I suppose you can say that I found my purpose with Steem when I came to the realization of what a flag is.

At this point, Steem was becoming overwhelmed with scamming sons of guns and I decided I would not stand idly by.

I noticed a thread that @timcliff started about making " downvoting great again" and suggested the notion of incentivized flags which he was in support of.

As a result @steemflagrewards was born and has been growing ever since. I never fancied myself as a developer but I was certainly an automation advocate in my field so I figured out how to make it work.

SFR became an open source project with global collaboration from users like @flugschwein and @crokkon and we developed together the innovation that we use today to tackle the problem of abuse on the Steem blockchain.

I would be lying to you if I told you that I know now what I know back then as surely I did not. SFR became the catalyst for my learning how to interface with the Steem blockchain programmatically.

My interest was serving the peculiar group of people I ran with. People that favored manual curation. People that despised manipulative self-voting, circlejerking and collusive voting arrangements made under the table (bid bots).

I defied these things but, in doing so, I became somewhat of an outsider. Still yet, I was not alone and here I am today. I represent a different train of thought here.

One that rejects the status quo (perhaps former) of voting as a commodity and accepts voting as an agent of appraising network value.

I have observed you for a while @smooth and I don't know if we are of one accord but I can say you have done a lot of things I respect.

I am a very sociable person but I am not sure I really care to meet half the people at Steemfest... But I reckon I would probably enjoy meeting you for what it's worth.

Thanks for running this contest and giving others an opportunity to be a part of Steem Fest.

Update: Feel like a jerk. Totally forgot to mention collaboration with @reazuliqbal without whom we would not have the SFR voting bot or flag trail..Thanks a lot, good buddy!