"very quickly I am finding out that unless the main development team contacts these exchanges, we are not likely to get very far..."

What are the exchanges requesting of you? It may be just as simple as knowing some API endpoints...

Also, is it required that steemit does anything? Steem is a decentralized blockchain, no one group should be doing much of anything from any standpoints, so this request from the exchanges sounds ... Misinformed? And I think the fault may be on this side, as opposed to theirs, seems hard to imaging me going to a presentation saying something like "i'd like to get steem listed on your exchange" and them pulling the name steemit out of their asses. Just saying ... Hopefully I'm just being ignorant to some facts here and it's just me.