Killing a city is hard to do

I have a training in Helsinki tomorrow with an early start so, instead of having to drive down at 6 am to train 8 hours and drive back, I will spend the night in a hotel. I booked it last week but there must be some even on because it was almost the only one available with a "close to" acceptable price that my company would approve. It is not in the city however and is really not anywhere near anywhere, however it is close to a metro station (I think) so I am not completely isolated from the world. I have some more prep work to do anyway.

I have taken on a bit of a task at the company alongside my normal duties and that is to build a global network of technical training partners able to deliver high-value, end-customer experiences. At the moment, the network is non-existent. There is a mammoth amount of work to do.

The company has recently moved to a SaaS model of business and as a result, what they are effectively doing is decentralizing a lot of the service points of the business while they focus on the development of the platform. What is interesting is that until quite recently, they didn't see the product as a platform at all and rather it was software. I wonder what happened in the last 6 months.

The business is growing rapidly and has doubled in employee size over the space of 2-3 years and is aiming to go from a 100+M a year to a billion+ a year book of business over the coming five or so years. There is an incredible amount of planning, collaboration and direct work involved in being able to align resources to be able to achieve this and, it all still relies on incentives. Some are monetary like the commission for sales people (both internal and external partners), some are career path orientated, some are satisfaction with the work directly. Getting all the ducks in a row is a challenge.

There is a lot going on. With going to a SaaS model, the release cadence has changed, the move to partner program development has changed the way sales and channel management operates, the addition of 100+ people in the last 6 months (a 20% increase) and more to come has added more pressure. People have reacted differently.

This was a small startup with 4 people a decade ago and while people were onboarded and it grew, the vision grew with it and even while people are achieving their goals, the growth experienced doesn't suit everyone. Some people love the "startup" life, some love the stability and importance of a larger corporation. This is very disruptive in an organization, but it is to be expected and accepted as part of the process of achieving what they set out to do.

For me, these are exciting times even though I feel quite out of place there still as I am still not completely comfortable performing my job roles, but I do think that in time I will be able to deliver quite a lot of value to them. I also think that in time, my knowledge and connection with the blockchain industry is going to prove invaluable to them as they are in a position to take advantage of it heavily in many ways. Many ways.

My hope is that if I am able to manage to get the global training network up and running smoothly enough, I will be able to move into a position where I can influence the company transition to be able to be a highly influential blockchain service provider that can help an already impressive, diverse and expanding customer base integrate BC tech into their industry use cases.

This is of course part of a long-term plan that is likely several years in the works because while individuals might mainstream blockchain quickly, many companies are much more traditional in their approach to tech integration and even simple changes like shifting from Skype for Business (getting phased out by 2020) to Teams causes them headaches.

I find the contrast of time frame and expectation interesting between the way 500+ professional people operate for the future in a transitioning startup already proven with a strong customer base, to how thousands on Steem see the future of the blockchain and crypto industry. The reason is that in order for blockchains and crypto to have enormous value, it requires usage at enormous levels and that comes through already established businesses making a switch over to integrate BC and tokenization into their models as this builds out the blockchains book of business and keeps users engaged and transacting.

If you haven't noticed, @starkerz, @oracle-D and @theycallmedan have teamed up for @threespeak to re-platform demonetized but potentially controversial YouTubers. This creates attention and as they say, any publicity is good publicity - at least in the early stages. @aggroed and @yabapmatt have developed steem-engine.com and mining tokens (like PALMM) that make mining much more efficient than booking or building mining rigs which lowers the investment and increases the efficiency. This could allow large organizations to mine stake without requiring anything more than capital investment and a private key. @steemhunt, @partiko, @actifit, @dtube, @vimm, @tasteem and so many others are building enduser experiences that will encourage more to be built.

This is all very exciting because what is actually happening is that slowly, slowly, the Steem ducks are getting into a row yet are all approaching the future from different directions. A bit at a time, more and larger business models start to develop to add not only value mass to the blockchain, but attentional mass that draws more and more users into the fold. Some users will use one app a month, some will use dozens for thousands of transactions, much like different users use the internet or their phones now.

There is a lot going on.

And just like in the company I work where people have preferences for some conditions over others, not every development is going to be seen positively. The difference in a decentralized environment like Steem is, one doesn't have to quit the company to change the experience, they just need to move to another application or community that better satisfies their needs and feeds their incentive demands.

We can see over the last 6 days the activity that has been created from palnet.io's arrival, and I believe that bringing in the EIP model will light Steem up with interactions and new models of business and usage like it has never seen before as it shifts incentives and forces people to rediscover Steem in ways they have never seen it before. This incentivizes adaption to the environment as well as the development of experience that is best suited to the individual, yet is still helping all levels of the community grow for the future where the communities themselves are bringing in more to the folds of Steem.

While some don't have the patience and will keep shifting position in the winds of change, others are developing a decentralized city, complete with suburbs, communities, transportation and sub-cultures. Cities are very hard to kill. Steem is the protocol and the electricity that powers the city above it.

You can complain all you want, but if you are reading this - you live here too. What are you developing, what experience do you offer your audience, what groups do you belong to, what suburbs do you frequent, what are you looking to get out of the city and, what are you putting into it? Will you plant trees and pick up trash, or tear up roots and throw shit? Your experience is yours, own it.

That is the beauty of holding Steem of course, ownership of the electricity that powers the city, and with it, comes opportunity to create and build in an endless digital landscape.

And people play Minecraft.....

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]