Introducing the Information Finding Championship! (PowerHouseCreatives contest entry)

in #powerhousecreatives5 years ago (edited)

Original by @yeszuzia and modified by @charisma777 for @ifc

This is my entry for the #powerhousecreatives (@steemitbloggers) contest, Feature a Community, run by @zord189.

When you first arrive on Steem, it can be quite overwhelming to say the least! The trending page is a mess of self-interested posting... no one seems to read or see your posts, and there is only so many times that you can blog about your cats throwing up on you ... or how you managed to cut your nails!

So, the concept of communities is something that is critical to the retention of new (and old!) Steemians. Communities give a reason to stay on STEEM that far transcends the payout figure at the end of your post. Communities have much of their interaction off-chain in Discord rooms and private messages. There are many communities that are bound by a particular topic or interest (like @classical-radio and @classical-music!), and there are others that are held together by a shared vision.

Introducing the IFC!

Artwork credit - @jimramones on steemit (for @ifc)

@ifc (The Information Finding Championship run by @apolymask) is one of these communities that are held by a single vision. At it's heart, the @ifc is a long running contest with a round every week, much like the other long running contests that you can find on the STEEM chain. However, where it differs from the other contests is that it is not restricted to a particular art form or style! Each round, there is a little creative hook (a word or a concept... for instance, universe, philosophy, photo treasure hunt, water...) which can built upon in any form or angle that you wish to take.

Music? SURE!
Poetriy? SURE!
Informational Writing? SURE!
Photo essay? SURE!
Video? SURE!
Comedy? SURE!

... honestly, anything goes! (well, we've not had anyone yet test the borders of taste with that yet...)

So, as a new Steemian... fresh to the STEEM chain (with a good amount of crypto experience behind me but a lingering regret for having rejected the notion of a blockchain based crypto!), I arrived to the vast vastness of the lack of ideas to write about! I'm a professional musician... however, I'm not too keen to write about it all the time! I love performing, but I'm not going to write about it much...

So, when I found the @ifc, it really started to give some focus to my writing! The idea that I would have some time (roughly a week) to mull over some hook, and think of a interesting angle to write about, was quite refreshing and liberating! For at least one post in the week, I would have a interesting new topic to research and write about... and I have to say, it has been really quite formative in my evolving as a writer. I have never written so much since... well... never! I never wrote much....

However, a community is not just defined by it's on-chain presence. In fact, the best communities on STEEM are defined exactly by the opposite, their off-chain interactions. After all, most of the public on-chain interactions revolve (and are tainted by...) around the elephant of STEEM/SBD and gaining and owning more and more...

The Discord of the @ifc is also home to a little (well... not so little...) marketplace of fellow Steemians selling and buying services and artwork (like the banners that you see here!). It is also a place where people of different experiences and backgrounds can come together and chat and enjoy each other's company or help each other out!

So, if you are looking for a contest that has a great community attached... or is that a community with a great contest attached... then @ifc is perhaps a very nice home to branch out from. The contest will really engage your creative mind in creating great posts (many of the posts from our first season attracted votes from @curie and other curation projects!)... and reading interesting and completely different points of view on the exact same topic!

Here is a little video from the creator of IFC (@apolymask)... he looks a touch scary in the mask, but he is a really great guy!

Classical-radio


I'm going to sneak in a second plug for a different community... however, in the similar vein as the first. Communities are a great way to band together with people of similar interests. Once you have a base of interest, then it is much more comfortable to start wandering around and discovering the vast variety of "interesting" ideas that STEEM has to offer!

@classical-radio is a support and curation account for the #classical-music tag (set up by @remlaps and @classical-music), which also supports musicians in the #folk and #jazz tags. Having an account that helps out with exposure and support (via upvotes and curation payouts) can mean a lot to beginning accounts. It also helps to have a Discord where you can learn from the STEEM and general real life experience of fellow musicians working in the same field. In our Discord we have a range of musicians in different stages of their musical development and career.

