My inactivity of Late, and general Musings. Covering Lots of topics...

There' a lot on my mind. Enough to make ten posts. If they were all going to make $400 maybe I would make ten separate posts, but since my average post value is less than $5, I figure I will sock it all into one post and do a couple of follow ups as time and desire to write hits me.

Inactivity of Late

Most of my followers will know that I have involved myself in a ton of Steem projects. Whether it is being a Curator for Curie, a Steward of Gondor, a Slothicorn fanboy, writer for Newsteem, or my own Fresh Five initiative, there have been very few things that I was interested in that I didn't dip my toes into. Hell, I dove in head first to most of these projects.

But here of late, almost all of these activities have suffered from inactivity on my part. This has nothing to do with any loss of interest, or any wrong doing on the various projects, but more to do with my loss of time. I haven't submitted a post to Curie in over two weeks, and I don't see myself having time to curate in the next little bit either. I barely have time to look at my feed. The Stewards of Gondor are on hold, and I will talk more about that in another section, I'm still a Slothicorn fanboy, but haven't had time to hang out in the Discord channel, and I have been leaving the Fresh Five in the capable hands of Hive account@aussieninja to keep the ship afloat during my absence.

So if I am still interested in all these things.... Why don't I give them more attention?

Well, the simple answer is, I got a promotion at work. It's a good promotion, increasing my annual income by 25% plus the possibility of quarterly bonuses, but it does mean that instead of having about 20 hours a week of office time where there is nothing on my plate, I now have a full 40 hours worth of work to take care of, and then family commitments at night. Losing that "Steem time" sitting in my office has been a major blow to my online existence, and one that will not be letting up soon.

So if you haven't seen me, and wonder why I am ignoring you, it is not intentional. I just don't have the time I used to. My hope is that by focusing my energies on the current job, that the added income it brings in will allow me to continue to build a portfolio that will eventually allow me to "retire" to full time on the blockchain, and then watch out!

The Cave Troll of Steem

I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out which side of the great Hive account@haejin fight I fall on. Yes, I tagged him, and yes he is welcome to come flag my post. I will even buy a Hive account@buildawhale upvote to make it cost him a little more VP if he does opt to come and flag my little post. But there is no getting through to Haejin, Hive account@ranchorelaxo or any of their followers that there is anything wrong with the actions they are taking.

Simple research and math will tell you that the reward pool is FINITE. A specific amount of STEEM is created each day as the reward pool for that day. The amount of the reward pool any given post is entitled to is determined by the number of votes and the SP/VP backing of each vote. When the value of Hive account@haejin's post goes up, the value of your post goes down. That's how this system works.

Hive account@public-eye wrote a nice post a couple of days ago with some analysis of the rewards Hive account@haejin is claiming comparing what he brings in to the income of a very popular steemian in Hive account@papa-pepper Check out the post and discussion Is Haejin rewarded too much on steemit. A very interesting discussion is taking place on that post, and I encourage everyone to check it out and get involved in the comments.

To make it loud and clear, I am fully behind Geek the Grey here on this mission. I donated to the @friends-of-gondor fund, I will do what I can to heal those who earn a flag from Haejin and his crew, and perhaps I will even dedicate my tiny piece of SP to the flagging effort if I believe it will help. I would do this regardless of my status as a steward of gondor, I have supported this effort with Hive account@berniesanders leading the charge, and I will continue to support it for as long as one person is claiming an unjustifiable percentage of the daily reward pool.

Oh Jerry.... Steemfest 2.5??

_{gif borrowed without prior consent from Hive account@themarkymark}

Sorry for not seeking your permission to use your signature gif there MarkyMark.... But it was just too appropriate in this instance...LOL

Oh Hive account@jerrybanfield, how you manage to stir things up around here. For those of you who don't know, Jerry is working on organizing a Steem Meetup now dubbed SteemFlorida which will take place toward the end of May. That's great! Meetups are a wonderful thing! The problem is that Jerry decided to dub his meetup "Steemfest 2.5" without consent from Hive account@roelandp.

Roeland made it clear in the comments of Jerry's post that he and "the Steemfest name" (quotes mine, not Roelands) are not associated in any way with this event, and he was not happy with the presumptive use of the Steemfest moniker.

