Sndbox is a global incubator project striving to integrate STEEM and other blockchain resources into creative and community initiatives.
Sndcastles and Kickstarting Community Engagement
Sndcastle Projects are a new collaborative initiative of Sndbox. We’re working with Steemit community leaders around the world to foster social, creative, and community impact. Our aim is to support and promote Steemit accelerator hubs, encouraging meetups, onboarding and local hotspots.
This is how it will work: Steemit users who want to develop an accelerator hub in their city, region, or country can work with @sndbox to develop customized resources, workshop activities, and programs that bring on “users with roots” - Steemians who have a local network and community to engage and support them. In exchange for development support, these hubs will nominate select new members to the @sndbox incubator each month. (This is part of how our incubator expects to grow.) Our @sndbox network will develop organically through this nomination network with the aim of establishing community hotspots that receive consistent support through a global network.
Our decision to work on this initiative with both veteran and new Steemians came about due to a number of pressing questions for the Steemit platform -
1. Can we break down language barriers?
 | Cultural and language barriers alone bar us from so many of our fellow Steemians and their valuable content. Some parts of the world have failed to develop a presence on Steemit simply due to lack of whale support of their country or tongue. Sndcastles are an effort to break down those barriers and bridge parallel region-based communities. |
|---|
2. Can we encourage healthier curation?
 | For the most part (until now) individual curators have been given delegation support or curation power. But tying curatorial responsibilities to a personal account can be dangerous, oftentimes leading to abuse and misuse. We want to make curation and community support more collaborative and trust-based. |
|---|
3. Can we improve on the “Meetup” model?
 | In the past few months, we’ve seen regional Meetups become a mainstay in the Steemit community from NYC to Munich to Manila. After trying out several events and gaining feedback from our own Meetups, we understood that they could be much more than just social gatherings. Gatherings could be an educational resource. |
|---|
Our mission is to address these questions by continuing to mobilize and innovate with different forms of organization and programming.
Sndcastle Goals
Our collaborative Sndcastles are structured and programmed to meet these goals -
Combine onboarding activities with education. It’s one thing to tell new people about Steemit, it’s a whole different thing to teach them how to use the platform. Much of the material, presentations, and online/offline activities will be designed to get new users quickly accustomed and comfortable with the ins and outs of Steemit.
Nurture a trust-based system. In-person activities offer a great opportunity to nurture relationships and built trust between users. These forms of bonds also help dissuade account and tag abuse as well as cultivate more active usership. For us at @sndbox, it provides a referral system for potential Sndbox members around the world.
Encourage more collaborative initiatives. As regional communities grow with more members and diverse accounts, we’ll be able to help them mobilize further with collaborative projects and programs.
Upvoting Guidelines
The @sndbox collective vote will be reserved for the support of hubs, incubator members as well as all Steemians with similar community impact + creative missions in mind.
| ^ | Who? |
|---|---|
| +100% | Sndbox Incubator Members |
| +100% | Sndcastle Hubs |
| +50% | High-impact physical projects / initiatives (Example: STEEM Park) |
| +20% | Introduction posts promoted by Sndcastle Hubs |
| +20% | New Steemians (under the introduceyourself tag with strong content related to creative or community practices) |
We also want to make sure that abuse of the vote does not occur internally and is not used for purposes other than our core mission of impact oriented content. @Sndbox will not vote on content from personal accounts @voronoi and @hansikhouse. We will also not vote on member posts that fail to meet quality standards we aim to uphold.
Our First Sndcastle Projects
This week, we have the pleasure of announcing two of our first Sndcastle Projects- @tach and @stach!
@tach - Turkish ACelerator Hub - is led by @monomyth. @tach has already gathered a tight-knit and dedicated Turkish community who are all committed to building the TR community. Explore all the details of what they are planning in their recent introduction post.
@stach - STeem ACcelerator Hub - is led by @ejemai to form a dedicated space and ongoing in-person program for the Nigerian community in Port Harcourt. You can show your support and follow their progress here.
 |  |
|---|
We’ll be working closely with these community leaders and Sndcastle members (a few more to come soon).
The Future
We're excited to launch this new initiative! During the next few months, we’ll report back on all the metrics, development and activity. We’re open all ideas, suggestions and criticisms. Let us know your thoughts below! If we you want to read more on the topic of healthy community building, we recommend you check out the following posts -
@donkeypong’s Report on Steemit Hubs and Meetups
@kevinwong’s Post on the Steemit Collaborative Commons
@clayop’s Proposal to Cope with Abusers
What a great post, once again! You/your team are absolutely wonderful and so precious to this platform. Thanks again for all that you are doing with us and for us.
