On Friday I had someone I greatly respect say something very enlightening about STEEM... I think people on Steem should hear. That same day I wrote this post... but just got back to going through it and getting it ready to post.
If you enjoy my ramblings follow along...
OF NOTE: me and 
First I should say I took the image in Bolivia back in 2012
I was talking to my brother about a bunch of stuff... he asked about the conference I spoke at (SteemFest) and my trip to Thailand. I told him for that presentation I interviewed a bunch of my youtube friends to see what they thought of the tech we can do on Steem.
Perhaps you should understand, My brother goes to the youtube conferences that I'm a photographer for and where I know a good amount of the attendees... I've introduced him to many of those youtubers or he knows their work so he was likely very interested in what they said. He has studied Youtube and listened to the top speakers and writers about building an audience.
Also I'll brag a bit... My brother is the most talented of all the Jarvies... he puts my talent level to shame. He is presently building a Super Car, a legit beautiful ferrari like car... by hand. He has designed it and he's doing pretty much everything from electrical, to designing, to modeling and sculpting the full size car and making molds for the body panels and all the mechanical work to make it go vroom vroom. He's built houses, painted beautiful painting and sculpted and created most anything he wants to create... He's also very passionate about freedom of speech and philosophy etc.
I know i haven't done a proper post about my survey of youtubers and my presentation ... my presentation from SteemFest is online as a video and I should find it and share it.
I have talked to my brother plenty about steem in the past. He's known about Steem for just shy of 2 years ever since I was just a n00b trying and failing to explain it. He's always been more or less "That's nice" and it felt more like he'd get around to it when he had more time or we got things on SteemPeak polished up. I wasn't pushing it, just like I don't push Steem to my Youtube or Photography friends because our feature set is not there yet and our UI is still lacking a few key things that will bring RETENTION.
What I did begin to realize is that my brother and and any Youtuber I talked to could care less about the "free money" of the Steem rewards pool because they knew (as we all should know) that Youtube had the potential to make much more serious money (tens of thousands of dollar) and interact with way more people. Last year I didn't really understand that leading with conversation about the reward pool is a loosing proposition because if you set that up as the "Champion of Steem" and that champion was dependent on 13 cent Steem (aka a few dollars in rewards) ... well your champion is not very ideal at all. In fact many youtubers may turn off ads on their videos up until it brings in legit sums of money.
However in this phone call: I explained many of the survey results from the Youtubers then I explained what we're working on right now with COMMUNITIES. I was honestly just excited to share the results of what I found out in the survey, wasn't trying to "Sell Steem"
Your proposition should be good enough that you shouldn't have to sell you should be able to explain and they see the value without you pushing it?
Ok enough of the pretext
I basically explained that someone could follow a content creator on Steem and unlike FB, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, Patreon... that connection would be INDEPENDENT and unbreakable ... meaning no company or site could severe that connection.
OK that's AWESOME... Every content creator likes that.
That's now the main thing I LEAD WITH when talking to content creators and they love it.
But when I said our latest project on the blockchain and on SteemPeak was working toward making an interface for communities and that communities would have a similar property.
And why would communities be cool when we have FB or Reddit you ask?
Aka... Subscribers make a direct connection to the Community and no dependency in a company or website.
And he didn't just say... that's nice. He made it a point to say something like:
That is literally the best thing you've ever told me about Steem.
Why? Because he immediately began to calculate how that was different than FB and Reddit and Patreon. How he and people with similar interests could build something that companies and sponsors would value instead of seeing companies demanding money for access to.
So that was a fun day for me. I've worked on SteemPeak for about 18 months now... we've had discussions and I've mentioned how it would help him and I've thought about just helping him post content for him so you all could see the progress of the Car. He may be the most talented person i know but he doesn't have a huge following and so probably the idea of going and convincing users on a new platform that has a tiny amount of people (compared to youtube) probably overwhelming and not really that viable.
But you can tell people:
"You and people you know can create your own community based on subjects you guys have in common... this space is yours and the subscribers can't be taken away from you it's only their choice. We at SteemPeak are just there to serve you and create tools to make your life better in hopes you'll use OUR interface to YOUR community."
