RE: A comment reply turned into a root post...
Great comment, thank you.
the assumption that we should hold our breaths and everything will work out once the technology is polished is a very dangerous perspective that will ultimately harm the prospects and work against the ambitions of Steem.
I completely agree. So what do you think is the best thing we can do about it? My suggestion would be to get more developers involved providing issues and pull requests on Github. If there's a problem on Steemit, let's describe it accurately in an issue and start working on a code change to fix it. Yes, we can wait on Steemit inc to do everything, but, as you said, that's like just holding our breath. If we care, we should get involved. That might even mean having some witnesses hire some developers directly.
If a system isn't healthy at a small scale, it won't be healthy at a larger one.
I agree to a point. Company culture matters, but I also want to move far away from Steemit, inc being the sole company that defines the culture of STEEM or Steemit. I've pointed out company culture issues in the past with Steemit, inc (and I think they are making improvements based on more open communication lately) and I agree, they should be working on this stuff now AND in the future.
Old habits die hard
Yep.
public education (more so than marketing), systematized feedback, a public presence and voice in the blockchain sector
I completely agree. Ironically, this discussion was born out of me essentially defending my perspective that the witnesses should be involved in more things in the wider blockchain sector. They should be respected voices who are asked to speak at more conferences. We see some of this, but not enough. I'll be on a Panel at TulipCon next weekend and Discon in August not because I'm a STEEM witness, but because of my involvement with DPOS in general and more specifically EOS, eosDAC, and (yes) STEEM. In all cases, I'll be discussing the goal which is to increase human well-being and create a world we all want to live in. The tools we use to do that are just tools. If we want our voices heard outside of the STEEM community then we need to be deeply engaged outside the STEEM community.
I've read those previous posts regarding involvement in other blockchains and I think the tribalism is silly. One of the things Steemit really has going for it is its capacity to house information and development of all other blockchains. Facebook and Google and Amazon might compete on some fronts but they work in tandem in others and that makes for a more robust ecosystem. Putting on blinders and swearing loyalty oaths in an emerging sector isn't just silly but also poor self-preservation.
I'm all for non-witness non-Steemit Inc. stakeholders in picking up slack and spearheading what they respectively see as needed in this community. I try to do the same with @voronoi at @sndbox. The biggest obstacle is the lack of connectivity between individual efforts and administrative ones. I give lectures and workshops about Steem in New York and yea, we can tweet and post about it but it doesn't quite accumulate into broader publicity and education. We've also found that it reflects poorly on Steemit Inc. when we do major projects/activities and there isn't at least some degree of involvement from the top. The same goes for your talk and @stephenkendal's booths or @dlive's meetups. It often feels like a 1+1+1+1 = 0.5 type of situation as a grassroots momentum of activity doesn't resonate at the top and there isn't any structured mechanism for the top to leverage the groundswell of efforts. It should be a 1+1+1+1 = 20 type of momentum but individual efforts are drowned out by the next batch of bid-botted posts and just passed over by time in general.
Maybe there can be an endorsed account dedicated to publicity? Maybe some type of formal curation/resteeming by Steemit Inc.? Some way to accumulate the diverse activities of Steemians in a cohesive dialogue and archive that is also pushed by the team high above would be incredible.
Lots of good points here. I wonder sometimes if we're just going through a transition where people need to hear from a "representative" of an organization or they want to hear a company title or some form of "authority" they can trust instead of just a bunch of random people doing awesome stuff in a meritocracy (or, at least, an attempt at one) where value speaks for itself.
Meh, I don't think you can have it both ways - an infrastructure that supposedly relies on the autonomous workings of dedicated, decentralized individuals and at the same time have a governing organization that is largely indifferent and unable to leverage the cumulative momentum of said network.
But I guess we'll see where we end up.