Hello Everyone!

Here is what I've been up to since my last witness post:

• I upgraded my primary and backup witness server to 19.2, which contains a lot of needed performance improvements for the blockchain software. I still have an extra server running 19.1 just in case a rollback is needed, but at this point 19.2 looks pretty stable.
• I continue spending a lot of time in the steemit.chat "help" channel, helping users with various issues and questions.
• I participated along with several other witnesses on identifying content in the 'old whitepaper' that was no longer accurate, so that Steemit, Inc. could make the necessary changes in the new version.
• I agreed to pay 50 STEEM / month (up to $80) to @someguy123 so he could cover the $80/m cost of hosting an additional "full" RPC node for the community/network to use. You can read about it here, and see a list of all the RPC servers here.
• I created a post to encourage more community developers to get involved with condenser (Steemit.com) development.
• I submitted a pull request to update the installation instructions for the condenser (Steemit.com) GitHub repository, since the current instructions failed to build. The Steemit dev team ended up submitting their own pull request instead of using mine, but I like to think that I helped :)
• I submitted a pull request to update the FAQ content, including info on the new cover image. The pull request has been accepted and merged, so we should see it up on the new site soon.
• I submitted a pull request to update the welcome page with additional content, including a new intro section and a link to the "New Member Support Community" (often called MSP). The pull request has been accepted and merged, so we should see it up on the new site soon.
• I created a post to discuss voting abuse in the context of the new whitepaper.
• I created a post to let people know about @biophil's new POCKET tokens, along with instructions on how to claim them.
• I created a community engagement post What do you expect from your witnesses? to get input from the community.
• I submitted a pull request to add links to the new Steemit Shop and Bluepaper in the main menu.
• I created a Guide to being a good witness to hopefully encourage witnesses (new and old) to add value through their witness campaign. The post included a lot of suggestions on different ways they can do that.
• I continue to review and respond to issues in the steem and condenser GitHub repositories. I have also opened several issues for glitches that I have encountered or were reported to me by other users.
• I continued creating weekly Reports from the Witnesses series posts. This report provides the community with an aggregated report of all the witness reports from the past week.
• I am continuing to fund @moataz's Facebook advertising campaign to bring more people to Steemit. So far, we have received over 9,000 clicks, reaching 120,000 people and generating over 500,000 impressions! More details about the campaign are here.

Some Information / Suggestions:

• @heimindanger announced the creation of DTube - a decentralized video platform using STEEM and IPFS.
• There is now a Steemit Shop where you can buy official Steem/Steemit merchandise :)
• @justinw from the Steemit dev team posted a video tutorial on how to develop applications for the Steem blockchain.
• If you are planning to attend SteemFest, remember to buy your tickets soon!
• Steemit updated their whitepaper!
• The Steemit dev team released a guide on how to setup an exchange node. If you have any contacts at various exchanges, it would be good to send them this guide and encourage them to add Steem.
• Steemit announced a partnership with the Busy.org team to officially support
  SteemConnect 2.0. This will be a big deal for third-party application developers that are interested in building things for the Steem blockchain! Steemit announced the release of a new Bluepaper, which is condensed version of the whitepaper aimed to be read by a more general audience. Forward Looking Plans: Continue providing support to the users in the "help" channel of steemit.chat. Continue with the weekly "Reports of the Witnesses" series. Upgrade my remaining backup server to 19.2, now that it has proved to be a stable version. Provide a "manual build" guide on how to setup a witness node without using docker. Various pull requests to the condenser GitHub repository. Summary of Current Witness Parameters: SBD Interest Rate: Currently the peg seems to be holding close to $1 USD (hovering between $0.95 and $1.05), which is right where we want it. I have added a small amount of interest (1%) to try and help with the occasional dips below $1. Price Discount: Currently the debt level is at 1.1%, and SBD is pegged close to $1 USD. Based on this, I see no need for a price feed discount at this time. Registration Fee: My registration fee is currently set to 0.2 STEEM. This makes it so that a new account costs 6 STEEM (non-delegated), which is about $7.80 USD at current market prices. Maximum Block Size: I currently have my block size set to 65,536. There seem to be no issues related to bandwidth after the 19.1 soft-fork, so I am comfortable with the consensus on this parameter given the current system use.   I welcome feedback if you think there are things that I can be doing better as a witness. If you think I am doing a great job, I would really appreciate your witness vote! https://steemit.com/~witnesses Thanks everyone for reading my witness report! / /steemit/@steemitblog/steemconnect-2-0-easy-fast-efficient-access-to-the-steem-blockchain