All for one and one for all! Namaste :)
That's very kind of you, thanks so much for your help Eric. We're all in this together, let's make it happen! Namaste ;)
You guys are just crushing it again and again. We're lucky to have you here pushing Steem forward every day.
I kept saying I'd move to NYC, but I ended up moving to Raleigh, North Carolina instead. We have a robust tech / start-up scene here (the "silicon valley of the east coast", as some say) alongside an amazing arts and music culture.
It's way too early for me as a Steemian or a Raleigh native to suggest starting a hub here YET, but... Maybe in another 3-6 months we should talk?
Best of luck on this new initiative. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help, no matter how silly or unusual.
Raleigh, NC! Right in the mix of the "research triangle" ... a great place to be @heymattsokol. Let's definitely discuss in the next couple months. Thanks as always for your amazing support and constructive feedback. We're excited about this initiative and hope that it does some good. Much more to come!
Sounds great :-)
Hiya @heymattsokol! I'm from Raleigh, NC, and just moved back to the area from Mexico. Would love to form a group (meetup) in the area, but like you, I'm a new Steemian. Let's chat!
Yay! Sndcastle is live and @stach is here. Really excited at the opportunities that this collaboration is set to bring to the Steemit ecosystem. Nice work @sndbox team.
So excited to collaborate with you @ejemai! You're doing incredible work with @stach!
Great post
Thanks for your support @katythompson!
I love seeing post from you guys as yu seem to always be on the cutting edge of Steem related projects. I am super interested in this and will be reading up a bit more. I am in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area of the United States. I am hoping to host a Steemit meet up in the city, once my account gets a bit larger so that I can use a few promotional posts to help with some costs that will be associated with renting a place to host the meet up on an expensive city. Nonetheless, if you need any help in that area, I would love to help where I can. Please don't hesitate to contact me :) Again, thanks for all that you do for the Steemit community#
Thank you @sixersfeds! Please do keep us posted as you begin gearing up to host events and meetups in Philly. We've got a sndbox member who is a professor at Temple University @kenfinkel. Make sure to take a look at his work!
Anyway, many thanks for the support. Philadelphia is an exciting place for start-ups and innovation these days, Steemit might just make it even more so ;)
Hey, I just wanted to mention that I did follow @kenfinkel and also made a preliminary post about a Philly meet-up, just to start getting the word out and hopefully make a few connections from other meet ups that I can bounce ideas off of. I hesitate to link it in the comments as it looked at as spam sometimes but I'll do it for those interested. Thanks again! https://steemit.com/steemit/@sixersfeds/future-steemit-meet-up-philadelphia-area
Thank you for the lead on another Steemian in the area. I will be sure to check him out! Also, I hope to make a post to at least begin getting feelers out and gathering some people in the area to bounce ideas off. Not sure what time of time line I am going to end up on but hopefully at some point this year! Thanks for everything!
Hi There @sndbox This is an amazing initiative. It will be my pleasure to participate. I am in Venezuela, you should know a lot because of my country due to social media. We have problems, but mostly, not as bad as it looks on TV. I know there is lot of potential in my country.
There is many good writers in Venezuela's history. This is why I truly believe your initiative goes side by side with what I've been doing so far.
I've been working hard to bring new members to Steemit. Also I'm trying to make educational meetUps. I take very seriously my steemit's account.
I know than as soon as you get more knowledge and better reputation, the more the responsibility you have to educate and guide people. I've been looking for something like your proposal since some months ago. Currently, even that I've been working with cervantes, to whom I'm deeply grateful for their support, I know than more support it's required in order to expand into more activities to empower more people. We, as Venezuela, We need better ways to improve the quality of educational meetups and education in general about steemit. We really need some kind of standards to get a balanced growing in our communities. IMHO, working for steemit it's a great opportunity to show to people, what a unique social media network can do.
I invite you to take a look on my profile. My content is in Spanish but I have some posts in English (I did the translations as good as I could. One year living in the UK's, wasn't bad to improve my language skills while being a caregiver).
It will be great to unify criteria to work within the best ways and support. So we can contribute to the growing of the Venezuelan Steemit community. Eventually, the Spanish speaking community in general all around the globe. Please let me know what is the process to work with you guys. I will be looking forward to make it happen.
