My journey to Berlin
First of all, let me introduce myself. Many of you know me as ‘Elum’, the 22 year old Dutch guy. I basically eat, breath and sleep crypto right now, but that was not always the case.
The system
Three years ago I started my marketing studies in Amsterdam. I followed the crowd and had chosen to be a part of the system. My plan was to start something for my own, but everyone told me that it would be a bad idea without a good diploma, because I would’ve had no backup in case if my ‘plan’ failed. So that’s how my school journey started, as a sheep I followed the herd and stayed in the system. This journey lasted less than 1 year, that’s when I came to the realization that I could do so much more with my life. If I failed I would get back up no matter what. I prefer trying something and failing, than not trying and never knowing what would’ve happen at all.
So there I was, I had no diploma, no money but I had a vision. I started talking to people, I started learning and looking for options. That’s how I ended up working for the Dutch railway company four months after that had I quit my school. It was a good job and I made good money. When I worked for the railway company I really started to see how the ‘big system’ worked. People go to their work in the morning with a cup of coffee and a grumpy face and in the afternoon they go back to their homes with a grumpy face and a cup of coffee. It’s a cycle; they work, eat and sleep and repeat. Just like a pawn. That’s not how I wanted to live, so I had to look further.
And that’s how it all started
Back in 2016 a friend of mine told me about this thing called Bitcoin and that it had a huge potential. I asked him if he could give me a sales pitch about Bitcoin and if he could convince me what it could do for the world, and he did. I had no school so I had all the time to search everything about it, and that’s how it all started.
If you are into crypto and your friends are also into crypto than you know that that would be the main topic during hangouts. That was also the case with my friends and I, and that’s when a friend of mine introduced me to Lisk. I had no idea what it was and I asked him if he could give me a sales pitch about, it was great, but I didn’t do anything with it for months and months. A few months later, I met him again and he asked me if I already invested in Lisk. I didn’t, I was too lazy. After that day I did invest in it after all and that’s when the magic began; the first price rise came. You should’ve seen my face back then, it was priceless, a form of pure happiness.
So I started getting involved in Lisk, I was active on the chat, on Reddit and started reading everything about Lisk. I daytraded with other coins so that I could buy more Lisk and that’s how it all started. I was (still am) breathing Lisk. It went so well that I could quit my job at the railway company and focus entirely on Lisk.
The Berlin meetup
Fast forward to the 22nd of November. I had the privilege to travel to Berlin without having to worry about anything or anyone. There I was sitting in the plane to Berlin to attend the big Lisk Meetup. It felt all so surreal; it was like I was in one of Dali’s paintings. At that moment I realized what I had achieved in a year and it felt amazing!
I went together with Joost (Joo5ty) and believe it or not but our conversations were only about Lisk. We talked about our expectations of the meeting, how we felt and of course if there was a case of a delay. We were so hyped that we arrived at the meeting one hour too early. We had all the time to talk to the employees of Lisk and it was actually really cool to meet the people behind the product.
I had noticed that everyone working for Lisk does it with passion and loves working for Lisk, and that gave me a confidence boost. If you have people working for you with a lot of passion and admiration then you now it’s going to be a good product; a product produced by love.
Besides Joost there were also some other delegates at the meetup including the French ‘liskpro.com’, ‘Carbonara’ and ‘5an1ty’. Forging is very profitable but the funny thing is, you couldn’t see it on them. They are really down to earth and totally not what I expected. There are some people in the community that find delegates greedy and money wolfs and it’s so easy to prejudge people. I was on of them, but then I realized that who am I to judge right? I don’t even know these people; so how can I judge them.
My point of view
During the meetup I was active on lisk.chat, everyone was hyped and you could really tell that the people were nervous in the community about 1 thing: is there going to be a delay for the dates or not.
So things started off good with some facts about the assets and funds from Lisk. After that it was Lindsay who started off with the marketing and social media charts. Too bad some displayed numbers were outdated as she mentioned. A lot of people noticed that she was nervous, and she did mention afterwards to me that she was. Not everyone can stay cool and be relaxed during a presentation in front of a room full of people and over 5000 people on the live stream, but that’s something that she can use as feedback for the next upcoming meetup(s).
Afterwards, Thomas explained the SDK with a simple example, building a Lisk city. It was a creative thing to do, but what I would’ve like to see is a comparison of the Lisk City to another city. Why the Lisk city will have a better infrastructure, why is it different from other cities etc? However, credits for the creative and innovative presentation.
