well the more I ask them about what’s ok to share now and what isn’t, the less I am understanding
But a quick basic outline of the trip was that I spent High School in Hawaii, where almost 3/4 people are from Asia, so many of my closest friends were from Japan and Korea. One of my best friends @aydenlee is from Seoul, and he was one of the first people I told about MaidSafe once I really became addicted to it so we started a “MaidSafe Korea” facebook page years ago and created lots of content with korean translations.
He kind of fell off for a while during all the delays–as many did–but still held his MAID and wanted more ways to get involved. So fast forward a few years and MaidSafe started to get more investment / interest from Asia and MaidSafe Asia / Solutions was started. They are a group of doers for sure and I have so much respect for their work ethic. They made a joke: “MaidSafe doesn’t have timelines… we do!” and they really mean that!
They schedule many events (and I think they are the masterminds behind the recent Jakarta trip?) and are organizing efforts for developer outreach, mainly. First in Asia–where they are based–and then other areas. They are excited to get as many “Pods” going in Asia as possible, and when they heard about our “MaidSafe Korea” effort, “SAFE-FS,” “AppStore,” “MWApps site,” “SAFEdemo,” “SecretChat,” “JAX / SF Pods,” etc etc over the many years, they became very excited and flew me (and @aydenlee) out to help them as they organize their outreach to new developers.
They are great people and genuinely want to help MaidSafe succeed. They are dedicating their time and resources to the things that MaidSafe might not be able to focus on right now, such as marketing and outreach. It is a great match because that is what I’ve been doing on a smaller scale full time for a while, and they have offered many ways for me to expand this, with weekly prize pools for app competitions, etc.
So our trip was very short and focused. Two days in HK total and nonstop meetings. Must have been 9 meetings across both days, and I felt like I was talking the whole time, because everyone kept asking questions about the apps, APIs, ICOs, SDK’s etc etc. Only time for food and meetings. Was about 10 of us, from different parts of Asia (including Florida haha) namely Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and Shanghai. We became very organized and got to know each other very well on the trip.
We are starting several projects for the future, and this is the part I can’t really talk too much about but what I can say is that there will be a new forum for MaidSafe Global (draft) and it will be heavily focused on catering to the other languages and fostering regular events overseas in these different countries. It is very exciting because that is where the vastly overwhelming amount of people using SAFE / SafeCoin will be coming from (due to high internet / smartphone penetration and also high percentage of unbanked people). Every second focusing on these areas is time very very well spent.
Well that’s it for now, maybe can take some questions in the next Audio Chat on Thursday (3/6) but that’s all I have to say here. Enjoy all the pictures I posted, and the links, and get excited for what’s to come!