Thanks for your time and many thanks for sharing this valuable content!
icons from icons8.com
@tach and @stach! It was rhyming and harmonious. I think this is a divine message. We must work together :)
Haha, harmony in the Steem universe ;)
We're excited to collaborate with you @monomyth! Amazing work you're doing with @tach. Looking forward to an exciting future!
Yeah, count me in....I already started a Bitcoin school last month which is ongoing, so it might as well be a Steem school, after everyone realizes what Bitcoin is...
I like the idea of education and meetups....in a way that encourages people.
I am already meeting in a location, and have about 10 students per class at this point. If you have an idea of the best resources for me to use, please comment below....I remember someone making some good noob materials, but honestly, i cannot remember who that was.
Oh awesome, that sounds great! We love making noob materials. (We'll be compiling a "master" post of all of them soon.) Take a look at these links, below and let us know what you think :
Welcome to Steemit! - An Introductory Guide for Creatives
Browsing the Basics on Steemit.com
Submit a Story - Tips For Crafting your Steemit Blog Post
Formatting with Markdown
Steemit Wallet 101 - Introduction
What is a Steemit Upvote
I'm totally inspired. I will make this happen in L.A.!!! Just tell me what to do to get started. I'm in.
Awesome! Try kickstarting a Steemit meetup group in L.A., I think there are a handful of Steemians out that way. We made a meetup group not too long ago to test the appetite for a hub in NYC. It started casual and then became more informative and workshop-based. Would be great to get more West-Coasters in on Steemit :)
https://www.meetup.com/The-Creative-Blockchain-NYC/
Working on it. Is there any script or language you'd like me to incorporate to affiliate it with this project?
Let's transfer this convo to Steemit.chat! You can reach us at @hansikhouse or @voronoi. We can send you some material. As reference, we think the way @tach started is a great way to launch.
In this whole one life which is more important to you money or time ?
its very Great post
Thank you!
This is a great initiative. What it takes to be part of this ?
Hi @sweetbbsr, thank you for the question. The incubators we're working with are groups that have already established a base and audience for growth. We recommend anyone who is interested in forming a Sndcastle to try bringing groups together and establishing an agenda.
ok, makes sense. In my place @sanjeevm is putting this initiative to bring forward new members. I will tell him, to get in touch with you.
What a great post, once again! You/your team are absolutely wonderful and so precious to this platform. thank you so much
Thank you for your support @newsworld!
A lot of people is scary about the blockchain technology, ¿what should we do? ¿what kind of words to generate trust?
We put together a concise explanation of Steemit and crypto for new users in our second post - https://steemit.com/welcome/@sndbox/welcome-to-steemit-an-introductory-guide-for-creatives
Have a look!
Really good project! Sndcastle is equipped for the future :) Yes we can!
One question: How can you best support your project?
nice
Sounds really awesome and I cannot wait to see the different hubs that will be created! You guys are doing an awesome job please keep up the good work!
Hey thanks @fury123 - These hubs are already doing incredible things and have super talented leaders! We'll do our best to support them in as many ways we can.
This is fantastic, it's great to see you growing by leaps and bounds since the inception of your project. I love this idea to mentor new projects/accelerators across the globe, and I wonder if something on the same lines could be done in India where Steemit is spreading rapidly.
Thanks so much @jznsamuel, It's been an exciting ride so far, we're looking forward to keep pushing further! Also, absolutely we would love to collaborate on a Hub in India where there is such a growing demand. Let us know!
Would definitely love to get things started and contribute to the bigger goal. Let me know how we can proceed and what needs to be done. Do you have a discord?
Steemit.chat is probably the best way to reach us! @voronoi and @hansikhouse
great the internet connection progress every day we need great idea thank's for your post !
Thanks @aymenz!
These are such great initiatives. I am going back to read again and try to develop some ideas hoping to contribute.
Fantastic, thanks so much @team101!
What a great post, once again! You/your team are absolutely wonderful and so precious to this platform. Thanks again for all that you are doing with us and for us.
All for one and one for all! Namaste :)
Thanks for the support @djboy!
wow, that's a heck of a vision with some great goals. I'll go check out the two new project hubs right now / wow!
We've got to up our Sndcastle skills to compete with that ! Hah, thanks @clumsysilverdad. Be sure to check out those two hubs @stach and @tach and give them your support!
This is a great idea, i can't wait to see the progress and establishment.
Thank you!
Wow, this project is very essential.. Thank you guys for this opportunity.. weldone
Thank you!
