I could make another post about the books that I am reading or edit the short film that I am thinking of making about my personal view on the latest Hivefest. I could put snapshots of myself in the best moments that I had in Croatia. I could. I warn you that this post is a bit longer, with not many fancy pictures to keep your attention and it will require some mental agility and genuine interest in new ideas for Hive that might not be what you expect. This post will require the activation of your crazy imagination. So grab a good drink or exit right now.
Will my smile be enough to want to read such a long post?
Photographer @jarvie
Do you know what is the best feeling in the world that a person could have? You can assume that the best feeling happens when you get rich, when you get married/divorced, when you have your own child etc. I think that one of the best feelings in the world is to be able to scratch when you have a really bad itch. If the social norms allow it , we all know how good that scratch can feel in some places. Itchy Itchy get your Scratchy right now.
I felt a mental itch at Hivefest and I literally could not sleep until I wrote about it. In my analytical oven some ideas got cooked. I just feel that an article about some of the things that are going through my mind about Hive might be more useful than my usual tackling of my choice of content. I could sob and write about the huge load of unprocessed trauma that a recent loss I had triggered in me. But it would not help me or you that much. My hope is that some of these ideas are actually worth a second thought and maybe they could help the community. If they don’t, discard them immediately just as a pigeon discards from the sky the tasty bread he had 10 minutes earlier. Yuck, but you get my point.
I think that the world is going towards digitalization much faster than we might be ready in terms of strategy. You can see huge store chains incentivizing their clients to download the app, scan the code and see some promotions. The days of passing your fidelity card to the cashiers are soon to be forgotten. It might sound crazy but I strongly believe that in the future companies will think about strategies of making clients access their app’s in their free time by offering them discounts and by making everything into a game. Play and win a real discount for food and daily groceries. Glued to a screen and ready for the dopamine rush ...sounds like a sad life but a lot of people are already doing it without any win. Or wait.. Am I missing something?
Let me go back to the day before the Diocletian Palace conference. I had a really interesting morning at that time. I imagined a future where every car moving in traffic had a scannable QR code with a Hive logo. Find me here. Scan and connect with any user that wants to be found. I talked about my vision with @jarvie because I could not hold it just for me, it was the beginning of my itch. The QR code was on everyone’s windows and it was so common. It looked like a matrix with different glimmering users shining in the vast crowded traffic. Sounds crazy or too optimistic? Maybe I am again missing something. This vision I had was inspired by the awesome art gathered through data by @gtg. Imagine a virtual universe where you can be tracked in real time and see what Bob, your neighbour, posted today and the simple act of seeing that is as common as drinking your coffee.
Let’s return to the huge chain stores. They are huge and make tons of money because their marketing strategy talks to the people. It is simple. I think of a blockchain for the people where the onboarding process can be shown and done by a 8 year old. Attention span is something all companies are fighting for. In the context of the current times my assumption is that the competition will be more fierce: people become less and less able to hold focus for more than a couple of seconds. Hitting them hard emotionally is a must. Maybe I sound like a typical marketing person when I say that it is not about the intricacy of the blockchain that people will be interested in but about what’s in it for them. Keep it simple and deliver quickly. You’re 3 seconds too long. Bye .So very sorry. Neeext!
The idea is that I think of my own onboarding process that happened in 2020. As the pandemic hit everyone was worried. The main cause of worry was money and a possible loss of the job. I was introduced to this platform in a very simple way: “Hey! There is this website where you can post about stuff that you do and you can make some simple money, it might not be much at first but it can help you in real life. You might as well try”. How long do you think it took me to ponder? Not much. My attention was hooked: simple message, simple process, good outcome. No brainer. Only after a long time I was able to look a bit deeper and find out about what makes a blockchain be better : ownership. Not in a million years I would have imagined that 4 years later I would attend to a meeting with the people from this platform and all of this because I posted my thoughts in the digital ether. I was fortunate to have been introduced to it and my hard work took me where I am now. Onboarding was stupid simple because somebody else guided me through it. I could not have done it on my own in 2020. Question: can someone do it on their own in 2024?
I think that when you want something badly sometimes tunnel vision can happen. We want people to find out about the amazing truth about ownership and how cool a blockchain is that perhaps the key point is missed: making onboarding stupid simple.
