Sndbox Summer Camp Final Quest: Life of Steem - My Experience

The sndboxsummercamp final quest is coming to an end. I think it was a really great way to assess the potential new sndbox members ability to work as a team. I only wish that things could have come together in a way that truly allowed my talents to shine. Luckily (or perhaps unluckily as I will explain in a moment), I was placed with a talented bunch of generally cooperative individuals. Here was the group that I worked with:

Mystery Project 2 (Project that promotes Steem)
@iamjadeline – Philosophy Quest, Malaysia
@vadimlasca – Filmmaking Quest, Venezuela
@catalincernat – Writing, Romania
@rubencress – Photography, the Netherlands
@mountainjewel – Homesteading Quest, USA
@maverickinvictus – Travel, Philippines
@artizm – Photography, Turkey
@whatamidoing – Sociology Quest
@travelgirl – Food, Australia
@dmcamera – Photography, USA

As far as working in a group to achieve a goal, this kind of situation is far from ideal. None of us knew each other. We all came from different backgrounds with little shared culture other than our time at steemit. Despite being someone who prefers to work without strict leadership, situations like this allow me to appreciate WHY people rely on the concept of a leader in order to achieve something: a shared vision takes a lot of work, a long time and careful scrutiny about who we choose to work with. We had no choice about which to work with and not much time or opportunities to get to know each other, but thanks to certain members hard work and positive attitude , things did come together in the end.

I love to work in a group but only when it’s a group I’ve developed a shared culture and a deep bond of trust with. I understand that sometimes we have situations where we need to work together despite not being able to choose who we work with. In these situations though, the urgency of the situation will help motivate us to put aside our differences. But as someone with strong opinions and an aversion to business culture, I found myself taking a back seat on this project, more than I would have liked. That’s not to say there was anything wrong with any of these people or how they worked, they were great, it was just difficult for me to find my place among them.

Under the right circumstances, I will often jump into what others would consider a leadership position, but for me I never look at myself as a leader, I am just trying to fill a role that is being unfulfilled in order to accomplish something. When I feel there is a need or desire for what I have to offer, I will take a more active role in cooperating to achieve the goal. When I feel a difference in our overall vision or when all the work seems to be taken care of by people who know what they are doing, I will take a back role, and if I feel the group is incapable or unwilling to work together I will abandon the project.

This group was more than capable, and they seemed to have a lot of agreement over how things should be done, and they seemed to work a little differently from me though, so rather than trying to push things in my direction and acting great overly important, I just shared my ideas and took a back seat and allowed them to see the overall vision through, just adding what I could. I find formal “brainstorming processes” and “business plans” to be fluffy and time-wasting, I’d rather get right to the point of things, but in a group of strangers, it’s not always easy to just get to the point of things. I find most advertising to be cheesy and would prefer to keep it as straightforward as possible, but I wasn’t about to force my views on the whole team when most of them seemed to be working together so well and getting things done. Different time zones and other projects were also things to work through.

Our biggest problem was that one member take off two days before the projects completion, taking the community account and some of our proposal with him, and so a lot had to be reworked last minute, but 3-4 members really came together to deal with it.

I am an “ideas guy”, I come up with concepts that can work, find problems that need solving and figure out ways to solve them. I can also write. Since the writing jobs seemed to be taken, all I could do was help with the concept of the project, to help illustrate why some thigh sensitive wouldn’t work and why others would and propose solutions to these problems. I came up with the idea for making a series of interviews with steemians about how Steemit and crypto has changed their lives. These interviews would serve as advertisements for steemit on other social media. I also came up with the idea for a contest where steemians would post the best of the best steemit posts on other social media and try to promote it. The winners would be determined by the quality of articles they chose to promote and their reach on other social media platforms such as Facebook.

I hope that for any future project I take part in, I’m able to get to know the group before jumping into working with each other and find a mode of working where everyone finds a role they are happy with and a truly shared vision. Working in a group is really about each member providing what is needed. Sometimes that means stepping back and allowing other people to just do their thing, but always being ready to help when help is needed. As an “ideas guy”, I will need to be careful to make it to the chat room on the very first day!