An insider's experience of Pinmapple

Many of you will know that I am part of the Pinmapple team, and it would be so wrong if I didn't write an entry to support our Pinmapple Thousand User Experience contest. Of course, my entry won't count, but still, that doesn't matter, as it's the experience that counts..... did you like my clever pun 😎

My user experience is going to be a bit different from most people as I get the benefit of both an end user experience and an insider's experience as a core team member.

End user experience

I've been pinning my travel posts on Steemitworldmap Pinmapple since it first launched back in 2017. Here's my personal map, 288 pins and counting. By the way, did you know, once you start pinning on Pinmapple, you start to build up your own Pinmapple travel map. You can check out yours on https://www.pinmapple.com/@ just add your username to the end.

It gives me immense pleasure to look at my map and see where I've left my footprint around the world. Not to mention it makes it so easy for me to find a travel post, it's so difficult to do that on Hive.

Every so often I will go through my map to see if I can pin any new countries to it. I've written about most of my recent year travels already. There are other places that I haven't got round to write yet like Iceland, Brussels, Netherlands, China but those are from ages ago. I look hideous in those days, not sure if I want to show those photos on the chain!

The only complaint I have about Pinmapple is that I wished it was available earlier. I went to New Zealand in July 2016 and posted about all my New Zealand travels BEFORE the map was around. The chances of me going back again, at least in the next few years are pretty slim, so I can't pin those New Zealand travel posts on my map. I've written two new ones since, using some material that I haven't used before, but the bulk of my NZ travels aren't on it ☹️

An insider's experience

I'm privileged to be part of the Pinmapple team, giving me an insider experience to the map. I've been part of the team literally from day one, when @martibis sent out a message looking for team members. I think 5 or 6 of us put our hand up back then but only @choogirl and I are still around. @lizanomadsoul and @itchyfeetdonica joined us later on.

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It took me over two years before I met anyone from the team. I met @martibis and @lizanomadsoul at SteemFest in Bangkok last year. It was so great to actually meet them in person after working as a team for so long. I also met @choogirl virtually. She and @martibis met up in Europe in 2018 and shared a photo of them together. I felt so jealous of being left out that I keyed myself onto their photo 😂 I hope I can meet @choogirl and @itchyfeetdonica in real life one day.

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A nice thing about part of the Pinmapple team is that we're all so different. @lizanomadsoul is based in Germany and is like a social butterfly, she knows everyone at SteemFest last year. @choogirl is an Aussie currently in Panama, she's a really chill person, you can feel that even virtually. @itchyfeetdonica is in Belgium, she isn't very active now but still authors the Travel Digest once a week. She used to write great travel posts with the most amazing images, she can draw and can cook. Often I wonder if there's anything she can't do. And then there's @martibis the crazy guy from Belgium who created the Pinmapple and the haveyoubeenhere app.

I say he's crazy because often he comes up with these weird crazy ideas, and I have to put on my ex corporate hat to knock him back to reality. Sometimes his crazy ideas turns out to be not so crazy, and I hate it when he proves me wrong, not once but twice!!! 😤

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A new name for a new beginning

The first was when we moved over to Hive and we were brainstorming a new name for the Map. Donica and I found a bunch of really cools ones which reflected travel and the map, such as.

listmytravels.com
showmytravels.com
travelandpin.com
mappingmytravels.com
lookatmytravels.com
followmytravels.com
theworldtravelmap.com

Then @martibis said the found @pinmapple. I thought it was absolutely bonkers, a bit like him!!!! He even came up with the Mr Pinmapple logo. That was when I started to warm to the name. It was fun, exactly what we wanted the map to be. The team voted on the name, and guess who came top of the vote?

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The generous folks on Hive

The second time that @martibis proved me wrong was very recent when we were organising the Pinmapple Thousand Contest to mark us reaching the 1000th edition of the Travel Digest. He wanted to celebrate with a big bang with a 1000 Hive prize pool. Celebrating and rewarding users that's been so supportive of the Map is great, but 1000 Hive is quite a signficant sum of funds. I put on my ex corporate plus accountant hat again. We have quite a bit of operation costs that we need cover each month, setting a 1000 Hive prize pool could wipe the Map's saving clean.

So @martibis came up with another one of his crazy ideas - let's ask people to sponsor the prize pool!!!! Honestly? I wonder if he's been smoking something or is he living is some sort of utopian la la land? Or maybe this whole Covid thing has got into his head and messed up his thoughts. I told him I'm pretty sure people will be willing to upvote good contest entries. @blocktrades, @theycallmedan, @OCD officially support the Map's curation, and I'm pretty sure a few whales curate in the haveyoubeenhere community. But to ask for actual donations??? That's a whole other matter. Anyway, he said he's going to ask around. Ok.....

He came back to the team very soon, and said @eturnerx agreed to sponsor 200 Hive. Then @crimsonclad pledged 150 Hive. @choogirl spoke to @ausitbank, he sponsored 200 Hive. Then I saw @c0ff33a talk about sponsoring contests and I approached him. He agreed to sponsor 200 Hive. I couldn't believe the generousity of the folks from Hive, we had 750 Hive worth of donations. @martibis proved me totally wrong AGAIN!!! On top of that, he himself threw in 150 Hive to the prize pool. Don't forget this is a guy who doesn't post regularly on Hive and isn't working at the moment, so the funds are coming out from his own pocket. We had our 1000 Hive prize pool.

But that wasn't the end of the story. @roelandp has always been a massive supporter of the map, delegating a significant amount from the outset. A few days later, he sent over 1000 Hive sponsorship!!! The team were absolutely gobsmacked!! And that's how we doubled the prize pool to 2000 Hive!!!

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It's these moments, the support, the happiness, the craziness, the unexpected, the friendship from everyone that makes my Pinmapple experience so special. Thanks everyone for being part of it.

You can checkout all my travel post on the Pinmapple here or click on Mr Pinmapple below