I did wonder how it would have been to have had huge banners with QR codes that could direct everyone who was new onto an onboarding platform : hive.blog/onboarding (don’t you dare typing this on Google). Think of the possible people at the conference that had no idea what we were talking about...those were missed opportunities. In my imagination the onboarding platform allows any user to make his first post by using less than 150 characters. Automatic tags like letmeintroducemyself, onboarding, newusers will be added and the community will have some sort of mechanism to reward instantly such post in order to show the user those first few cents ( “it’s not much , but it can help you in real life”…) No need to have Hive power or someone else in the system to help you out. DIY baby straight into the crypto land! Ding ding we all are hit by dopamine when we see that dollar sign. We can put an option of referral when we onboard them or leave it blank. The idea is to make the onboarding one thing and the focus on ownership another. Maybe a button with “Collect your rewards here” directing them to a page where everything is explained about keys, ownership, cashing out can be another add- on. I am sure that once John Doe sees some money gathering up he will want to find out more.
I think in terms of very simple .I think in terms of taking a stranger at Hivefest 2025, someone passing by, making them scan the code and posting their first article in less than 5 minutes. Can it be done? Could someone use their Facebook, Instagram or Google account to join the marvellous crypto platform? Could institutions like schools use this onboarding process to join and see real results from posting? Imagine how motivating it would be for parents to start blogging if they know that this way of using their phone could fund their child’s education.
Once I went to this path of thinking all of my brain started to sizzle with ideas like fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Time for the fizziest ideas of them all. Ready?
Let me go back to the bag of Hive goodies. Very nice. Very posh. How about digital functionality? Maybe I am inventing a new term in here. For me digital functionality is the quality of an item to send you to a digital platform where you can track and be tracked by people with whom you share common interests. Example: cars which have a QR code for ordering their pizza, carpet shops that have the same code directing you to their website where you can order etc. You get the point. Now...to the bag. How would it have been to have a sticker with my personalized QR code that will send you straight to my Hive profile? Yes, Instagram does it, why shouldn’t we?
Now the craziest ideas of them all ( drums rolling….) and boy I must tell you that I really like this one even if you might think by now that I am a hell of a crazy Aquarius woman. Maybe my ideas are really crazy, I know that @nonameslefttouse could have an accurate assessment of the craziness of everything that I am writing here as he is also quite a creative writer. Maybe @acidyo who is an experienced and dedicated person for the Hive ecosystem could tell me that I am really on fantasy land on this one. Possible reality or just another crazy fantasy?
The keychains. Look in the Hive bag. The cute black and red accessories that maybe you have already tucked into your closet or maybe you use them. Their digital functionality? None. How about something good like….wireless connectivity between users? I do not speak code and there are experts like @arcange, @vaultec, @techcoderx and maybe other people doing this stuff that might find a way around this.
Let me tell you my dream: what if two users who hold their keychains close to each other can automatically follow each other and connect on Hive without opening their phones? Yes. How about that? I do not know what kind of mechanism one device must have but boy I tell you that if Facebook could find a way for more people to follow each other and connect even when they are not using the app...they would do it. The concept is scalable to any platform. Imagine the amount of time that you win. In order for me to follow you and you to follow me we both need to: pull out the phone, connect to data, log in, search by username, click follow. A lot of steps! The future of digital functionality is all about making stuff happen fast and efficient. Call me crazy but if anyone could invent such a device I put my bet on it that Apple, Facebook, Instagram..they would all invest in a technology offering their users an extra alternative to have with them to connect with others. More people connecting...more traffic...more money. The physical keychain could be recharged in order to flicker with red light when follow me- follow you process has been successful. Talk about visual impact…
I imagine that such a device can also be solar charged as well if the design is well thought. Now the utopian vision of cars with Hive stickers being all over the place is not so crazy anymore if every user has a keychain that has enabled his networking process increase by tenfold. We all have been that person that once upon a time received a business card or someone told us how to find them and we did...nothing with that (ooops!). Nothing. Why? It was unconvenient and not so easy to remember. Humans are comfortable creatures. Give us wireless anything and we will take it (sorry but for making babies you really need contact, we can't wireless that..catch up later in 3025 and maybe we can do something about it).
I think that a product like blockchain needs to be made simple in order to reach the masses. Blockchain is a technology but if we think about the masses it must be looked at as if it is a product. Banks are trying to get into the game of crypto and I think that the win (of users) will belong to those who make the onboarding process stupid simple. And this is not because people do not have the mental capacity to understand but just because we now live in an era where the easiest thing has to be dangled first in order to get to the gist of it all later. Ownership is great. But ask anyone whose stomach is growling what would they prefer: instant 1 dollar in their sight or ownership of whatever they are posting? We all know the (digital) answer to that.
P.S. I did dare. I did search on Google. Damn.
