Something BIG is COMING!
The Now
A new idea is born and only you can make it take flight! Take a journey with me into the past and into the future I hope to give you, together we will stand on top of a mountain and see the impossible!
I personally don't care about the Steem price! What I do care about is sustainable business on the Steem blockchain which can weather the storm of high or low Steem prices, with a long-term view of job creation and daily incomes on Steemit, helping everyone get a bigger stake of Steem which I believe, if maybe, just maybe we are patient enough and stand behind each other as a unified force in the blockchain space, we can become the world's greatest social media platform, ever!
It takes a village to raise a child, but it takes an army of dedicated and talented individuals working as a team to create something truly world changing. We are on the cusp of that very moment and we don't even know it.
The Past
I stand proud to have joined Steem in the incubator stage before payouts became real, I stand before you as the first Steem witness in Africa, my powerful server and seed remain active at the service of the community.
My journey on Steem started as Steemit Community Manager for Bravenewcoin.com, I actively sought out Bravenewcoin CEO, Fran Strajnar and persuaded him to allow me to post on their behalf for a profit share, he agreed and I posted for @bravenewcoin for several months, with a total of nearly 100 posts. Most importantly I became good friends with Fran; who in my opinion, is one of the most influential and connected people in blockchain and banking, the mentorship and business acumen I learnt from him was among the most valuable gifts I received from being involved on Steemit.
After a while, I developed ideas for my own projects, the first being the @steemdrive billboard initiative, where with the help of fellow Steemians and trusted friends was able to crowdfund the second highest grossing non-developer post on the Steem, yielding a gross post value of $27 037.14 which was used to launch the first digital and massive print Steem billboards in Durban, South Africa ... followed by New Zealand and Chicago made possible by the amazing collaboration with @cryptoiskey and @theprophet0 respectively. This project was intended to create employment for billboard liaisons in their respective countries and sub-regions.
Billboard crowdfunding was only feasible when the Steem price was over $2.00 so when it dropped below that I came up with the SteemSports mass SP distribution games concept, and created further jobs for nearly 20 people, including writers and developers.
SteemSports started-off in "robin hood" style, giving the game winners a share of the liquid reward and the balance to the writers and editors, in a well-oiled publishing model which soon gained the @steemsports account the #1 reputation rank on Steem, which it still holds to this day. We distributed nearly 250,000 SP to winners and writers alike over the span of the project and then shifted to a monetary pay plays system with a dedicated website developed by the then CTO, @furion and managed by my good friend @cryptoiskey.
We created a truely vibrant chat channel and had some new writers such as @writingamigo come fresh off the web to join Steem via our project. It was in this project where I met @smooth and am proud to be his friend on Steem, my change of timezone caused us to lose touch a bit, but his attentive ear and encouragement meant more to me than he will ever know.
The project was heavily trolled by uninformed parties, just as we had planned a media roll-out with healthy exposure for the project and for Steem itself, an initial release on the coremedia.info magazine can be seen here. The steemsports.com site operated up until a recent hard-fork in early 2017, rendered our integration inoperable and the project remains as a daily showcase of @cryptoiskey's graphics capabilities and dedication while the rest of the team no longer found it profitable to continue on.
In the time overlapping the creation of Steemsports, I came across another great project by @marcgodard called @steemvoter, which is a curation bot with a simple interface to empower ordinary users with whale bot voting capabilities, I quickly identified the synergies and cross-promotion between SteemSports and steemvoter.com and since I had already made friends with the developer @marcgodard it was an easy progression into buying out half of his project and becoming co-owner.
Since then I introducted Marc to bravenewcoin.com to help market his other equibit.org project which took up alot of Marc's time at which point he sold his share to @cryptomancer who is now my current trusted and talented partner on the project.
Late in 2016, I flew to Johannesburg in South Africa and met Steemit CEO Ned Scott at a Steem Saturday event which I was proud to be guest speaker in as ambassador for Steem and my related projects and met other great Steemians, including @gavvet and @jacor and other blockchain professionals at the amazing event.
(Starting from bottom right in the photo is Robert Marshall -MD of QuadroIT, then me...hello, @gavvet behind me, then Ned Scott and opposite me is Adam Meister)
Furthermore, ten months ago I wrote a post suggesting Vote Power Delegation, today it is a reality.
The Future
Without giving up too much, I will tell you that I have big plans on Steem, a concatenation of my prior and current Steem projects into one global game changer for the community, creating further ease of employment for bloggers and developers alike. I am making contact with developers at this stage and will release further information in due course.
"Dream today, for tomorrow your dreams may become a reality!" - @thecryptodrive
If you believe in dreams, vote thecryptodrive witness!
I don't think so. @steemsports's content has been going downhill lately and everyone is paying attention. It's one thing to be in maintenance mode but announcing everyday that you are and being paid handsomely for it makes steemsports look very greedy. They could post something of value, some future projects/plans for steemsports or even other improvised games like they used to do instead..
If you go to Steemwhales.com and sort by reputation, the blockchain reputation of Steemsports is 77.7 in #1 rank. Steemsports content ceased because all writers retired due to low Steem prices and negative morale from bring trolled, I myself was hit very hard and lost alot of my creative spirit for some time. Our ops manager and good friend @cryptoiskey was the only one faithful to the end and kept posting his daily artwork creations even when posts were only worth a dollar.
I think for Steem to survive we all need to put aside negativity and support each other, behind the blog pseudonyms are people, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sick and injured people, sad people, lonely people, heartbroken people. What we say to them in our comments could change their lives, positivity is so important for the future of Steem to be a place people want to stay in.