Roeland has organized both Steemfest 1 and 2 and is already at work on Steemfest 3, so using the Steemfest name, even though I don't believe there is a Trademark on it comes with quite a bit of controversy. So much so in fact, that there was an instant backlash to Jerry's post causing him to amend the name of the meetup briefly to SteemJ, followed by the current header "SteemFlorida".

I do think Jerry's intentions are to bring Steemians together in the States, and that is something I can get behind. As an American with a currently expired Passport, I can appreciate the idea of having a meetup here where we can put together events that allow us to get the feel of Steemfest without traveling over to Europe.

In point of fact, I think it would be a great idea if there was to be some sort of annual gathering in the States as well as in Europe, with possibly a third event that is THE Steemfest. I believe with over 50k daily users of the platform there is an opportunity to have more than one conference a year to get more exposure for people to get a chance to meet. I'd love to see Steemit Inc come on board with something along these lines, with Hive account@ned, Hive account@sneak, Hive account@andrarchy and others attending a "SteemUSA", "SteemEurope" and "Steemfest" each year. There is an opportunity there.

But if I wanted to build something like that, I would certainly not dub it Steemfest without talking to Roeland, and I would try like hell to get Steemit Inc on board before I announced anything. You need a list of speakers/attendees before you can sell a $300 ticket to anyone and expect them to travel to you on their own dime. I know Jerry has quite an avid following, but for most of us, you can't just announce something and expect everyone to flock to it.

TL;DR on this. I believe there is an opportunity to build a SteemUSA, SteemNorthAmerica, SteemAmericanContinents whatever you want to call it, but it needs to be done the right way, and with the right people on board before announcing it to the world. If someone were to ask me how this should be done, I'd say you need to start now to plan for 2019, work with Roeland to make sure your event is a solid 6 months removed from Steemfest, and get to work now to have a great event next year.

The Fresh Five Initiative

So Jerry being Jerry kind of puts me in a tough spot with my plans for The Fresh Five. I have been in the process of writing up a proposal to Jerry's Hive account@budgets initiative to try to apply for some Steem Power to be added to the Fresh Five account. However, the more I think about it, the more I don't think I want to have my curation initiative associated with a controversial figure. That poses a bit of a problem for my plans.

My hope was to get enough Steem Power to Hive account@thefreshfive to be able to support more than five new Steemians a day, and to support multiple curators working on the effort. I know there are good people out there who would help me with the initiative with the welcome to new Steemians being the only reward. Adam is doing that right now, he gets roughly 50% of the SBD produced from each Fresh Five post he publishes, but realistically, that i nothing compared to what a curator ought to be receiving. I've been sending him 5 SBD a week, which may or may not be more than 50% of what The Fresh Five is bringing in. I'm to lazy to do the math, so I am eyeballing it.

I do want new curators to join the program, and if you are interested, please shoot me a message in Discord at Hive account@mikepm74 and we can chat. This is a "ground floor" opportunity, so you would be joining on the basis of knowing there is not much reward right now, but with the hope of amending that in the short term. What I can tell you is that if/when Hive account@fulltimegeek is able to reinstitute the StewardsofGondor program, I will be supporting my curators with upvotes from that delegation.

Be on the lookout for a post from Hive account@thefreshfive account inviting people to help with our curation efforts. And if you happen to know any people or communities who might be interested in delegating some SP to the Fresh Five endeavor, please direct them to talk to me as well. I am happy to answer any questions people may have regarding the initiative and what we are trying to accomplish. The short answer is that we are looking for the Best new Steemians coming on board, welcoming them, and working on trying to help them get started in Steem with engagement. The ultimate goal is New Steemian Retention to grow the active daily user base for the platform.

Final Word

Going back to the top, if you have been looking for something from me and haven't gotten it, i beg your forgiveness. My time is short these days, so I have been dropping the ball on getting things done around here. Please DM me on Discord and I will do my best to get back to you. I take my interactions with people here seriously, so if we have had interactions that suddenly dropped off, I apologize for that, and will do my best to make amends.

Thanks, as always for reading, and thanks for your support!