An overview of all my interviews so far

Hello steemians!!! Trust you all have been good. Today I shall be sharing with you an overview of my interviews so far. It promise to be interesting and educative, as it's filled with experienced steemians, with a lot of advice from them, which is good enough to help you navigate through this planet . Please sit tight and read, and please make sure you read to the end. Thanks

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I started my interview project with a mindset of asking technical Steem-related questions which newbies would love to ask. We all started as a newbie on this platform, full of a lot of burning questions, and sometimes stuck in the middle of something while trying to figure out how it works. Thus, I took it upon myself to act as a mouthpiece between newbies and the experienced ones (top-notch Steemians), to help answer these questions, give advice, and also help them in navigating through this community.

The second tangible reason why I again felt it was necessary to kick-start this interview project and also to diversify my attention mostly to the witness-category segment was because I saw that the level of apathy Steemians had (mostly newbies) towards the witnesses was getting out of hand. I then took it as a job to let Steemians know who witnesses are, what special projects they are working on, the impact they have on the platform, as well as give a paramount reason why all Steemians shouldn't be left out in participating (voting) in the witness segment.

I had the very great opportunity of kick-starting my interview with @pharesim who appeared to be amongst the top 20 on the witness page, as well as a reputable one.

@pharesim kickstarted the interview by stating an explanation of who witnesses are, and why it's paramount for all Steemians should vote. @pharesim said:

Witnesses are in control of the rules of the blockchain. Every investor should have an interest in having the most trustable persons filling that role. Besides, the good payment allows financing infrastructure projects this way, and a lot of witnesses put a lot of work in those. A vote not only secures their funding, but is a sign of appreciation.

While a minnow with low SP has very little influence on the outcome of the vote, it's the mass of users that counts — like in any democracy. I acknowledge that it's a bit more demanding than choosing one candidate every few years — you have 30 votes, and you can update your choices any time. If that's too much for you you can still use the proxy function. This way you can choose someone who actively manages their witness votes and don't need to worry about keeping up-to-date with all the different witnesses' work and projects.

He further gave advice to newbies who are feeling dejected and are on the verge of quitting, due to low upvotes. He said:

Check your expectations. How many posts of other authors do you read and upvote? How many likes do you get on other sites like Instagram? This place is not different than the rest of the world. Looking at the wallets of others is a most certain way to unhappiness.

I had various other opportunities of interviewing top-notch Steemians such as the likes of @ehiboss @ogoowinner @papa-pepper and

@d-pend who spoke on why he preferred the 50/50% Power-Up over the other option:

I would recommend the 50/50 power up option because of the present and future potential of SBD to rise in value given its low supply. Moreover, when SBD is at a high price in USD$ value, one can make up to 5 or 6 more times on a post! In that case, the best strategy is to build up SBD and buy STEEM with it to power up when there is a favorable ratio in the internal market or on exchanges.

@d-pend also ended his own part of the interview by dropping great advice meant for newbies, he said:

Set goals, work hard, and don't give up. Invest in Steem Power if you can. Don't expect overnight success. Work 10 times, 100 times harder than everyone else. Post and comment every single day without excuses. Change your attitude towards life in general. Trust in yourself, trust in life! Find your niche, you are valuable and unique!

@surfyogi happened to be my 5th guest coming on stage to lighten up my interview, and also to add some sauce. He gave a mind-blowing response to a very confusing question I posed to him. When I asked where the currency used by Steemit comes from, he answered saying:

New blocks for STEEM are generated by block servers that work with the top witnesses at a set rate of inflation per year, is how I look at it. This is a system called DPOS, and is beyond the scope of this interview, but if you compare it to POW (that Bitcoin uses), DPOS is much more efficient (greener) and Dan has developed it to the point it becomes usable for some types of blockchains. DPOS creates an opportunity for blockchains not to charge users fees for transactions, and then blockchains can decentralize all kinds of applications that really are not possible with Bitcoin.

That is a very simplified view, but I think it's enough to note that value comes from the blockchain, as the community that encircles that blockchain gives that blockchain value! So, the important take-away is that P2P money is very valuable to the community that uses it and agrees it has value. PEOPLE made that money and AGREE it is money. That is so cool, and it's not easy to explain to older folks that think they understand economic Libertarianism, need banks to feel secure, and think I'm trying to sell them an investment; which I sort of am, VERY indirectly.

