First, let's get this out of the way, "what's in it for me?" right? That's what you're asking. Well, a lot, perhaps.

• If you help promote this project, your blog will be promoted right along with it.
• You will gain followers and upvotes
• You could win a big fat chunk of $BD, if we succeed.

I'll explain it all in a minute. First, let's talk about how this goes down, shalll we?

I want to conduct an experiment. Can we, the plankton and minnows of steemit, put a post at the top of trending? I've been working to prove it's possible for some time now, without seeing it happen in quite some time. There are several challenges we'll have to overcome to get there.

To set this up, first, let me say we'll be using a plankton account, @dolphinschool as our launching pad. The entire platform there is designed around helping plankton become minnows and minnows become dolphins. I'd teach you to become a whale, but I haven't done that yet, so I'll do it when I get there!

• I want to do it from bottom, that way you can see how you might accomplish the same thing.
• I'm looking to launch a new bootcamp at the end of this, and those that help will get first preference to be on board!
• If I do it from this account,we might pick up whale support, and kind of skew the results.

It's going to be an uphill climb, can we make it?

I'm not sure. That's part of what it makes it so exciting! I think we can, if everyone will really do what they can to help. With a few hundred of us working together, surely we can gain the attention to get more votes on board and carry it the rest of the way.

• Hitting a meaningful spot on trending will require at least $50-75 in upvotes. Without buying votes, this could be one vote, or hundreds.
• Keeping it on trending will require sustained promotion once it's up and running. I'll take any help with that I can get.
• The price for entry is steep, but the rewards could be big too!

I promise you this, if @dolphinschool wins, we all win, because I've dedicated that profile to helping as many Plankton survive to become minnows and then dolphins as possible!

So, what kind of post should it be?

I've got ideas, as you know, but, I want your input here. I'm thinking we just go straight for the jugular, like, "Here's How This Post Got on Trending Without Buying Votes!" But, would it work? I'm not really sure.

I'm kidding, my best idea is an article titled something like, "The Power of Community on Steemit"

The post itself will be a declaration of the power of the little guy. It will include a list of links to any blog that helps support the project, with your best post front and center! If that means 200 links, or 400 links, then so beit! I'll keep editing the new ones in as people sign on! If I have to edit it ten times a day, I'll do it!

I'm going to run a series of these articles through some friendly accounts that will gladly help promote us and see how much attention we can get over the next several days, then on Sunday, the article will be launched from @dolphinschool.

Once the article is in place, we will promote the heck out of it! I'll be using Steemit Facebook groups, Steemit chat and I'm working on getting into Discord more. But, again, here I'm open to suggestions.

• If every person also resteemed the post, it would help to spread it.
• If we are offering a portion of proceeds to participants, @moneyinfant can add it to the contest list they run, there are probably others.
• Promote it to curation services and others that share content.

Whatever else you can think of to help make it go, leave me a comment. I'll take as much input as I can. Not all of the ideas will probably get put to use, but this is brainstorming people, share!

Great, good feels, altruism, blah, blah, blah, show me the money!

I said I'd explain and here it is. By joining this project, you'll get the following, provided you help do the heavy lifting (promoting, upvoting, etc)

• Your name in every post related to this project
• A chance to promote your blog and your best post linked from the project post, which we hope goes viral!
• A chance to win half of the $BD the project post earns. There's no way to know how much that will be.

But, wait, Mark, what's in it for you?

As always, I have my own motives. I'm not trying to hide it. I'll be keeping half of the payout to further my work here. But, beyond that, I'm hoping to get the following.

1. I want to prove we can do it. Just because. That's kind of who I am.
2. I hope to gain more followers throughout this process. Always.
3. Promotion for @dolphinschool. I haven't put as much time into it as I want, but it's hard to do when the audience is small and the payouts are not enough to cover the time.
4. I want to see some of you gain exposure through this project. It's going to be a seven day push, and I'll promote as many of you as I can!

So, where do we start?

We're starting at the bottom, so, let's have a conversation. Got an idea of how to make this work? Great! Add it in the comments. Want to "sign up" to help? Great! I'll be making a list of everyone that says they're in over the next couple of days, I'll add it to ALL posts on the topic. Let's call it #projectminnowvote and use that hashtag as one of your tags if you want to share about it!

As a part of this, I want to encourage as much interaction between all of you as possible. So, go, follow each other, upvote each other's posts, comment, resteem, whatever! Let's start some buzz!

If this works, people, we could build a network capable of making this a regular thing!

I'm not a huge fan of automated curation, or renting votes. You know that, but a weekly post, with comment links to any posts deserving a boost, could be huge! Imagine a weekly post that got 500, or 600 upvotes, with 100 comments, all saying, hey, take a look at what this account over here is doing that's not getting attention!

Then, what if the highest voted comment/link got our attention for a few days? Could we change trending? Maybe. I think it's worth a try.

Here's what inspired this.

Last night I was looking over my posts and feeling pretty good about the interaction, but I got stupid and clicked into Trending. I started looking at the posts sucking so much of the reward pool up. And you know what I found? They're not special.

In fact, the one thing they all had in common? Paid votes and a LOT of them. Some of them paid more than $200 SBD to get there, something many of us cannot afford to do.

The bigger problem for me, though, is the poor quality of the content. And it's what visitors are attracted to first. It's the pattern that's being set for success here on Steemit. Is that what we want? I don't, so this is my response.

SO, are you with me? I can't do this without you. Leave your name in the comments if you'd like to be tagged in future posts on this topic. There will be no minimum requirement for participation, other than an upvote on the final project post. So, what do you say?

*If you're in here are some ways you could help promote it!

• upvote this post,
• resteem it,
• write a review of it on your blog,
• make a promo image and put a link to it on Steepshot, or Dmania.
• Make a video about it and post it to DTube.
• Tag your friends in this post to encourage them to get on board!
• Write your own posts about the idea and gather more ideas and attention!

PLEASE DON'T BUY VOTES FOR THIS PROJECT!

I know, we could do it that way, but let's not give the big fish any more of the reward pool than necessary, okay? They can upvote their own fortunes.

Some of you will want to watch and see what happens. That's great! Could you do me one favor? Please, please, please, don't do anything negative. Encourage each other. If you don't want to participate, at least don't stand in our way, please? Thanks! That includes negative comments, pointing out problems, being unhelpful, or otherwise distracting. Just go do your own thing, we promise not to rain on your parade!