Hey, I thought you might know: is anyone working on a Steem debit card? See my latest post about this....
That would be incredible! I don't know of anyone currently building that out, but hopefully soon??
Thanks again for all that you are doing with us and for us.
Thank you for the supportive words @cointraveler!
@sndbox
Another great post, well pretty much all your stuff has been as such. It seems as if you revel in the avant garde where Steem technology is concerned. I can’t begin to tell you how interested I am in this project, and I am salivating at the thought of learning more about it. I hope being in Japan will not be an issue, seeing that the epicenter of this technology, among others seem to be in North America. By the way, when are you guys gonna has an Asian Steemit meet up? If and when you decide, make sure it is in Tokyo. Hopefully I will have enough leverage then to broadcast and promote such an event. Whatever happens, please, don’t leave the east out of the loop. We are depending on you.
Hey @nicholas1983! Thanks so much for the enthusiastic support. We're definitely down to support you if you can begin mobilizing people around Steemit. There is definitely a substantial Japanese community on Steemit as well (the #jp tag I believe?). Being in East Asia is not a problem for us at all and we encourage growth however we can.
BTW we will be in Asia (South Korea) this winter and we'll be sure to host meetups/events. Hopefully we can make it out to Japan soon as well!
i tried to organise a Sydney Australia meet up but only 2 people replied -- i would like to try again with support from you guys
Hey @daydreams4rock! We would recommend you broadcasting more on this platform and maybe trying to link up with creative, blockchain-interested, and other social groups in Sydney. If you can get a group on board that is dedicated to learning about and using Steemit, we're definitely eager to help!
how do i broadcast on your platform does that work byusing tag sndbox or do i have to look up a website? I understand a bit better now , that we are looking for people outside of steemit , that is a great idea , i am keen
Good, i like
Thanks!
Great work @sndbox!
Thanks @cipas!
Gonna check it, I'll keep you updated
Thanks @codybitscott95! Looking forward.
Very Good initiative. I try to developed a steemit community in Kolkata, India. Anyone interested with me please send me private message in steemit chat.
Hallo worlds i can becouse you
Hi, I'm on my early beginning on Steemit, today I posted my 1 month anniversar 💎
I'm starting to understand what's really happening here and all these initiatives just make me more trustful and enthusiastic to give my best!
Many thanks 💎
[email protected] 🌼
Followed and upvoted, good job!
That Bereh tulesan droe neuh hy @sndbox eukk, lage lam kapai are ;)
Nyoe kan ku tuleh nyoe koen pu laen, nyoe ku meuharap meurumpok persen bacut bak si karma, meunyoe hana jih jok persen meu bacut theh sang hana so jok keudroe kuh, jadi nyoe komen lon numpang jak siat, meuah beuh, bek neukira apam syara beh, trimong geunaseh, mnyoe awak blah deuh khen thank you very much, nyan ban :)
Congratulations @sndbox!
Your post was mentioned in the hit parade in the following category:
I love this idea. I'm in Raleigh, NC (just moved back from Mexico). I would love to be involved, or even lead the charge here, but I'm a new Steemian, so would need some support! :)
Thanks for this initiative. Anything that enhances the user interaction and user experience among stemmians will help the whole community. Thanks for sharing. Voted and resteemed.
Hi All, would you like to read some skin care? Please my article and upvote
https://steemit.com/skin/@rizwana/tips-for-healthy-glowing-skin
I just joined STEEM IT today and am very glad to have found this blog, definetely very interesting, I feel like a have so much "homework"to do LOL! FOLLOWING!
Brilliant! I am expecting the project is going to land in Indonesia ASAP, as you know Indonesia has huge steemit community so far. Very informative and brilliant idea. Thanks @sndbox
What an interesting post, thanks for sharing!
I'll investigate :D
Great. Thanks for sharing. I vote for you and begin to follow you. And Resteemed... ☺♥
Thank you for sharing your wit and information with our beautiful community. I will be visiting you often, and reesteem for you. Greetings from Venezuela.
Thank you for sharing your wit and information with our beautiful community. I will be visiting you often, and reesteem for you. Greetings from Venezuela.
Local hub is a great idea. Thank's.
your post is very nice, full pack of knowledge and very attractive :-)
i'm confused about #2 healthier curation - it would seem to me the opposite of what you say here and that individual curation is much more fair and honest. Individuals are more likely to actually read a post where as streemian curation bots not so much....please tell me where I'm missing something
Great post and thanks. Looking forward to helping in some way or another.