At first I wasn't excited about all the talk about Steem Alliance. It resembled too much with politics (and still does). But truly, I believe some form of organization that transcends the witnesses and Steemit Inc. is necessary to push us forward.
And that's what Steem Alliance at least promises to be in some future, a foundation that can help Steem step up to a new level at best, or offer coordination in various domains at minimum.
How exactly Steem Alliance will be shaped up is settled, in the first phase, these days, when its structure is under vote. Either that, or we'll have a big super proposal in the end, but then, what's the point of a vote?
While initial rules stated that only registered voters could have voted for one or more of the proposals, there was issued an update that all steemians can and should now vote, by going to this poll.
You should of course check out the proposals first, and don't vote uninformed! You can check out the final proposals on the same page linked above.
The vote period itself has also been extended from one week till April 24th, to give more time to people to understand what this is about and cast their vote. This is very well, as it is already clear not enough people spend time to understand what this is all about.
In principle, I believe changes of the voting procedure during the voting process is not a good call, but maybe we'll all learn in time and do better.
I also think allowing a multiple choice vote is a possible mistake, because it makes the vote less focused, less responsible, on the logic that if you vote for all the proposals that you partially like or teams that you like, you've done your part. But you haven't! Because you haven't really chosen, have you?
I haven't voted yet but I will. Not that I'm a big whale to make a splash or even a dolphin yet, but well, if everybody thinks like this and leaves it up to the huge stakeholders... By the way, the vote of whales is capped at roughly 250k SP, after which every 1 SP counts less for them, so smaller players do have a word to say too.
P.S.: I initiated a poll of my own yesterday on the topic of Steem Alliance, if you would like to take a look.