At last, the moment people all were waiting for … the moment Max came; now it started to get really interesting. He mentioned that it takes time to get the product perfect and this was their main goal after all: a perfect product. And which impact the product can have on the world. The moment he said this I immediately thought that there was going to be a delay. Besides that the roadmap looked great and awesome. I could see really high potential items in this one, but the online community didn’t really seem to care about it, for example the decentralized exchange. The main thing that they wanted to know was the rebranding date. And there it was, drumrolls please, the rebranding date: 20th February 2018. There was a complete silence after Max mentioned the date. People didn’t know how to react but after a few seconds the crowd started clapping. We all understood that things could be delayed for a good purpose. It’s all for the benefit of the rebranding and for a perfect product, but the online community didn’t agree on this one and it was like they didn’t understand it at all.
The rebranding is actually just a small piece of the puzzle but the hype was too big. There were rumors about Google, Harvard etc. The majority of the community was disappointed; they didn’t hear what they wanted to hear. I did, I could see the bigger picture. Revolutionary things will come in 2018 and now it’s just a matter of time and it’s up to us to wait. After all, patience pays off. Right?
Conclusion
It’s hard to see the bigger picture when you are all hyped and pumped with all the adrenaline about one thing that gets delayed. The people at Lisk work day and night to get a good product, with passion and love. They are doing a great job so far. Of course, there are some cons, things that they can do better, and we as a community should give them the feedback and advise that is needed so that they can use it for the future. I am fully confident that Lisk will change the Blockchain world with a good product and a worthy community behind it that supports Lisk without letting them down. I recommend everyone to attend a Lisk meetup, get to know the community and get involved! Something big is going to happen the next upcoming years. Lisk is going to change the world! It’s only a matter of time.
Great read Elum! Congratz on your first blog 🙂
Great stuff mate! Keep it up!!
Good read! There are some pretty exciting things on the roadmap. It would be great to attend the next meetup and meet some of this inspiring people
I am I big supporter of Lisk and have been for some time. That said the reason for anger from the online community is because (let’s face it) this is not the first time the rebrand has been postponed?
Funny how people get a little crazy when their own money is involved. You talk about a worthy community that supports Lisk without letting them down? That my friend goes both ways don’t you think?
before starting, i would like to mention, that i do see great potential in the lisk project, and that i am in general supporting lisk in various forums, explaining people details about the project to bring it further. this without being paid, mentioned or anything, i do not even hold any lisk, which makes me more unbiased than lots sof hypers or lisk-fanboys.
but lets face it, the meetup was a public disaster.
and this is not because the relaunch date is further away than was expected by most, but because of the unprofessional way the presentation was handled.
so here my points of critic, and i hope, someone from lisk team will actually read this.
– the presentation appeared to be cheap (does not matter, how much time and money the spent to make it happen).
– how a multimillion dollar project can run a presentation on an crookedly hanging screen in front of windows and airconditioning systems is beyond my understanding !!!!
– how can they use slides in their presentation, that are not only not readable for people, who were following the livestream, but even are not readable for the actual crowd there?
– how can a cameracrew focus on people, who are texting in their smartphones, while at the same time, we could not see the actual far more important slides?
– besides of this, as everyone saw, and as you mentioned as well, lindsay used outdated slides. this is not a little unfortunate, that is a huuuuuuuge mistake, when liskteam want to present something to their investors, who spent millions to support them. things like this must be triple checked before being used.
– how can max say, that the “whole” team focusses on the relaunch, and that only after relaunch they will focus on the release of the sdk? when in fact half of the company has nothing to do with relaunch, like backend developers for instance. and i am sorry, 5 month for a rebrand? (sep-feb), what are they doing? people want explanations. i know, they want to do it right, but it is a competitive market, and chinese developers would do that within 1 month max.
– how can thomas mention, that they do not watch, what competitors are doing, when market analysis is a fundamental part of every business that wants to be succesful. alone this statement makes them look like fools in the eyes of investors.
– and last but not least, if you have a presentation to demonstrate the progess of your multimillion dollar project to your investors and supporters, it is deadly to allow people from the venue to advertise their location in the middle of your presentation, only to save a few bucks.
and those are just my main points of critic, there are much more little ones (about the handling of the livestream for instance)
it needs to be remembered, this is not a presentation of a school project, and the price of lisk was not falling because of the relaunch date being in february, the price was falling, because people coulnt believe their own eyes seeing this mess.