Belgium, the potential for Lisk
Disclaimer: This article is written as one of many contributions of delegate endro. Donations are always welcome but voting for endro would help our community get the exposure we deserve. Do your part in helping Lisk become the number one developers community by voting. Have fun reading!
The dutch community of Lisk is probably one of the most active communities. Joosty and Meyade recently announced the Lisk Center in Utrecht, frequent meetups, Moosty the decentralized organisation for musicians and we can go on with a lot of other initiatives! Unfortunately people tend to forget that the dutch community is much broader with a lot of members living in Belgium.
First steps
The first meetup was announced in October that would take place in Leuven. This city was chosen for 2 main reasons:
The first one is that Leuven is known for not having a lot of blockchain events and for having a lot of blockchain enthusiasts that attend events in other cities. There was always a lot of potential to get those local communities started but never actually came to a proper start.
The second reason is that Leuven University (KUL) is a highly respected institution that is ranked #48 out of 1,258. KU Leuven is also known for having a lot of international appeal. Monthly meetups do happen around Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Internet of Things but almost never about Blockchain.
Combining those 2 reasons gave a real incentive to pick Leuven as a starting point. Students who are eager to explore new technologies and Blockchain enthusiasts who are eager to connect and network with fellow enthusiasts.
Blockchain unwired, 3 December
There were a lot of positive comments when we announced the Leuven meetup. One comment came from Academics For Technology, a local student organisation for young entrepreneurs. They wondered what technical subjects would be addressed on the Lisk meetup and if one of the subjects could be presented on their blockchain event called Blockchain Unwired. I immediately knew it was a perfect chance for me to talk about Delegated Proof of Stake, the consensus algorithm used by Lisk.
While the talk went perfect, i noticed such events can have a very diverse audience. From students pro-efficient in Blockchain to marketeers who are just getting to know blockchain. The audience was so diverse that the Q&A became a very interesting part of the talk. The interactivity between me and all attendees showed that we as a community can educate each other on different parts of our journey towards decentralisation.
For those interested in what was presented. I’ll be creating a video in a few weeks on Delegated Proof of Stake and the comparison with Proof of Work.
Lisk Meetup, 6 december
Organising a meetup is not just picking a date and presenting some content. My work as the organiser started a few weeks before the actual event. It began with small tasks such as meetings with the building manager, designing the presentation flow for a comprehensive view about Lisk, providing food and drinks and much more. I couldn’t do this alone and received a lot of feedback from Monica and Mat who were very helpful in assisting where needed.
The meetup itself had 60 attendees on our meetup.com event page. Some statistics of the night revealed that we had roughly 30–35 people joining. 36 t-shirts with “Lisk Leuven” were taken home, 22 pizza’s were eaten and around 60 drinks were consumed.
A nice surprise for attendees was a contest held by liskpro.com. The price pool had 5 physical Lisk coins, 1 x Paper wallet with 25 LSK, 2 x Paper wallet with 10 LSK and 10 x Paper wallet with 5 LSK. So a big shoutout to liskpro for providing such chance where students, long time bitcoin hodlers went home and explored Lisk products!
One of the most important parts of the evening was the networking afterwards. So many interesting people were at the event and shared their thoughts on what Lisk and Blockchain can do for our society. Eventually the event came to an end and everyone went home with the positive feeling of doing more meetups in Leuven.
A sincere Thank you to everyone who helped set up the event and giving people in Leuven an idea of what Lisk is.
Next Steps
Blockchain Unwired and the meetup definitely left a positive feeling about the whole Ambassador role for Belgium. People expressed an interest for new meetups and want to know more about key concepts of the Lisk Blockchain. There are already plans for a new meetup and other organisations are expressing interest to have a talk about Lisk. A lot of cool new events are on the horizon for Belgium and will be announced as soon as everything is set in stone!
Delegates that are interested in collaborating for events, online seminars, contests or any type of event can always contact endro in the official Lisk chat. We can achieve great things together!
Vote endro! https://explorer.lisk.io/delegate/9096358076943957197L