@surfyogi further gave advice on how new users could secure their account against hackers when I asked him if there was a way users could block their wallet from others from viewing it. He said:

I think people are becoming more and more aware of privacy issues in crypto that will make user experience better and protect users' privacy. Certainly, at this time, I feel sorry for married guys trying to send their new crush flowers using crypto. 😉

Simple answer — no. More complex answer: buy a second account from blocktrades and do separate transactions from your own second account, created for exactly this reason, privacy. If managed correctly, it can provide enough privacy to send your lady flowers and then some.

Another perfect opportunity I had during the course of these interviews was to bring on board a few witnesses to speak of the projects on which they are working, and also state some convincing reasons why they deserved Steemians' votes.

@noisy spoke on a project he is working at SteemProjects which is meant to show how productive our community is. He went further to talk about his other project SmartVotes which is meant and aimed at discovering quality content. He spoke a lot on this project, as well as well as how SmartVotes could help discover high-quality content.

@nnnarvaez, a very good friend of mine and popularly known as the botmann, also talked about a project he is working on as @castellano witness. He talked about it saying:

@castellano is a witness node that aims to represent the users by providing a tribune to solve disputes and mediate as well as build bridges between the authors and the shareholders and projects. A voice for the people, by the people, from the people.

@reveur STEEMizens Incubator, which means "dreamer" in French, from our discord we have a daily activities schedule aimed to educate South American users in the responsible use of blockchain technologies as part of the paradigm shift of which we all are being part. We aim to show users that the STEEM blockchain is more than a blogging platform, but a technological tool to build human networks and drive change. Our activities range from English lessons for Spanish speakers, weekly discussions with witnesses and actors of the block-chain, social development projects sponsoring and conduction, properly addressing people in a mass-media environment, blogging and block chain training and competences development, photography, programming in python, curation through a forum to present yourself as author and present your posts, as well as training and encouragement for minnows. We even do Karaoke nights on Saturday, because not all is work and school.

All this is possible thanks to the sustained efforts of a team of Steemians that share my views of the block-chain potential to shape the future of humanity, and we drive it with my personal stake and my wife's, which is around 9000 SP. We have some external support (600 SP delegated by @patrice and @guiltyparties) and we have a small follow vote from @anomadsoul (which makes the difference for the authors).

From @reveur, we support and sponsor small promising projects namely an artists community called @celfmagazine and a literary editorial @steemitfiction, run by a multinational south American team.

Apart from that, I am deeply involved in the cleaners initiative for the Spanish language which is more educative than punitive thanks to a consensual committee ( @lince ). I also give a hand from time to time to @patrice coding the odd bot for @spaminator and did some forensics for her and SteemCleaners, we work in close collaboration to try and keep the Spanish side of the blockchain spam free (which proves to be an impossible task).

I act also as a bridge between @sircorck's @youarehope foundation by giving some guidance and follow through to the Venezuelan charities.

Also, I have been commissioned as Spanish Operations Manager of @steemstarnetwork which right now we are developing into a fully-fledged audiovisual station for the Spanish side.

He ended his own part of the interview by giving a genuine reason why newbies should resteem others' posts with moderation:

'Everything in moderation' has a positive impact. Newbies tend not to have many followers, and resteeming is aimed to give visibility to others. There we fall in that conundrum: If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to listen to it's falling, does it make noise? Now if you really like something and want to share it with your close circle, the odd resteem is perfect for that.

@timcliff featured as my 9th guest. He talked about how he as witness is helped in managing the role of moderating the #help channel in steemit.chat, as well as how he spends most of his time reviewing reported issues. He said:

I am one of the Steem witnesses. One of the main things I do is to moderate the #help channel of steem.chat. I review all of the reported issues every day to ensure that everyone is getting responded to. Over the past few months, I also did a lot of "exchange outreach" to try and contact various exchanges and ask that they list STEEM. I am also involved in a lot of discussions with various stakeholders, witnesses, and developers about potential changes to the platform.

My interview went on as I seized an opportunity in interviewing one of the fastest growing communities on the platform. @adsactly came on board, and defined what the term "adsactly" means, why Steemians would benefit in joining their community, as well as how their coin, the adsactly unit, could be earned and used. The community said:

ADSactly can be described with one of the acronyms created by the members of the society: Autonomous Decentralized Society Acting Cooperatively to Leverage You! We are a society of like minded individuals who want to cooperate and work together, not just one person. Concerning what steemians would benefit in joining our community, we like to think of our society as cosmic glue, connecting different people all over the world. What we offer is is a cooperative relationship, as well as guidance and help to newcomers.

Also, we do have community units [tokens] which can be used within the community in exchange for products and services. We will soon be launching Adsactly cash, which will be a mineable and tradable token, be sure to join our Discord for updates on when this will be going live.

