An interview with @derangedvisions via meet awhale... episode 29

Hello Steemians, it's another episode of my interview in which I get to ask some technical Steem questions and also bring you closer to your witnesses.For this episode's interview, I have the pleasure of bringing to you @derangedvisions, a steemian who has a great passion for the Steem blockchain, a steemian who works tirelessly at the witness level by supporting various communities, as well a reputable witness. This episode promises to be educating, and interesting . Be sure to sit tight and grab a cup of coffee while reading through this great interview.

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@jamesmovic – Can you introduce yourself and tell everyone a little bit about yourself?

@derangedvisions - My real name is Wes. I am I military veteran turned photographer and filmmaker. I live in the US with my wife, kids, two dogs and two cats. I got into photography when I got sick of seeing all of the ugly stuff in the world and I wanted to be a part of capturing and sharing more of the beauty that is all around the world.

@jamesmovic – How did you first hear about Steem and how do you believe it should or could be promoted to the world?

@derangedvisions - I was late to the crypto currency game. I got into it around November of last year. Around January there was a crypto YouTube channel that was talking Steemit and how you can earn Steem by just posting content to it, so I signed up for an account, but I quickly learned that there is a lot more than just posting your content and logging out.

In my opinion, if Steemit were to be promoted for world wide adoption and be successful, I think it would need to be marketed more as a social aspect for content creators and content consumers and less as a huge money making scheme.

@jamesmovic – When you read posts, what is it that catches your attention and Why?

@derangedvisions - The main things that really catch my attention when I am reading posts is when someone is able to put their own personality into their posts. I have read some posts that I thought I would not be interested in at all, but the author did an amazing job making it interesting because they were able to keep me engaged in the content by putting their own experiences and personality in with it. If people are able to make the post personal to their readers, no matter the content, then I feel it would be more successful.

A catchy and clever title and great thumbnail are the other obvious answers as well. If you don’t hook in your audience with that, then you will most likely not even be able to get them into seeing how awesome the rest of your post is.

@jamesnovic - What communities are you supporting and how?

I am supporting the Veteran Community. It is a group of military veterans from countries all over the world and we all support each other just by being there for one another and by supporting each others content.

I am part of the @helpie community that is run by @meno and @pechichemena. We help to support new Steemians and teach them different things about the platform, posting techniques and crypto in general. Most of my delegated SP is going towards this community because I feel they are doing amazing things and I have found a home among them.

I am supporting the @curie guild with delegation because I know how amazing the work that they do is for the community. Without the recognition from groups like them, a lot of content creators would not continue to be putting in the hard work they do on their posts.

As a photographer and someone that loves to travel, I also support the @travelfeed community with some delegation. They are doing great things to showcase photographers work and I appreciate their efforts and the time that they put into all the curation that they do.

I am also a member of the Minnow Boot Camp or @mbc-meps and I have delegated SP to them as well. It is run by @underground and @eaglespirit and we mentor new members of the platform and teach them different classes in markdown, crypto terms, posting habits and many other subjects.

I have also delegated some SP to support @steemitbd. Steemit Bangladesh is a Steemit blockchain based community organization to empower youths from Bangladesh.

@jamesnovic - Can you tell us why you decided to become a witness?

@derangedvisions - I wanted to do my part to ensure the future success of the Steemit platform. I have seen what this platform can do to help people from all over the world. With all of the issues going on in some of the countries where people are living on less than a few US dollars a month, the power of the Steemit platform is huge for these people. So I wanted to do my part to ensure that this platform is going to continue to be operating for them to essentially survive when their governments are making it hard for them to.

@jamesnovic - Can you tell us how you feel about it (witnessing) now?

Some days I wonder if I made the right choice or not because I have less time now than I did before, but in the long run I am sure I made the right decision. The witnesses that I have surrounded myself with are a great group and are very supportive.

@jamesmovic - What exactly does "voting for a witness" means to you and do you think it is necessary for all Steemians to vote?

@derangedvisions - Voting for a witness is a essentially voting for someone that you feel has the best interests of the platform at heart. When I vote for witnesses, I like to have a balance of technical witnesses and those that are supporting communities and initiatives to keep the creators engaged in the platform.

The job of a witness is crucial to the platform and many of Steemit’s users do not understand the importance of witnesses. I think the last thing I saw was the around 95% or so of Steemit users do not even vote for witnesses, which is kind of sad. Many users do not know what a witness does, so it is nice to see when people make posts explaining what witnesses are and who they are voting for because it is educational to a lot of people.

@jamesnovic - What are your thoughts on the new changes announced for Hard Fork 20 (HF20)?

@derangedvisions - I am interested to se how the new resource credits will effect the bandwidth issues. Hopefully all of the changes will make the whole platform run efficiently so that the witnesses won’t have to upgrade from 64GB of RAM too soon.

The recent update about curation rewards was pretty interesting. It sounds like they are going to be making it less profitable for people to self vote themselves right after posting by removing the authors unfair advantage of earning additional curation rewards from their self vote.

I think everyone is also excited to see what happens with the SMTs. But we will just continue to sit back and wait for HF20.

@jamesnovic - Is there anything you would like to say on your own, without me asking the question?

@derangedvisions - I am just excited to be part of this platform in its early stages. So much good can come from Steemit.

@jamesmovic - Any advice you would wish to give to my fellow Steemians [newbies] who are feeling dejected one way or the other due to low upvotes?

@derangedvisions - When you are new here, the best thing you can do is find out what you want to post about and seek out those types of post and make well thought out and engaging comments. Take the time to actually read people’s posts. Too many people come to Steemit and begin posting right away and get frustrated because no one votes on their posts. If you take the time to read posts and see how others are writing, using tags, commenting and having interactions with people, you will earn more money from commenting in the first few weeks than you will from posting your own stuff, plus you will be building a following without even having to type up a single post. Then when you do actually make that first post, you know how the whole posting process works and you have a following already. If you start off just posting a bunch of times, you will get frustrated, then you will most likely resort to going to people posts and doing the hated spam comments and asking for people to visit your blogs and not even reading their posts.

@jamesmovic - What impression do you have about this interview and what do you feel about it?

@derangedvisions - I felt that it was good. Hopefully I made sense with my answers.

@jamesmovic - Lol...thanks for your time and thanks for honoring my invitation

from @derangedvisions:

I want to thank all of you that are supporting @c0ff33a and I with your vote. You are helping us to support many different communities and activities across the platform. If you have not yet voted for our witness and you like what we are doing, please consider a witness vote for our team witness @cc0ff33a. Proceeds from the witness go back towards supporting different community initiatives and contests. Thank you all for everything. You are awesome.

Thanks for reading. Till next time

**VOTE @yabapmatt @timcliff @pfunk @someguy123 @arcange @b0y2k @enginewitty @pjau @themarkymark @jatinhota @yuriks2000 @qurator @aggroed @good-karma @steemcommunity @neoxian @lukestokes.mhth @blockbrothers @adsactly-witness @timcliff @drakos @roelandp @reggaemuffin @felixxx @jackmiller @teamsteem @steemgigs as witness.