I was refering to the real reputation, the sentiment of the community if you prefer.
I don't know where you see negativity in my post, it's called criticism.
And please please don't play the victim card to justify the mediocre content, that's petty.
There is no victim play here, a lot of my team suffered from the trolling, I won't downplay that, morale was never that low and a lot left Steem altogether which is not what the community wants I'm sure, to lose Steemians.
I do agree with you SteemSports is currently a shell of what it was and will be renewed again into something better. As I said the payouts haven't been as great as you say and at times was close to one dollar, majority around $10 -$15 for most of this year, they created interim employment for our graphics expert and friend of mine while we didn't have a direction, and he was happy to post right through the low rewards period just to practice his GFX skills and earn whatever was on the table, I applaud that.
The original graphics on the posts are amazing and I wouldn't say they are low quality, perhaps you mean it lacks writing content.
I learned more about you reading this post than I would have thought. I missed a lot of this in my feed but commented to a couple people, I am glad I came back and read this whole thing.
I had no idea about at least half this stuff.
No wonder I always liked you LOL
(:
GBY and you have a good week my friend.
LOL
Thanks man
I am intrigued but I know you have the drive to make it happen!
Thank you my friend, we will all be great soon!
I believe so!
time zones, mean you might miss this and thought you would like this:
https://steemit.com/life/@barrydutton/ran-into-my-friend-at-dinner-i-played-with-and-went-to-school-with-rob-pearson-1st-round-pick-of-toronto-maple-leafs-out-of-our
Lol, I did! Especially the fights, they were wild!
Hello Ricardo :)
Thank you for this very interesting post regarding past and yet filled with a whole lot of vision for the future. Hope we meet in person some day soon. Until then, please check out my blog and do support original quality content. Who will if not guys like you? :)
Best,
@velimir
Hello @velimir I had a look at your intro post and a few others and yes I would like to vote for you and have added you to my autovote list. Welcome to Steemit. If it's not too much trouble please will you support my witness, I used to be number 26 once but since I haven't marketed myself much am now down to 37.
Thank you, and Yes, of course. Happy to help! :-)
Appreciated my friend!!
:-)
hi )))
... how do i help ?? - )))
When you state your witness number ... it 'feels' like it should BE .. #7 )))
... 30 spots out (( post 12 days old)) ... june 12 th now )))
i see this ... https://steemit.com/witness-category/@thecryptodrive/a-world-of-witnesses-geo-diversity-for-a-safer-tomorrow
... so, 29 spots .. away from 7 ))))
Could you please link a "how to vote for a witness" article ?? - ))
please ))
LOVELOVELOVE )))
greb'Z )
... AvataR CO-M_petition ... FUN )))
Well, if you still need writers, you always know that I am available. It was a pleasure working with you back in the day. I would love to again.
The pleasure is mutual, you were/are an amazing writer and a great guy to work with. I will assign you an editor shortly, can you send me a pm on Discord?
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I know on any day Ricardo is a mover and a shaker that takes the time to listen to each person that tries to contact him.
Writing for steemsports was not only a pleasure but I met a lot of great people in the private chat. People that were motivated to make a change not only in Steemit but the world.
I'll stand behind these guys any day of the week.
It was my honour to have worked with you @kryptik you were and are still a good friend, we had some good times and hope we can relive them again.
We will buddy. We will.
Great news. I'm excited!
Great news for the win
A win for Steem is a win for all!
Well said man.
Yes, I agree. Winning is my game plan
Thank u my friend! Always good to have you on Steem.
Hi my friend, long time no hear from you, if you need anything, let me know :)
Hi again @elyaque.
I hope you are doing well, I have appreciated so much of your hard work for things here, just saying hi.
BD
I am fine how are you my friend?
Struggling along with the injuries and life.
I hope you are good my man!!!
Yes long time indeed, will be in touch you are very important to marketing. Thanks for remembering me.
Steemsports gave me a lot of my sp.
Which acct are you using these days my friend??? FBA or FBS?
I never see you commenting or posting, I do see the odd vote from you and thanks!
I am just checking on you as a friend and hope you are OK.
DM or tweet me etc if needed.
I'm glad my projects helped you to some degree, it gives me pride to know it made a small difference to your Steem experience, thank you for letting me know that our team made a difference.
Yes, when it went behind the pay wall was a sad day around here, we were making more from steemsports than posting,...
Yeah I know, unfortunately not everyone appreciated the distribution model, not everyone can blog or network successfully, Steem needed another way of interacting. That was the idea behind it.
Lol, I speculated that the friction was a result of me getting toooo much traction.
I keep winning the nascar giveaway, too.
Freebornwinner :) :)
Lol, well, I can't make it blogging,....
come and hang with us on http://steemspeak.com and network with others. You can make it blogging. Just need to socialize more and make great content.
Off the top of my head I would suggest regular posters such as @craig-grant, @jesta who should have many upcoming project updates, @teamsteem does amazingly well, he writes like a CEO in my opinion...hmmm I should get him to ghost write for me hehe, @steemsports @steemvoter @barrydutton @meesterboom @webdeals @officialfuzzy @kingscrown @gavvet @steemcleaners @thecryptofiend @hanshotfirst @fyrstikken @sweetsssj @acidyo are sure-fire curation rewards makers if you get in early. There are many more as well.
You are doing fine commenting, I'm giving you 24 cents each time I vote your comment lol. How cool is that. You can create engagement on other posts for now, I will find other ways for you to earn, don't forget you can earn curation rewards by voting good posts early, use steemdb.com and steemwhales.com to identify top grossing authors and then load them onto your Steemvoter rules.