The primary mission of the @classical-radio account is to give exposure to fellow musicians. In addition, there is a small curation payout for those who are featured in the curation posts (70% of the liquid payouts are returned to the featured authors). Another defining characteristic is that the curation is run by professional musicians rather than interested amateurs, and so the quality of curation has the potential to be much tighter.

If you are interested in delegation, you can do so via these easy links:

Delegation links: 10SP, 25SP, 50SP, 75SP, 100SP, 150SP, 200SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP


Upgoats by ryivhnn
Account banner by jimramones



The classical music community at #classical-music and Discord. Follow our community accounts @classical-music and @classical-radio. Community Logo by ivan.atman


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the first I have heard of @ifc
thanks

No problem! Check it out, it's fun to write for!

Thanks, the contest post for this week just came out. It is on the topic of 'inspiration'.

You are very busy! Have a great weekend

Always trying to help those who helped me when I was smaller!

A real pay it forwarder

I love @ifc, but I'm often scared away by the topics, lol. Even when there is no specific topic, like last week.
I just noticed this week's topic is 'Inspiration' - Not so hard you'd think. Still, I'm not sure I will be able to get a post up. Lots of ideas are going through my head... but I don't know which one to work with.
Guess I'm also held back by my fair of failure. Silly, but I can't help it.

I entered last season when there was an assignment to - if I remember correctly - write something in which every word had the same first letter. I love to play language games, and I know I'm good at it, so I didn't think twice before submitting my entry. But most of the time, I feel a lot of pressure - although there isn't any. It's something I do to myself...

That's some valuable feedback and something for me to consider.. Perhaps I should work on making the quests easier and less intimidating. I was thinking about doing the one you mentioned that @bashadow came up with where each word starts with the same letter this week, though felt like inspiration was something I needed in my life so went with that, however.. I'm probably planning on doing that one next week! So if you can't think of any this time keep a look out and I'll try to keep thinking of ways to make the quests less intimidating.

And to be fair, there is a bit of pressure and it's not easy to win.. During the finals of last season it got a bit heated actually.. So you're not alone. I think some people enjoy that pressure though and some perhaps don't sort of akin to the conversation we had recently about talking to bigger fish on the platform and directly asking someone who their "alt" account was.. It can be a bit of a shift in perception to find pleasure and enjoyment in competition, and I've debated before and asked the community if we could find a way to make our game so there's no winners or losers and everyone just learns and has fun.. But overwhelmingly they all said we need a winner. Heh. So.. It's probably going to continue to be that way into the future, however.. Maybe some day we could create a lil side game where there are no winners and losers and have that be a separate thing from the IFC.. Something to think about! Thanks for sharing your thoughts, gave me some stuff to ponder over.

It's not the competition that I find intimidating, I'm a very competitive person myself. I would have voted to keep it a competition too :0)

In my early days on SteemIt, I wrote a post that may help you understand what I mean.
Although I wrote it over a year ago, I'm still stuck in the same mindset. It's hard to break old habits..

https://steemit.com/mapsters/@simplymike/i-m-my-own-worst-enemy-self-critisism-and-fear-of-failure

I see. Yeah.. I couldn't figure out how to make it work without a winner as well but felt like I didn't want people fighting and getting upset at each other and in the finals it got a bit heated there and I could see how it could get even more heated some day if our contest ever got super popular, sort of like the UFC.. I had just been to watch one of the big fights with my brother and it seemed like the people watching were so riled up they wanted to fight each other! So I didn't wanna add to that kind of "conflict" where people get angry at each other and wanna fight over a game.. But.. I dunno how else to do it and maybe if I figure it out someday we can make a complimentary game where there is no winner and people just do it for fun.

I read your post and left a detailed comment over there so not sure how much I should say here but.. That's a bummer that you still feel like you're stuck in the same mindset.. It can be a tricky one to work out of! After playing many games my whole life I still get stuck in that mindset as well.

