A few days ago, I attended the Steem Growth Forum on Live and I decided to give the French community a summary of it.

And because this summary was already written, why not to translate it for the English speakers who will not want to spend two-plus hours listening to the show? So, this is the summary!

Having participated (as a listener) in this forum really made me discover people and their ideas. I was pleasantly surprised because this was the first time I had participated in such an event and I am already looking forward to the next one!

The last thing that impressed me: the whole world was listening to this live. Whether they were in Asia, Europe, or the USA, we were all on different time zones. And that shows how important this event really was.

The Steem Growth Forum in numbers

Two-and-a-half hours live, five minutes of questions/answers per speaker, over ninety people listening, and more than twenty on air!

And a lot of blah blah blah blah blah on MSPwaves-audience's channel.

Stakeholders and discussion topics related to the idea of how to grow Steem's ecosystem.

We had a representative of Steemit, Inc. (@andrarchy), Witnesses (@timcliff, @ausbitbank, @lukestokes), and successful authors (@stellabelle), as well as unknown authors (@ellievallie), community creators (@luzcypher, @cervantes), and ambitious project creators.

In other words, it is rare (except perhaps at Steemfest) to be in the middle of such an excellent group of people.

Here is the list of speakers (and in their order of appearance):

@andrarchy
@stellabelle
@lukestokes
@elear
@blocktrades
@ausbitbank
@luzcypher
@beanz
@timcliff
@teamsteem
@Swelker101 / Shane
@globocop
@cervantes
@drdave
@ellievallie
@Isaria
@kennybll
@kubbyelizabeth
@rodeo67
@Meno
@yabapmatt
@transisto

What I remember

Everyone had the same voice: everyone wanted Steem to grow up, wanted Steem to gain in value (Tim Cliff really hopes for STEEM at $10 and we do too!). They all hoped for less spam on the platform and to find a balance with the rewards given.

Everyone hoped that Steem will radically change the world of social networks, that Steem will become as famous as Facebook and that it will be an easy gateway to the world of crypto-currencies.

@andrarchy told us about the fantastic #promo-steem initiative that also joins another idea suggested by @aggroed: that everyone invite at least one friend to discover Steem (in the form of Tupperware party why not, haha).

@stellabelle expressed to us the need for more transparency on Steem and the importance of open source projects such as Utopian that should inspire us. Because it is in open source that we will grow up.

I liked listening to @beanz speak and defend the Minnows who pay bots because they can’t find any other way to grow up. She said she doesn't agree with the flag and the Whales who make the laws. Flagging poor little Minnows is not a solution, she said, before suggesting the idea that Whales could use Minnows (delegate them with MS and vote responsibly).

But this joins another concern that @ellievallie brought with her when she spoke of Steemit's slogan that sells only dreams and leaves the frustrated and angry Minnows (who no longer have any self esteem). Because yes, “Money talks; Your voice is worth something; Join the community that pays you to post and curate high quality content” doesn't send a good message. (We'll come back to that, it really makes me want to write an article on the subject). “Money Talks” needs to be changed, she said. This sends the wrong message!

Lukestokes then spoke about Smart Media Tokens, @elear went on to talk about his Utopian project and how it works.

We then heard @blocktrades who gave his opinion on the scalability of Steemit, which is probably the number one point to improve because DDOS attacks that lead to the site can no longer be repeated. But also for him was the importance of making improvements to the onboarding level of new Steemians, more functionalities at the social network level, improving the curation system, etc. I was able to discover that @blocktrades works hand in hand with Steemit, Inc. to improve the scalability of Steem for example. I didn't know, but at least that explains better why @blocktrades is present in Steemit's interface.

@ausbitbank then talked about the spam that is proliferating on the platform and is probably one of Steemit's major problems. He proposed the idea of changing the reputation system because for the moment, as you know, reputation has nothing to do with the quality of articles (remember: @mindhunter with a reputation of 72 had only plagiarized articles.).

Then @luzcypher, leader of the Open-Mic community spoke to explain that not everyone is a content creator (blogger) but that Steem is for everyone... and he chose to support musicians through a contest (one of the oldest contests of the platform).