My interview with the community ended as they gave a wonderful comment saying

"The interview was great! Thank you for having us as your guest!"

To keep my interview fresh, I designed a number of different important topics which would encourage witnesses to talk, not leading them too much. I also designed my new questions with the motive of urging these witnesses open up on their own, as well as pose some direct questions which would lead to some important topics, without being too direct.

@felixxx had the opportunity of kick-starting my new questions where he talked about his project saying:

I support the #deutsch (German language) community. I created a bot: @deutschbot. It observes a list of trusted curators and if enough of them have voted for a #deutsch post with enough Voting Power, the bot will follow the vote. It distributes around 25 SBD/week and is operational for over a year. I try to reward all sorts of users and help in a variety of communities, so Steem becomes more widely distributed.

When asked what he had like to say without my asking, he said:

I am on a mission to propose a new hardfork, that brings back non-linear rewards. I think Steem's reward system is broken since HF19 and it can only be fixed that way.

I was also privileged to bring on stage a very young and interesting witness. @someguy123 gave a simple definition of who witnesses are. He said:

In the simplest definition, a witness is simply an account that produces blocks on the network. However, many people believe that witnesses should have a "cause." They should be actively contributing to a project of some kind, whether that's development work like @jesta, or community work like @aggroed. The vast majority of witnesses make it clear on what they do to help the platform in some way.

He also gave a reason why most users find it difficult to receive their email verification messages, and also gave a way out, he said

The cause is quite simple: it costs Steemit, Inc. to create new accounts, as such there's a lengthy manual verification process that can take 4 weeks or longer. There are several paid services available to create accounts instantly, such as my own, AnonSteem (https://anon.steem.network). If a person is still waiting for their verification, they can still use AnonSteem to speed up the process. AnonSteem will inform them if their username is already taken, so it doesn't hurt to try if they're still waiting for verification and are happy to pay for their account.

He ended his own part of the interview by dropping superb advice to newbies who feel dejected due to low upvotes. He said:

First, ask yourself - is your content good quality? Are you posting frequently? What are you doing to promote yourself? If the first two are no, you have a problem. If you aren't making content that anyone wants to view, then of course you're not going to get good upvotes. Similarly, if you very rarely post, then why would anyone bother to follow you? If the last is "I'm not," or "not much," then you've got another problem. If you've got the content, and you're posting regularly, you still have to promote it somehow. Use post promotion channels on steem.chat and PAL. Make friends on Steem who enjoy your content, and if you have the money, use bid bots or rent SP. As your followers grow, you can worry less and less about promotion, and you can grow naturally, but in the beginning you have to do everything you can to get your content noticed (without spamming of course).

The @neoxian interview came after the @someguy interview, where he talked about his bank project [Bank of Neoxian], as the only project he has at hand. He said:

Right now, my biggest and most noteworthy project is my bank. I’m basically running a bank on this Steem blockchain. That means: taking deposits and giving loans. Also I’ve started my own Discord server: City of Neoxian.

My interview is still up and running as @krnel happened to be the last I have interviewed. He mentioned a few projects of which he is in support. He said:

Philosophy, psychology, veganism, information about the world. Delegating to some projects like:

• @abh12345's The Curation and Engagement Leagues
• @apolymask's Information Finding Championship
• @informationwar's Information War content, #informationwar
• @whatamidoing's Catalyst Project, #nobidbots, steemitzombies

He ended his own part of the interview by also dropping advice for newbies feeling dejected due to low upvote. He said:

Write content that you know about without concern for rewards. If you want attention and rewards, put out content they want to see and interact on you with. Comment on other people's posts with relevant info that adds value, and you will get more people to do the same on your posts, in time. This all takes time, and paying your way to popularity for rewards or attention is not the honest way to go about it.

This overview is intended to carry steemians along with this journey I've embarked on, as well as to give a proper summary of what I've done so far. @jamesmovic is just a young guy trying as much as possible to do things the right way If you like what I'm doing as a steemian, you can support your boy in any way you can. Thanks

You can check out my previous interviews with @themarkymark @krnel @someguy123 @felixxx @neoxian @adsactly @noisy @D-pend @pharesim @ehiboss @ogoowinner @nnnarvaez @surfyogi @timcliff @papa pepper, by tapping on my previous post

Below are the names of witnesses I'm currently voting for :

@themarkymark @krnel @ausbitbank @pharesim @felixxx @noisy.witness @drakos @someguy123 @castellano @neoxian @steemgigs @timcliff @lukestokes.mhth and @adsactly.witness . you can also give your support by casting your vote for those names.

Thank you all for taking your time to read through this interview, and also for voting for these witnesses. Till next