Aelf’s first birthday

On the 13th of September, 2017, a seed was planted in the public’s mind. On this very day, Ma Haobo and Zhuling shared their dream for the world to see in the form of aelf’s whitepaper. 12 months on, and that seems like a lifetime ago. In fact, many of us were not even involved in aelf at that point. From then to now, growth has happened, that seed has flowered into a garden of investors, a vibrant community forest, and a special and rare array of friends. And now on this same day in 2018, a special anniversary event was organized.

Held in the heart of Singapore, the very same city that houses aelf’s head office, friends and partners from all over the world attended. I came from Australia just to be a part of this special occasion, with others coming from throughout Asia, Europe and the US. In addition, although many of our community were not able to attend in person, they were able to participate through the online livestream. To bring this event even closer to our global community I aim to scribe the story that was our anniversary event. I will take you through the journey we went through that day.

I had just arrived in Singapore 36 hours earlier and was still familiarizing myself with Singapore, the culture, city layout and the heat. That morning we arrived at the office like any other day. The day before we had gone through the overall planning of the anniversary event, but now it was time to get our teeth into the details of it. We had our presentations to finalize, prizes to organize, and merchandise to arrange, among many other things. The morning was also filled with phone calls, adjusting timing schedules, and adding in last minute slides. Throughout all of this there was a special atmosphere in the air, I was not the only one to feel it.

Everyone from our Chinese team who were in the office, the Singapore team and myself could feel it; an excitement, an anticipation. By lunchtime, a lot of the necessities were in place and although there was still plenty to do, we felt some team bonding was due… that and we were all hungry for lunch. Zhuling Chen, Co-Founder and COO of aelf had already left for our first event — SLUSH 2018. But I was treated to some of the local cuisine, pork rib hot box by the rest of the team. After a short break, we were back at it, finalizing the last few things before heading off to meet Zhuling at SLUSH.

Only a short walk through the heat, and we found ourselves entering the gates of SLUSH, a crowd of enthusiasts all driving towards the one goal — Blockchain adoption. We literally had to stand less than one metre in from the front door due to the crowd. Shortly after we arrived the panel discussion started. One panelist we recognized instantly, our COO, Zhuling; but sitting with him were close acquaintances and friends, Loi Luu from Kyber Network, Li Xiaozhou from Celer & Michael Lints from Golden Gate Ventures. Of course I couldn’t forget the incredible panel host Apirat Kongchanagul from our partner — Roland Berger. Looking through the crowd intensely focused on the panel, we could see many familiar faces as well as many new ones, each with their own incredible story of how they came to this very place.

At the conclusion of the panel, aelf announced our business survey which is helping to provide insight into both Blockchain ventures and the enterprise world. Although there was energetic discussion sparking in all directions, the team could not stay long and left to prepare for the incredible evening we were planning. Only Zhuling and I stayed behind to continue to build connections, learn about other projects and grow the name of aelf. Although it is always interesting to meet new people, by the end we were both quite exhausted already, but that is ‘the name of the game’. We did, however, get a chance to rest and gather our thoughts in transit between SLUSH and the anniversary event. One thing I hadn’t noted until now was the traffic…

This was the week of the F1, and that meant many city roads were blocked off and so, what was normally a direct route, became a long and indirect route. Nonetheless, we arrived out our new location and were hit with a well prepared and inviting arrangement. There was calm and order, something I am not used to when preparing for large events. But this was indeed a welcome sight.

Of course, no event would be complete without the normal array of technical hiccups but I won’t go into those now. Within 15 minutes of the doors opening, guests started arriving and we were soon being entertained with the enticing music that was small chat. Upon arriving, guests were greeted by two of our lovely team members from the Beijing office and given a limited edition aelf t-shirt. Upon signing in one could turn right to a delectable table of canapés and soup or enter the main area ready for our presentation.

I can’t go further without mentioning the twitter and instagram props the team had prepared, the guests had plenty of fun taking photos for social media.

At 7pm sharp we kicked off with a short word by one of our sponsors, Leonard from BlockConnectors. Zhuling then dived straight into aelf, who we are, and what we have achieved in the last 12 months. Following this Guanglei, Chief Architect, opened up the world of Blockchain technology with in depth discussion of the aelf technical project. After such an overwhelming burst of knowledge we wanted to lighten things up again and presented an interactive session on our global community. This was my cue. But before we did, we had a special surprise, created by our community for our Co-Founders, Ma Haobo and Zhuling Chen — a thank you video. It said exactly what many of us felt. Watch it here.

This was then followed by my presentation of our wonderful aelf community. Many of you may have experienced my telegram trivia which tends to run every other day. Today, marked the very first day I would run this trivia live and in person.

At the conclusion of the presentation we had our panel discussion which comprised of Zhuling Chen, Li Xiaozhou from Celer, Leonard from BlockConnectors and KC from DigixGlobal. Discussion varied from project specific questions, to looking into the future to the crypto community.

Following this, dinner was held, and although I only got to taste a few of the dishes on offer, as I was too busy talking to everyone, it was very tasty! But all in all, it was an incredible success. By the time my presentation started we had standing room only. This feeling of success was shared by everyone involved in the preparation. It could easily be seen by the team after all guests had left, and there was such a sense of achievement and relief, you couldn’t wipe the smile off anyone’s face. This is what it means to be in a startup, what it means to be in Blockchain. This is what it means to be a revolution for the people, by the people. We are aelf.

Please watch this video to continue the journey of that day