The state of the network.
We all know that activity here on our platform is a little like a beehive, users are coming in left and right and we are all having a good time. However since the primary method of onboarding is through steemit inc, we know they are getting bogged down a little bit. I like to imagine that those of us with some technical know how and an interest in the success of the steem ecosystem have at least somewhat of a responsibility to take part in the growth of the platform.
Likely this takes place most of the time organically, we talk about steem with our friends and they become interested...(or not) either way sometimes people can slip through the cracks.
The tools at our disposal now.
There are two tools that have dropped my jaw in the last two days the first is steemconnects new version which was created and is being further developed by our good friends at busy.org the introduction of the new tool can be found here and was written by 
The second tool is a standalone wallet application called Vessel developed by our good friend 
The run down.
From left to right that is my little brother, my mother, and myself at Cherry Hill Gate in Hamilton Ontario.
I have been bothering my brother for a while now to create himself an account here on steem and start posting his writing here, the other day he touch based with me and said that he needed a phone number to do so, I guess I knew this but it hadnt really crossed my mind.
On Monday I was chatting with two of my friends one of which is a writer the other who is an avid reviewer of assorted arts. The writer had started speaking to me how he had recently lost all his work from his most recent book and steem popped into mind.
For whatever reason however when I suggested they both create accounts on steem they contacted me back and told me neither of them had phones either...
Here I was in a pickle with three fairly interested people wanting to get onto steem and no way to do so. That is where SteemConnectv2 comes into play the primary use so far of this tool lets you pay the creation fee for a steem account and mint the account with your own account, currently the cost for doing so is 6 STEEM !
To say the least I was off and running I created all three accounts using steemconnect and promptly handed over the details to each of the new users! Two of which have now started posting! 
Using Vessel it is now possible to delegate a piece of your vested steem power to another persons account, so I went ahead and delegated 58 Steem Power to each of these new users to help them get off to a good running started.....It isn't much I know but is what I can do.
TLDR
If your friends are having trouble getting on steem and you have some technical know how and can pay attention to details...HELP THEM OUT!!!