I feel like that's what he heard... and he was all over that. In fact so excited I made him an account 
I feel like what I learned today is:
Stop talking about Reward Pool stuff.... it's fine but it should literally be like point #5 or #6 when talking about Steem. An afterthought at most. "Oh yeah and you can also make a couple of dollars from time to time"
You don't even need to talk about Steem-currency or economics at all to begin with.
If you're talking to a content creator that has had success or understands success in social media. Talk to them about INDEPENDENCE. Talk to them about how they can be in control of their own destiny. They already know how to make money because of eyes on content.
Don't tell them they can come somewhere and everything will be provided... you won't appeal to the successful people. You'll appeal to the leaches and lazy people or those who are easily misguided into thinking that there's an easy way to lots of money.
Tell them they can control their destiny and this time around the companies will stay out of their way.... this time they'll have ownership of their connections and their communities.
Tell them their influence will be valued by companies like steempeak instead of having to pay to reach their community (aka facebook) ... they'll be the ones making the money instead of paying the money. And that's not so much a discussion about how they'll get rich it's a statement of valuing what they bring to the table.
It's still gonna be a hard sell for now because we simply don't have the pool of individuals Youtube or Instagram have... no getting around how important that is to them. So we likely have to give them a reason to bring their users here. Why? Well, again, one of those reasons is the independence of knowing those connections aren't dependent on another company or site. But also we have some very interesting things the blockchain can provide as well.
That's what I'm learning more and more about Steem.
It's NOT about the price of Steem...
It's not about the price of Steem...
It's not about the price of Steem...
repeat after me....
If we can't use and take solid advantage of this amazing technology and the blockchain and find success -> then we really don't deserve the price of Steem to go up.
I think there are reasons why Steem the platform can be more successful now than it ever was with $3 steem.
We have some amazing things that are presently diamonds in the rough. We need to chip away the edges work on our message and presentation and realize the actual solid foundations that people will come and stay here for. Price of Steem (any crypto) is blatantly inconsistent... if we make a foundation on that ... that house will fall whenever it's not healthy. We make it on solid things that we know are great and here to stay... we can build on that foundation and then maybe reap the rewards of a price increase.
Price of steem shot up because of speculators... now we can work toward things to have users and large apps slowly create real and sustained demand. Slow and sustained growth.
Am i saying everyone should be flocking to Steem right now... nope... as for User Experience I think there are things lacking. It's not intuitive enough and there needs to be a reason for big time creators to create and lead their subscribers here. We have a bit of retention problem but that may because all we told them was about reward money and they realized it wasn't very much.
BUT SOON... March... April? (wild guess)
I'd like to see https://steempeak.com/ get done with the bulk of it's present To Do list by around that time.
If I ever say ownership i mean non-dependency, you own your account and no one can take that from you... you have the keys... you're not dependent on someone else.
Independence is what will happen with communities.
You aren't independent if you fully rely on any particular company or website if there is dependency then what have they received that sub-reddits and facebook groups haven't provided?
We can't start off the offer with unstable crypto-currencies and new tokens they are complicated, they are unfamiliar. Also there aren't solid examples yet of tokenized communities, nothing yet to replicate. Full time content creators are savy... When someone makes something successful they'll learn how to replicate but no one has yet with all the tribes out there so far. But you know what they've seen plenty of ... People growing communities.(all over the internet)
There are a lot of people who have that skillset of building communities. LARGE ones... like tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. Give them a tool like we're starting to create ... give them tools like SteemPeak is planning on.
Then when they have a good community going give them things like letting them sell promotion on their community.
When communities system gets active. Don't just create a name for a community ... create an actual community. There's a difference.
"No my dear: you didn't create a COMMUNITY you created an account and gave it a title"
And if someone created the name of a community you like... who cares? It's about who actual WORKS HARD AND SMART and creates a community governed in a way that will make people want to be there. But working smart sometimes means working together ... good community leaders know how to work with others.
And to those who read the whole thing I'd love to know what you think... but if nothing else just let me know if you read it. haha
Here's another Bolivian City
