I want to start out by wishing everyone a very happy new year! 2018 has gotten off to a really great start in the world of STEEM, and I suspect it is just the beginning of many more great things to come.
To start off this update, I want to highlight a post made by 
If you're a posting content to Steem, take some time once in a while to reflect and show us how your contribution is helping Steem grow.
This really hit home for me and I consider “helping Steem grow” to be one of the most important responsibilities of the witnesses on the platform. I think that my past contributions (which you can see any time by checking my blog) have mostly had this focus, and it seems that has been reflected in my rewards and witness ranking, but going forward I plan to have an even more conscious focus on fulfilling what I believe to be the responsibilities of a Steem witness.
The primary responsibility for a witness is of course to produce blocks, but being a great witness means much more than that. I consider the witnesses to be the leaders of the Steem community and, as leaders, the witnesses have a responsibility to each and every member of the community to make the Steem platform the best in the world! I believe that responsibility includes (but is not limited to):
- Understanding how the platform works in great detail, and why;
- Promoting the platform to new users and investors to help it grow;
- Providing assistance and education to help everyone be more successful;
- Providing tools and services that improve the platform; and
- Preventing / curbing abuse, destructive behavior, and scams;
For #1 - I’ve only been here for about 5 months but I believe I have a better understanding of how the platform works than many who have been here far longer than that. That being said, I do know there are still many things I have left to learn and I literally keep a list of things that I don’t know or don’t understand about Steem and go through it periodically and spend the time to learn them.
For #2 - I’ve focused my efforts on this front to approaching individual investors with whom I already have a relationship and who can potentially bring larger amounts of investment or influence to the platform. To date the people I’ve introduced to the platform have invested nearly $100,000 into STEEM and I hope to bring that number into the millions in the near future.
For #3 - I don’t do this as much as some other witnesses, and I think the ones who focus on this definitely deserve a vote (like 
For #4 - This has been my primary focus since I have a background in software development. In addition to the tools and services I have already created I have a number of other neat things that I plan to build to help improve the platform in the future, so stay tuned for those!
For #5 - This has been a very hot topic lately, and it’s a very difficult problem to deal with. I have and continue to work to prevent abuse of post promotion services specifically, but that’s only a small portion of what needs to be addressed. Again, witnesses that focus on this really deserve a vote, such as 
Of course, this is just the list that I came up with. I’d be very interested to hear what the community feels are the additional responsibilities of the witnesses. Please let me know in the comments and also let me know how you think myself and the other witnesses are doing towards fulfilling those responsibilities and the goal of growing the Steem platform!
If you think I’m doing a good job, you can support me by giving me your witness vote. You can either go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses and click the upvote icon next to my name, or click here to vote directly using SteemConnect!
Thanks for reading and for your support!