Yes it makes sense to wait for Steem to be stable after the upcoming HF. As far as Steemit being onboard with an exchange listing plan, as far as I know they don’t have a dedicated person approaching exchanges so we have to do it. They however are generally happy to help with technical support when the exchange is interested. I collaborated with them quite nicely to get paycent.com onboard for the ability to load Steem directly to a crypto debit card.