After @luzcypher, @beanz passed (but I talked about it above) and @timcliff followed (and as a reminder, he is currently in second place in Witness Steem). He told us about his idea, which talks about VS stakeholder investors (i. e. the stakeholder of a project). In Steem, investors and users are both stakeholders, i. e. they have the choice to play an active role in Steem, which is original for a project. Typically, investors donate the funds and leave the project to the stakeholders, hoping that their investment will grow over time. But in Steem, everyone can participate and investors have more weight on the platform (they can therefore direct the choice of top Witness, make quality content curating, etc.). And as he said again, remember that you get what you reward. And so when spam, plagiarism, etc. wins rewards, people will naturally turn to that (and it's easier too). (I'd also like to talk about this one day in an article...) Don't forget that we all control where the rewards go! It's unheard of. We have the power. But so investors (Whales) must start to be responsible. But again, it is a personal responsibility; we cannot impose anything. Ask the question/questions: "What does it mean that the community is a success? What does it mean that the platform is a success? What does success mean for the investor himself?" He added some wise words that if the platform is a success, the value of STEEM will rise and everyone will win. So it's up to each of us to ask ourselves,"What can I do at my level (with my knowledge, skills) to improve the quality of the platform?" And only then will the community and the platform grow. And he concluded by sowing a small seed in our minds… "And if STEEM were worth ten dollars in 2018... Keep this idea in mind. Think about it." Is it not worthwhile to involve them properly? What can we do as individuals and as a community to build STEEM so far?

We were able to hear the experience of @teamsteem for whom Steem has completely changed his life, and how Steem helps people to become better versions of themselves. He explained that he is now completely addicted to the platform, that he likes the people who are on it. He talked a little about Steem and what he likes (such as the impossibility of censorship, for example), but that we should start to stop thinking about money. An intervention filled with love for the Steem ecosystem.

There was a short pause before leaving for a second game even more intense than the first.

@swelker101 (whose first name is obviously Shane) is a person who was there at the beginning of PAL. He addressed the issue of the slider, which would be more relevant to receive as soon as you arrive on Steemit rather than waiting for 500 SPs. He also spoke a little about his project to help Minnows which is @minnowuniversity.

Then it was around to @globocop who explained the project that hosted the live show, which is the MPSWaves radio in which there is music, live chat, interviews, free speech shows, podcasts, discussions, etc. The project was then presented by @globocop. The objective: to show communities that they have a voice and that it can be heard.

After the German accent, it was the turn of a Spanish accent that appeared with @cervantes to talk about the development of the Spanish community (currently more than 2000 users) and spoke about what a community needs to develop (content in the language, curation, Whale support, etc... in short, everything that we are currently facing).

Then @drdave took over the torch followed by @ellievallie, whom I mentioned earlier, and then @Isaria, who talked about her project to promote artists mainly. Then @kennybll talked about his experience as a Minnow.

@kubbyelizabeth, one of the moderators of MinnowSupport and @rodeo67 (a veteran and also part of MSP) shared their ideas about how to make Steem grow from the point of view of Minnows (participation in activities such as competitions, etc.), but also how to explain Steem to friends to try to get them into the adventure. @Meno is also part of MSP and as a Minnow talked about the difficulties of Minnows and proposed the #inviteafriend tag which would be a great system to be rewarded for having promoted Steem to friends (and therefore, give visibility to his friends too!).

@yabapmatt spoke from his point of view as an investor: why he chosed to invest on the platform.

And finally, a last-minute guest, @transisto, who thought that we should all be united so that Steem can reach its full potential to produce and find quality content. Like @blocktrades, he said that we need to review the curation system and that Witnesses and Whales should really get involved in this process (because these are the stakeholders as we have seen above. Investors have a role to play and not just to put their money in and wait for it to grow!). He went back to @yabapmatt's comments and proposed to make people pay for wanting to be on the trending page, which would bring money back into Steem, and finally make people pay for wanting to be super visible. This was an astonishing proposal on his part, because he is generally anti-voting, but that would not bother him. He also proposed to share our content on other social networks (and ideally, try to have thousands of views) because that's what will also bring people back to the platform. For the moment, the Steemians remain many among themselves: content creation for Steem, comments, answers, but without making the content known beyond Steem. The last point, according to him, was that Steem is the best blockchain to create tools and new projects.

Their different points of view, what everyone had to say really touched me, challenged me, made me think and made me want to have this discussion with the French community. It's so sad that we have still this language barrier right now...

You too have your place in the next live show!

I discovered that everyone could intervene on the air if they wanted to give a constructive idea. Whether you are an investor, a Witness, or simply a member of the community, everyone had the right to speak out and give their opinion and/or question the community.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear the spokesperson for the Spanish community, who explained the challenges they face as non-English speakers. This has taught me a lot and who knows, maybe next time, I will join the talk to explain the challenges our French community is facing and especially to continue my work of the five last months that I do everyday to grow the French community.

Listen to the live show

If you want to hear the whole discussion, it's this way:

Part I

Part II

Link to the official post from @aggroed

I would like to thank you so much @LenaDr for her help with the english correction of my translation. Since I've discovered the #english-spelling-grammaron PAL, I really feel confident of translating my own articles !

And you, what are you going to do to develop Steem ?

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If you speak french, join me on my profil @roxane to have more information about How to share quality content on Steem and others tips. And have a look at Comprendre-steem.fr!
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