certain people actually went completely out of their way to help me with everything, from teaching me everything Steemit-related to helping me improve my writing tremendously.

After a month went by, I was so impressed by the Steemit community, I felt I wanted to give back in a way and become a stronger part of the Steemit-ecosystem. I had observed that in a lot of ways the idea behind Steemit is to share your skillset and / or what you love and try to improve the community by doing so. I was and still am learning to develop and I love to travel, it didn't take long before I came up with the idea of Steemitworldmap.

@sndbox : We’re always excited to hear these stories and emphasize how supportive Steemians are when it comes to new folks finding their footing. Thanks for sharing a bit about your beginnings. As we gear up for the new year, what’s on your horizon?

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@martibis : Currently the map has been growing at an incredible rate, so our focus at the moment is in making it easier for our curators to get through the posts on a daily basis. At first I wanted to make a web application only accessible to the Steemitworldmap-team, but after thinking it through. Manual curation could use a boost on the platform in general. So we are now working on a manual curation application, which we hope to finish within 2 months. It will make it a lot easier to quickly go through complete posts whilst only showing those you potentially wish to curate. In Steemitworldmap's case, those on the map, 24 hours after the last #traveldigest was created. There will be a huge set of filters to accomplish this.

Looking further, 6 Months from now:

I will not disclose a lot now as this is still so far out, but we are thinking of making Steemitworldmap completely stand alone. So you can read, post, upvote, comment, etc. All directly through the map. A lot of thought went into this already, @oroger and I had a meeting on this just last week. Of course this is a lot of work, and would take massive amounts of time from both me and @oroger. Once we have some more work done on this, we will let all of you know.

@sndbox : An exciting teaser, we’ll definitely stay tuned as the Map grows! So in the mean time, how can Steemians support the World Map project?

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@martibis : There are lots of ways to support the Map!

• Add your travel posts to Steemitworldmap
• Delegate SP so we can reward amazing travel content: learn how here
• Follow our curation trail look for @steemitworldmap
• Autovote our Traveldigest look for @steemitworldmap

In the long run I hope that all travel bloggers on Steemit will find out about the map and will start using it. We are already quickly moving towards that goal, which is amazing!

Once and if we launch the stand alone version of Steemitworldmap, I hope it will be the go to front-end for travel bloggers. Again, I won't disclose most of the reasons as to why I think there is a high probability for this to happen, as the whole idea is still in flux.

@sndbox : This is a lot of great info, thanks for sharing this. And who may we ask is part of the World Map Team?

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@martibis is a passionate and young web developer and the founder of Steemitworldmap. He's spending a lot of time behind his laptop. Whenever he can find the time he is traveling the world, looking for new adventures!

@oroger is an incredibly talented and experienced back-end developer, without him there might not be a Steemitworldmap right now!

@choogirl is one of the most active curators on the platform and is also helping with the selection and curation of the content for our daily #traveldigest. She moved from Australia to Panama after quitting her job, selling/giving away all her stuff, and buying a one way plane ticket to her new life.

@livinguktaiwan is a strong member of the Chinese community and is also helping with the selection and curation of the content for our daily #traveldigest. After living her life in the UK and working in Hong Kong she decided to take a career break and move to Taiwan.

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A big thank you to @martibis for doing the interview! For more updates on his work, make sure to follow his account at @martibis and the @steemitworldmap page. (20% of the SBD payout from this post will go to him and towards his projects.)

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