HivePH: Power By Bayanihan

The direction HivePH is heading is shaped by the quality of community members that make it up. The greatest asset any organization has is its human resources. You can install multiple systems that serve its people but the outcomes would still depend on what the people do with those given resources. So if the organization is run by people who value self-interest more than the group’s well-being, you’ll get a community that eventually fade into irrelevance.

Giving people more money was never a long term answer. It’s one of the first hard lessons learned when it comes to community building on Web3. If people come together for money, more of it isn’t going to solve the problem, it will keep the group together until the well dries up. We’ve seen this happen for the past few years on the blockchain where new names come and go during bear and bull runs. I’d like to think HivePH is beyond that. But it’s naïve to think people got convinced to join web3 without being offered by those social rewards.

The health approach is creating a culture where we are a community on Web3 that happens to earn monetary rewards getting involved on Hive. Instead of we’re a community centered on maximizing those social rewards.

The measure of one’s individual success in being integrated into HivePH is when they are gone, someone organically makes a query of where have they been? Because if no one ever asks how you’re doing despite your long absence, then that just means no one in the community has any good ties with you to care enough.

The misconception Filipinos have when they enter the HivePH server or get involved with HivePH is getting support in the form of votes just because they exist. Everyone goes through a trial where candidates for membership are peer reviewed by other existing members to see if they are a good fit for the group culture. This means everyone has to start 0 and make friends with more people in the community. It’s not benefits handed readily, you have to get to know the community and interact with its culture to see if you can belong. Now if your attitudes just don’t align with the group culture, you’re out.

Members have the individual responsibility to screen candidates they want in. Another misconception is how these memberships are dictated by staff, they’re mostly not. 1 Staff voting is still 1 vote for OR against the membership. It’s hard to earn the membership and even harder to earn it again once lost. The part where strangers don’t get when it comes to HivePH culture is how closely-knit the group is. Once you’re in, it’s easier to ask for favors because that membership to “Hayahay” is a badge that says other members have deemed you good for the community and therefore have less reasons not to help.

Bayanihan is the local term for integrating a sense of community spirit. You can have a conceptual meaning like helping community members out when they are in need for this and that. But operationally speaking, if one HivePH member asks for support over something during times of distress, they can expect more than half of the time other members will take initiative to step up and help for their sake as long as the request is reasonable.

Bayanihan is one concept the community tries to integrate without the pitfalls of being too giving as a community. There have been many ingrates and do shitters in the past so more stress on how members are screened gets emphasized. We’re looking for people who can believe in the same things and use the systems in place to do more for others beyond their Hive routine. Those monthly reports on how we use the funds we collect from delegators, blogging contests, events, and other incentives in place. Those are the things that we do to bring in value into the community.

Because where else can you find a Filipino-based community where you get the network, resources and people’s precious time to help you get started just from the onboarding? Staff members and members that do more for others do not earn any monetary rewards for helping out new users. It’s all handed freely. We got a channel where helpful guides are compiled.

We share the resources that can help new users thrive and earn and this costs only a new user’s precious time to attend the webinars we host. No downpayments, no invest here talks, no paid tutorials for Hive, no guilt trips for beneficiary cuts on your posts, or get coerced to join the community right after onboarding.

We’re not selling people anything but we do teach them how to thrive in the network until they find their own niche into the Hive ecosystem. That’s why we didn’t opt for a community token. We’re not a community driven to invest in a token, we’re a community driven to invest into the growth of our members and non-members who want to get involved with HivePH activities. The community account and all its stake is an extension to that growth.

And these are all things that make this community resilient, when I think about the things that could be, I know a lot of it are just possibilities that will collect dust at the back of my head until someone else than me picks up the vision and works towards those goals. HivePH was able to be the way it is because there were others willing to work towards the vision. And that vision isn’t built on lofty goals that people can’t care.

There are no promises of riches or changing the world bull shit here. There’s no guarantees that the time new users spend on Hive will earn them quick $ for the least amount of effort possible. What we have are arrows that point to opportunities where new users could find a niche and thrive in the ecosystem, then in some small chance when they find value in what we do, they delegate and reinvested into the community that helped them get started. Do this repeatedly and you get delegations from less than 1000 Hive to more than 30k Hive on @hivephilippines.

We didn’t sell people grand things. We showed them the tangible and realistic goals we can achieve as a community, we installed systems in place where people can visibly see the impact of their efforts onto others, made ourselves more accountable with the trust that we’re given, and it eventually goes back to everyone involved.

Yung maliit mong delegation sa community, merong 10% na cut sa rewards at pumupunta yun sa community fund, staff, events and projects na tumutulong sa ibang tao. Yung mga libreng upvotes nakukuha ng members, bigay yan ng ibang members na nakaangat sa platform at paying it forward to newbies. So if you’re just a member that passively does nothing but take those benefits for granted, better start reevaluating what your purpose is into this community. Yung libreng access the community account pwede rin magamit sa ibang members at non-members na gusto mo bigyan ng votes.

Anyone can start a community on Hive, any Filipino can come out from the blue and just say we’re this and that. There’s nothing wrong there. But whenever I’m reading introduction posts, I’m just thinking it’s all talk until proven otherwise. You think thriving on Hive is hard? Try managing a community where you’re not only negotiating with your self-interests but compromising with what others think is best for themselves and everyone else.

You think curating people’s post is easy? Try doing it regularly (close to daily) reading about strangers you aren’t invested about talking about stuff you aren’t invested about but take this upvote and nice post, I’ll include you in the curation compilation. Part of the community organization is being invested in the lives of the people you’re working with and for. Hive doesn’t exactly provide enough monetary incentives for your precious time but we have staffs and members willing to go out of their way to know new people and teach them about the platform.

This whole voluntary service for others is one of the core virtues of Bayanahin culture HivePH has. Value doesn’t mean upvotes or money, value is given in the form of knowledge and time were you teach others how to fish. New users being onboarded have more to gain from the deal than established users who may not even get anything for their time.

So when I evaluate how other starting communities and communities who have been existing long but never blew off, I look at the culture to see why. If the organization is led by people who never bother to know their members, it’s not that hard to imagine that it’s all superficial and platitudes that don’t matter on the introduction post. If the organization is led by people who do not invest on their human resources, there’s nothing there to build forward.

We’re not just a community focused on votes and curation compilation. Some of the webinars we do aren’t even related to Hive. Financial literacy, mental health topics and other subjects do get some spotlight during Friday nights. For people who only think of Web3 communities as a place to earn more money on the network, they’re in for a culture shock with HivePH. We are a community on Web3 first and we happen to earn from social rewards on Hive.

If users want to participate in this HivePH culture, they’re going to get the benefits of this culture. You give value to the community and the community will give it back and probably more than you expected. And you don’t have to be a Filipino to be part of the culture. As long as you make friends and members have peer reviewed you to be an asset to the community, you’re good. This is one misconception I’d like to dispel while I’m at it.

It’s the same pay it forward culture that onboarded several valuable members this community has. It’s the culture that led us to meet one another during the recent meetup in Manila. Because people of value will eventually attract other people that have value and good things eventually happen at the community level.

Sinulat ni Adam