Well, It's almost been 2 weeks and there have been some pretty great developments. I wanted to share what I've been up to as a Witness and summarize some of what's been going on.
Total Votes
I reached my 200th vote yesterday. That's more total votes than some of the witnesses above me. I've been here for about 13 days in earnest so that's a great showing. You'll notice some prominent legends in the list of voters. I've been fortunate to have some wonderful support from excellent people on here and am stoked to be building the blockchain!
Witness position
The way witnessing works is that the top 20 accounts witness all the blocks and a backup witness is incorporated in the last spot. There is a new block every 3 seconds. So, the top accounts are witnessing about 1400 a day. Backups have a range. The position and number of blocks witnessed is based on the steem power of the voters and the steem power of the proxies they represent. While I'm doing awesome so far I'm still short a few GigaVests to put me in the top 49 where there is some revenue sharing from the higher witnesses. Many of these accounts have received a vote from 
Here's hoping my level of activity will earn me some more big ups.
150 blocks
I'm now witnessing about 20 blocks a day with my current vesting power that people have voted to me. Each block awards 0.89 to backup witnesses (those outside the top 20) steem and that's hard wired into each HF. So, next HF might be totally different, but as of today I earn 0.89 steem x 20 blocks. Each one of those is worth ~2USD. So, the witness is earning approximately $36 dollars a day. I'm trying to plow that back into helping minnows grow with the Minnow Support Project.
Minnow Support Project
The MSP was born out of getting great exposure because a few follower-whales resteemed some of my posts and I suddenly had a huge audience. Recognizing the advantage of that I turned around and created a contest to support minnows get resteems from larger accounts. Contestants put links to their posts in teh comments. They get upvoted by peers and the winner catches resteems and liquid post rewards. So far there have been 3 winners over three weeks and about 400 SBDs or 800USDs have been awarded to first place, second place, and runner up. Additionally, winners have reported seeing their follower count and average post rewards increase as a result of winning the contest, which is exactly the result I was looking for.
MSP discord
I've created a Discord channel called the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network, aka PAL or PALnet. It hosts the MSP. We currently have just shy of 200 members in there after 36 hours of being a thing. It's completely open to the public. There are no requirements. It's a way to help minnows and new steemers figure out the ropes. Me, 
I've created a few tiers in there.
New- Anyone is welcome
Registered- There are 2 bots in there . Banjo and Minnowsupport. Folks can use them to upvote content with a simple command and get their content exposure to the community for further resteems etc.
Member- As part of training to get out of minnow and into dolphin members are required to have steemvoter and streemian. Minnows are required to have 100% upvotes on the 
Greeter- People that write a post about their experience and pledge to help others that come can become greeters. You can go to tthem for help with the system.
Future roles- Additional bots with higher steem power will be introduced in the coming weeks. People that have achieved greeter status can apply to have curation authority over them with a post, a small community service project, and a pledge not to upvote shitposts.
Avoiding shit content
While it's possible the lowest tier bot will upvote shit content the fact that it all has to be publicly displayed is a deterrent. Also the minimum bot will be manually kept at a low SP so taht abuse has minimal impact on the system and is just part of the learning experience.
Steemfest
Here's the announcement for the MSP contest that starts in 1 week- https://steemit.com/minnowsupportproject/@aggroed/minnow-support-project-announcement-steemfest-minnow-all-expense-paid-trip-to-steemfest-courtesy-of-the-minnow-support-project
Overall
I'm 2 weeks in, have 150 blocks, 1500 followers (closing in on top 75 most followed authors), have a public discord channel and group meant to support minnow growth with just under 200 people in under 36 hours, and by the end of the month have gotten 3 people funding to Steemfest. Feeling pretty good. If you like these actions and you support my values of Peace, Abundance, and Liberty please upvote, resteem, follow, and vote for me as a witness.
