Meet Our Steem Witness With @helpie. Episode 26

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• I welcome you to another episode of meet our steem witness @meno and thanks for the honor smiley

• How did you first hear about steemit and what made you decide to join?

Like many others I heard about Steemit through someone who is not currently a witness anymore. Not to go into details here, but lets say his exit from Steem has been controversial to say the least.

• For steemians who don’t know much about witnesses, can you give a layman explanation of what it is that witnesses do?

All blockchains need a way to create new blocks, to store new information. The easiest way I can describe a witness, its basically the ones who “mine” blocks for the steem blockchain.

They verify and sign the blocks that store everyone’s transactions. Posts, comments, resteems, absolutely everything people do on STEEM.

• What is the biggest challenge you have ever faced since you joined steemit?

I think almost everyone has the same steep hill to climb: Getting noticed.

You could be the best writer, the best musician, the best developer, it almost doesn’t matter what your talent is really. When you first start out on steem you have clean canvas, and almost nobody knows you are there.

However communities are the game changer, so once I found mine, once I became a member of MSP (Minnow Support Project), everything changed. All of the sudden I could network, I could meet friends, and support for my efforts started to show its face.

• As one of the top witness what is your duty?

Well, I’m not a top witness, not really but I think I can answer the question nonetheless. The main responsability of a witness in my book is to always work in the benefit of the blockchain.

So any project a witness takes on, any business venture, community or what have you, has to be focused or framed within one question: “Does this help STEEM succeed?”

So, even though technically the job of a witness is to sign blocks, the job of a witness who truly cares goes above and beyond that basic description.

• I know that you are always busy on your computer trying to help the community, apart from that, what are the other things you enjoy doing?

My favorite thing is spending time with community members teaching. Actually I enjoy that above many other things. But besides that, I try to have fun. Not everything has to be about work, not really, and there is a lot of value there too.

• What is the biggest challenge the steemit community must overcome before it goes widespread?

To me it comes down to simplicity. As long as we continue to work on dapps, different front ends or what have you, that simplify using STEEM the blockchain, then eventually we will get there.

So as much as the challenge are there and are quite undeniable, we are consistently improving and as you know development has not slown down, quite the opposite, so I’m confident we are on our way.

• Apart from the steemit community, there are still other sites created for steem user, I don’t want to mention them but which one will you prefer and which one will you advice others to use?

I don’t favor steemit anymore, steemit.com that is. I think busy.org has been leading the charge for quite a long time and recently steempeak is just blowing my mind.

I’m one of those that believes that the website steemit.com will fade into obscurity in the future and make way for a new king.

• Can you tell the community one unique thing we probably don’t know about you? What makes you different from other witnesses in the steem community?

A unique thing about me? Well, I hand build guitars. I’ve taken a little break from it for personal reasons, but I’ve built quite a few over the years. Some of my guitars live in different countries which is a little point of pride for me.

About what makes me different from other witnesses? I seriously don’t know. I mean, I am me, not the most knowledgeable of them for sure. But, at the same time I try to offer to the STEEM ecosystem the best version of me.

It’s probably because of this that I’ve focused so much in supporting a community that values people over token valuation. It’s just a reflection of a personal belief.

• It is a good thing to be a witness and another thing is that being a witness takes a lot of time, how do you manage your time and keep balance with other things?

Managing time? That is the hardest thing to do and I’m still trying to figure it out. I’ve got my hands in so many things I don’t lie when I’m say I’m a full time Steemian. I’m always on here, writing posts, doing dlive events, troubleshooting an issue with @helpie (the witness account), it never stops and that’s OK, I’m learning.

• Where do you see the value of steem in the next 4-5 years along with the platform?

I don’t have those crazy predictions like others, but I do think STEEM could reach 50 per token in the far future. More so after SMTs. I’ve been here long enough to see how “impossible” it was for STEEM to reach 10 dollars and yet we say it go up to 8, so to me 50 doesn’t sound crazy at all.

• With some of the current problems steemit faces, I.e. Whale circle jerking, pool draining, bot votes etc and some radical backlash some steemains, what, if any solutions do you see?

I think people need to understand the concept of freedom a little bit better. I mean, we can’t have it both ways, we can’t have both a system that is only ruled by code and then be upset the code is law, it’s not logical.

Obviously if changes need to be made to avoid spam or abuse, they must be made at a code level first. However, there are other elements of the conversation which are equally as valuable. We need to have a better culture, one that not only punishes bad actors, but rewards good actions, thus creating the right system of incentives.

I know more than one whale that does a lot of good, but never gets a thank you, and I think that is a terrible thing too.

To me this is solved with education and culture change.

• What can you say on the recent scam and phishing war going on on steem?

Another problem that be solved by education. Users have to learn to guard their keys with jelousy. No one and I repeat no one should be entering their keys just anywhere, they are the keys to the bank.

Today, almost with no exception, the cryptocurrency world is filled with scammers, and until people educate themselves on the methods they use, they will continue to be victims.

• What is your preventive action you can give to the steem community to protect their account?

Get used to only using your posting key to log in. Do not use your password for anything, almost ever. If you need to move funds then enter the active key but do not store it on your browser.

You can’t be too careful with these things as hackers have their ways and many people have spyware on their computers and have no clue they do.

• In five sentences or less, tell steemians why you deserve their vote?

I don’t know if I deserve it, I’m not a big fan of the word if I’m to be honest. I rather people who share my vision for the importance of community to see why it’s important that they do their part. But it’s not about me, at least not solely about me, and it never will be about me alone.

• If there was a worldwide internet and cellular blackout for a week, what would you do for those 7 days?

Probably work on a woodworking project. Yes, that’s it. It would keep my mind entertained and I could walk away with a new piece of furniture or something of the sort, so it would be a productive week after all.

• If you could give advise to new users just starting out on steemit, what would it be?

Be patient, Rome was not built on a day. Learn to walk, don’t try to run right away. Be yourself, don’t worry about how others are “making it” and focus on building a community around yourself or joining one that resonates with who you are.

• Once again I would like to give a huge thanks to @meno for having this conversation with me

Thanks @dhavey