It's always good to look back and take stock - congrats to all on the many successes :)

You have had allot of congrats in other comments, so I'll focus on "what do you think we need to improve the most?" now.

For me the where we are going vision is lacking for Steem - I thought I had it figured out, but when SMT wasn't released as promised it created allot of confusion and loss of confidence. You have hurt allot of people who trusted @ned to deliver, you need to address this as it links to your... core business/reason for being..

Many people keep asking about it, and don't seem to get a response. Please take the time to share the strategy here moving forward. Is it still being viewed as a fundamental/important delivery in line with core business.

As all objectives should link back to a single high level common vision one way or another, it makes the Steem leadership and governance model and the successes here look 'disconnected'. The purpose of a company isn't to 'survive' (although that is one of the most important functions of your steem inc board) its to fulfill it core business function. It's OK to provide other commodity services, but not at the costs of success for the core business. It seems since SMT has...gone quiet the core business is changing from a social media crypto mining experience to a pseudo 'crypto bank account'?

One of the things I have learned is 'techno geeks' are the best people, filled with energy and commitment, but they need a special kind of management style to truly thrive - everything connects, all your successes and failures either deliver or take away from your core business. The best technical people in the world lack business acumen and strategy plan developing skill - I could be wrong, but I still think you need some help here. Rather then complain about it, I'm happy to discretely look over your business plan/Strat plans and give you some tips - I really think it would help if you'd let me help develop your 3 year strategy.....But I'm not a whale, so some may consider my 20+ years experience working with boards in large enterprise as a weakness in the crypto realm. I notice most whales here are very entrepreneur, intelligent and fantastic at setting up small scale operations - I assume these are the main groups your consulting - as you haven't gone into detail, I can't tell? nor can I understand how you went about determining the needs and wants of you stakeholders and key customers.

The communication in this post is good and definitely feels like your trying to engage with the community - careful saying you have engaged with the community already as a success; which community groups and how? I certainly didn't get consulted. Some tips for communicating would be (and I struggle to follow these):

Try not to write in the negative. It's known to make absorbing information difficult; for instance avoid using the word not.

Most importantly use metrics when reporting your successes; what are your objectives and measure of success for those - you need quantitative and qualitative results.

Own what you did wrong (and clean up if needed). All of us are sharing in our mistakes, what you do effects all of us; we are workers, shareholder and key reps of the business. Who got hurt in the failures. What are you doing to repair and restore this to get back on track to success.

Demonstrate you understand by the way you report on success and failures.

Keep up the good work communicating what is happening, this is probably the best post I've seen come out in a while looking at the goods and bad's. Still to most it just a bunch of statements without some references and stats/objectives ticked to back it up as a success.

In terms of future things - I'd like to suggest a ínvestors bonus. For a long time I powered up my SBD and Steem vs. sell to help the platform and was rewarded by dropping prices. Can I suggest if your going to consider this more like a crypto account, a discount re-investment plan for those who power up. Rather then printing more Steem, Steem inc could add a bonus % to everyone who powers up would be a real incentive, and often done by public share companies. This will also address a few with harsh feelings about the huge holdings if it was funded by unused Steem in the Steem inc account. It wouldn't need to be very generous to have a positive effect on raising price and getting people to stick around, maybe 1.5% extra SP when you power up. Not a well thought through idea, but best I can do without coffee today :)

Cheers.