I don't wanna repeat what I said in the other message so I guess I would just say that.. I think if we are able to get out of that mindset and find a way to overcome the fear of failure that there can be some amazing rewards on the other side of it! Not just the chance of winning, but.. More so the personal development that can come with trying. The self discovery and discovery of other things in my opinion is often worth more than whatever the prize might be. If you can try to look at it as a fun learning experience then hopefully the fear of learning is reduced, furthermore.. If you're able to do what many of the "superstars" in various sports do.. Then you can even turn that fear into an excitement.. Instead of being scared of losing, you become excited and turning that negative debilitating energy into an uplifting positive form I think can do amazing things for you, especially when it comes to your odds of winning the game! I think we all get scared, and that fear can be a good thing as well if we learn how to tap into it and use it and have it make us more alive rather than paralyzing us. It's a powerful energy and if you can direct it better instead of allowing it to direct you, I think you'll really be onto something that not a lot of people are able to get. I think that is perhaps one of the secrets of competition and then you can apply it to other areas in life as well. :) Anyways.. I hope you're able to find a better way of looking at it and that you're able to get unstuck from the fear and perhaps even turn it into an energy that helps empower you. That would be inspiring in my opinion. :D Good luck simplymike!

and there is only so many times that you can blog about your cats throwing up on you ... or how you managed to cut your nails!

Lol! That gave me a good laugh.

So, the concept of communities is something that is critical to the retention of new (and old!) Steemians. Communities give a reason to stay on STEEM that far transcends the payout figure at the end of your post.

Agreed. Well said. That's the main piece of advice I give to newcomers to steem these days, try to find some good communities to be a part of.

So, when I found the @ifc, it really started to give some focus to my writing! The idea that I would have some time (roughly a week) to mull over some hook, and think of a interesting angle to write about, was quite refreshing and liberating! For at least one post in the week, I would have a interesting new topic to research and write about... and I have to say, it has been really quite formative in my evolving as a writer. I have never written so much since... well... never! I never wrote much....

That's cool to hear about it from that perspective. It's always refreshing for me to hear about it from the players and community members as it's different from my own way of looking at it and I could see how that would be pretty fun and helpful if roles were reversed and I were a player instead of host/judge.

So, if you are looking for a contest that has a great community attached... or is that a community with a great contest attached... then @ifc is perhaps a very nice home to branch out from. The contest will really engage your creative mind in creating great posts (many of the posts from our first season attracted votes from @curie and other curation projects!)... and reading interesting and completely different points of view on the exact same topic!

Some really good points there! And yeah.. It's almost like what came first the chicken or the egg with our contest/community.. They go hand in hand and are both great aspects yet would fall short without the other. A true good marriage I think of such important things. :)

Here is a little video from the creator of IFC (@apolymask)... he looks a touch scary in the mask, but he is a really great guy!

Aw shucks. That was nice of you t say. Thanks. I think you're a great guy as well! And you inspire me.

Thanks a bunch for mentioning our community/contest! That was cool to see and read and hopefully we get another player or two or more from your efforts. That would be cool! Also good luck with your classical music and radio communities as well! Cheers bengy! :D

Well... the only way to get more players is to just keep promoting and hoping for that lucky break! You can't get the break if you don't keep trying! Hopefully, sometime somewhere... something will fall in place!

Agreed. :) I'm definitely going to keep at it! And hopefully one day, but even if it never blows up like myself and others might like I feel extremely grateful and rewarded for what has already happened!

You got a 10.02% upvote from @ocdb courtesy of @bengy! :)

@ocdb is a non-profit bidbot for whitelisted Steemians, current max bid is 60 SBD and the equivalent amount in STEEM.
Check our website https://thegoodwhales.io/ for the whitelist, queue and delegation info. Join our Discord channel for more information.

If you like what @ocd does, consider voting for ocd-witness through SteemConnect or on the Steemit Witnesses page. :)

Congratulations! This post has been chosen as one of the daily Whistle Stops for The STEEM Engine!

You can see your post's place along the track here: The Daily Whistle Stops, Issue 423 (03/09/19)

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