We are bound by nothing except belief. - Ernest Holmes

Well I believe that any community or team needs to grow organically and at a healthy pace. Quantity and quality are mutually exclusive in this context.

We need to focus on quality!

That's why I'm completely against vote trading services on steemit. I'm totally convinced that excessive vote buying will considerably harm the eco-system of this network and impeed growth. These artificial accelerators won't lead to anything but an instable and not reliable system. They downgrade any existing quality standard on this platform.

Yet, being aware of the difficulties new users face in attracting attention, I decided to start a different initiative. A couple of months ago and under the account of @steemaniacs, I started to offer personal coachings to newbies aiming to help them to improve their blogging success on steemit. That was a lot of fun and also had a great impact!

Now this idea is reborn through the newly created account @talentfactory.

Why the new account? The name is supposed to clearly communicate the intentions - here: talent fostering. 'Steemaniacs' was too generic and could have meant a lot of things. The Talent Factory is undoubtedly created to bring new talents on the steemit street.

So the two big differences between mercenary vote trading services and the @talentfactory are the following ones:

The Talent Factory offers support to newbies for free and
The Talent Factory helps new users and their steemit accounts to grow organically through coachings, contests and tutorials - which will be much more efficient and contributive (for both the individual user AND the whole community) than vote buying in the long run.

While trade services exclusively focus on THEIR benefits, @talentfactory aims to support OTHERS and - like that - strengthen the whole network.

As the name implies, I'd love to cooperate with the #untalented project hosted by @steemgigs / @surpassinggoogle. It would be amazing to bundle forces here and strengthen the idea of 'We are genious!'

Now this 'organic growth model' needs an identity.

Get ready and unleash your creativity, steemians!

Picture kindly provided by pixabay.com.

Who wants to give The Talent Factory a face?

The account @talentfactory is as fresh as a hot cake, it was set up TODAY at 3pm UTC.

Thanks to https://anon.steem.network a new steemit account can be easily generated in only 1 minute. I exchanged some SBD for Steem at the internal market (which is generally a good deal being SBD prices high right now) and then bought the new account transferring 10 SBD to @anonsteem.

Here it is:

The account @talentfactory needs an identity!

It's time to really help small accounts to grow here instead of trying to make quick money pretending to boost them. The only ones that benefit from vote buying are the ones that sell these votes!

In the current environment where the most powerful tool we have - our voice (vote) - constantly looses its credibility, I feel the urgent need to set up the @talentfactory and provide new users with solid blogging tips and recommendations.

Before starting with the coachings again, I want to give this place a new, shiny, fresh and powerful look.

Besides a new logo, the account also needs a cool banner! As you can see on the screeshot above: currently there is none. It's all black.

Strong beliefs need a strong appearance!

The rules of the game

The creation of the logo needs to include the name The Talent Factory.
There are no specific rules regarding coloring, font style or design in general. EDIT: However, it would be cool to have the idea of a real factory (in sense of a building) included.
A link to @surfermarly's logo should be rather avoided. This is a project that will be completely independent, so the logo should have its own personality.
The logo needs to be provided as a vector graphic, enabling its scalability. The banner needs to be submitted in PNG format, having a size of 2,000 x 462 px and a solutioin of 72 dpi. You can download the example I copied at the end of this list and use it as template.
The logo and the banner need to be a 100% original creation, NOT including any third party elements (and related copyrights).
All proposals need to be submitted by publishing them in the comment section of THIS article. If you want to do a separated blog post to promote your entry, do it! But don't forget to drop the logo here anyways. We need them all present on one page!
Of course, other users can upvote the submissions then. However the logo that receives the most upvotes doesn't need to be necessarily chosen as winning creation.
If the most popular logo (most number of upvotes from other users, independently from the rewards) wasn't the winning logo, I would reward it with 50SBD. Then the winning logo would receive 150 SBD and the most popular logo 50 SBD. If the winning logo was the most popular, too, the creator would receive the full reward of 200 SBD. So go get your friends voting for you! 😉
All proposals have to be submitted until Thursday 30th of November 2017.
The winner(s) will be announced and paid on Friday 1st of December 2017.
Once elected the winner, the creator assigns and transfers the full right of use to @surfermarly and @talentfactory.
In the unexpected event of not receiving any proposals that mirror the idea of the project, I reserve my right to not reward any of the participants. Submissions need to meet a professional standard as well as ALL of the above mentioned general rules.

EDIT (23th of November): There must be at least 5 entries / submissions (from 5 different users) to make this a valid competition. Otherwise the contest will be cancelled.

Here's a plane template for your banner:

Are you ready to win these $200 SBD and support a real minnow project?!

I'm looking forward to your input!

Have a great day everybody.

Best,
Marly -

PS: If you are new to steemit and want to learn more about personal coachings that will help you to improve your doings as a blogger, sign up to @talentfactory and stay tuned for their announcements.

Thanks for your valuable time!
This blog was launched at the end of July 2016
aiming to provide stories for open-minded
people who enjoy living on the edge of their lives,
stepping out of comfort zones, going on adventure,
doing extreme sports and embracing the new.
Welcome to the too-much-energy-blog!

PS: Don't forget that this is a troll-free zone.

Original content. Quote found on brainyquote.com.