Hey, hey. I hope you're all having a great Wednesday. Still Tuesday here and it's mega quiet cos it's a public holiday so there's no construction noise or traffic. Panama City is so noisy, all the time, except on days like today. Sigh. I miss quiet.

Feature photo

Today's photo was taken by @trudeehunter and shows that 'winter is coming' down under. Well to the trees anyway. It's still pretty warm up in Queensland as you can probably tell. There's a while to go yet before Brisbane has its one week of winter! If you like this photo, please upvote it here.

Meet-ups

We've had a few since last week's update but I haven't seen any posts. Adelaide's end of month drinks were last Thursday, which attracted the usual suspects plus a couple of newbies. By all accounts it went well.

Then @holoz0r had a work trip to Melbourne on Tuesday and wanted to get together with some Melbournian steemians in the evening. Looking at the discord chat he was there on his own, but @just2random and @datascience were on their way. Also the 3am timestamp was my local time, not the reason he was Holo-no-mates.

Sydney

Don't forget your meet-up this Saturday, 2:30PM to 4:30PM at the Bavarian Bier Café in Parramatta. @bearone's been pumping this one pretty hard so hopefully we will see a good turn out. Further details here. 

The following steemians have indicated they will be attending.

• Confirmed: @bearone, @ratticus, @rustle, @sanctus, @quochuy, @phamished, @travelgirl
• Maybes: @stabilowl, @foovler, @chrisdavidphoto

Go along if you want to meet them.

Credit: @bearone

Witnesses

One of the hardest things for new steemians to get their heads around is witnesses, so every couple of months I bring it up here. I think now's a good time since we've had a few Team Australia members join the witness ranks recently.

What does a witness do?

In the simplest terms, every transaction and interaction you make on the blockchain, be it from Steemit, Busy or any number of condensers (front ends) built on top of the Steem blockchain, has to be witnessed and processed by a set of people who create blocks, employing a consensus mechanism called a delegated proof of stake (DPOS). Witnesses run servers to a necessary specification for this task and are also required to produce a price feed, pooling price data from exchanges to ensure the correct value of Steem and Steem Dollars in the internal market. Put simply, without witnesses, Steem would not work. Source

How do you vote for them?

Everyone gets 30 witness votes and it's pretty easy to do. Just go here. If you don't see the witness you want in the top 50, you will have to type their name in the space below so they show up on your list. Here's an example of mine. (Don't copy my votes. Make up your own minds).

It's important to check regularly that you are not voting for dead witnesses, which might be stopping active witnesses from moving up the ranks. You also don't have to use up all your witness votes in one go. If you don't know, then you should research what witnesses are doing for the community/ platform before you decide. There's no rush to use up your 30 votes.

You can quickly check who you or anyone else is voting for at https://steemd.com/@user_name

You can then check if they are active or not on this witness list.

If you're voting for inactive witnesses, please consider unvoting them (at least temporarily if they haven't quit altogether—check their blog), so active ones can move up the ranks.

You should already be voting for @ausbitbank since it's part of the deal in joining Team Australia. Without him, the Team Australia and Minnow Support Project communities would not be as strong as they are. 

Additionally, in the past few months, several other Team Australia members have taken on witness roles.

Witness	Witness announcement post
@jackmiller	Link
@thekitchenfairy	Link
@quochuy	Link
@bobdos	Link

Please note that @thekitchenfairy appears inactive on the witness list because she has not cracked the top 100 witnesses yet and produced her first block. She is definitely not a dead witness.

On the other hand, @cryptwo has been disabled for a while. I don't know if/when this witness is coming back online. Perhaps @juicy-shark can comment below or provide a witness update?

Since I'm on the topic, I would also encourage you to vote for @curie. I talked about this a few weeks ago, as we are currently playing musical chairs with a couple of other witnesses for the 20/21 positions. If you see @curie as an important community project, please consider voting @curie's witness to help us get back in, and remain in, the top 20.

The usual community notices

You should follow @mrsquiggle, who is doing a great job recognising Aussie creativity by curating quality content.

Check out the awesome Minnow Support Project (MSP). Details on how to join are here. Come say hi in the #teamaustralia chat room in PAL-Discord. It's fun and you will make new friends. 

You should consider voting for the MSP witnesses, particularly @ausbitbank and @aggroed, who've a done a great job in getting the MSP project off the ground. 

Lastly, if you're feeling generous, you can delegate SP to the Team Australia upvote bots @centerlink and/or @mrsquiggle (or any other bot you like) using Vessel. You can delegate to any of the MSP bots using this link.      

Candidate 1

Name and bio

@andrewsmodels is an artist and scale modeller in the Bendigo region. He's also into sci-fi including Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica. (Yes! An awesome show.)

Intro post here. 

Fun fact

"I got into art totally by accident :-)"

What does that mean? You can't just say that with a smiley face and then not give us more information. Spill.

Candidate 2

Name and bio

@exploreadelaide is from Adelaide and I'm super happy that he's finally joining Team Australia. Unsurprisingly, he loves being outdoors. He also likes camping and running.

Intro post here. 

Fun fact

"I do fire spinning whenever I get the chance, which is very rarely these days. I'm also quite spontaneous with my adventures. If I'm out and see a walking track, or cliff to climb, I'll usually disappear for a few hours while I explore."

Cool. Although given that bushfire warnings regularly appear around Australia, I'm guessing you don't combine these two activities.

Sorry Tim, but there was no way I wasn't using the photo of you in a Christmas tree costume here. 😁

Candidate 3

Name and bio

@westcoasteagles is a a footy fan page but the dude running it is from Perth and @cryptoslicex's real-life twin brother. However, given his opening line is "finally, we can all go back to pretending cricket doesn't exist and just in time it seems", I'm not sure I can let him in. Team Australia is a safe space for cricket fans.

Intro post here. 

Fun fact

"It's my only goal in life to have a few shaggy highland cows and a couple of sheep. I even carry around a photo of a calf in my wallet. Something my partner isn't totally thrilled about, although she is equally represented."

Those cows are cool looking, however, I'm not sure Perth City Council would be up for that. You might have to move away from the suburbs first.

Candidate 4

Name and bio

@jessicaoutside is yet another Aussie living in Canada. She and her boyfriend quit their jobs a few years ago and bought one-way tickets to Vancouver. Now they are in the process of fixing up a motorhome to travel the West Coast and the Rockies this (northern) summer. 

Intro post here. 

"I am a poker queen! I have dreams of making it big one day without the balls to back it up."

Wait, do you mean you want to make it big, but fear is holding you back? Or, you're a girl so you don't have actual balls but you're going for it anyway? I feel like this could be either. In the meantime, did you know there's a steemit poker league? Check out @spl.

Congratulations everyone, you're now part of Team Australia.

The rules for joining Team Australia

If you’re not yet a member and want to be, this is what you need to do:

1. Vote here for our resident steemit witness and our Minister for Welfare @ausbitbank.
2. Send me your introduction post so I can find out a bit about you. If you’re new to steemit you'll have to write one so use the introduceyourself and teamaustralia tags to help boost your following. Use this handy guide by @teamsteem if you don't know what to write.
3. If it’s not mentioned in your introductory post, tell me which city and country you’re in, cos let's face it, a lot of us live in Australia's fourth largest city—London. You need to have a connection to Australia to join.
4. Tell me a fun fact about yourself. This can be anything. For example, maybe you have eight kids and three dogs, or you rode your bike across America, or you won the blue ribbon for javelin throwing at sports day back in high school, or Toadie came into the pub you work at one day and you served him a beer, or, maybe you can fit 55 maltesers in your mouth like Ed Sheeran can. It doesn’t matter what it is, I want a fun fact about you! The more fun, the better.
5. Regularly check the Team Australia and Australia tags and upvote/follow the content you like. You can show your support by following the centerlink curation trail in steemauto. Instructions are here.
6. Comment below or DM me in PAL-Discord that you want to join.

Once I receive this information I will try my best to write a good introductory paragraph about you for the official Team Australia membership updates. So the better your information is, the better I can make you sound. Where relevant, please use the teamaustralia and australia tags to promote your work. I will try and post weekly updates. 

Gif by @justcallmemyth

Team Australia footer by @bearone

Page divider by @kristyglas