Hi, Smooth. Thank you for hosting this contest. It’s a great chance not only for people to go to Steemfest, but for positive and productive interaction in the community.

I’m co-founder of @thewritersblock alongside @GMuxx. It’s the largest and most active Steem-centric professional writing community on Discord. We focus on the creative aspect of writing more than the technical, but we involve writers of all skill levels as long as they’re serious about their craft.

In just over a week, I’ll be in Toronto alongside GMuxx and our IT project coordinator @jasonbu to participate in the Steem Creatives Conference and SMT Summit. There, we’ll launch our new front-end site for the blockchain that’s specifically designed to spotlight high quality written content. This is important, because our target audience is not just the internal crypto community, but mainstream consumers as well. We have a plan to implement our SMT in a highly utilitarian fashion that will introduce digital currency in an easy to understand, easy to use manner, and therefore position ourselves to onboard a whole new demographic of blockchain users.

Core leadership at The Writers’ Block has maintained since the group’s inception that the Steem blockchain is a brilliant new opportunity for publishing. Many of our members have real-world experience in that industry and a strong motivation to usher in the next evolution of digital publishing. In November, we intend to launch Steemhouse Publishing, an LLC already incorporated in the U.S. with the primary focus of marketing novel-length fiction directly to mainstream reading audiences. In other words, we’ll publish books and sell them for FIAT, which we’ll then exchange for Steem and use that to reward authors and compensate staff. We’ll also use a Steem wallet to accrue assets, which means we’ll be investors as well as content creators, and a solid example of how the Steem blockchain can be used in real-world business applications.

In addition to all of this, I’m one-fourth of the @noblewitness team, which is currently ranked 66, 63 active. All four of us bring different ranges of talent and experience to the table, so everything from tech to PR is covered. We believe content is king and is ultimately the driving force that will bring investors to the blockchain and keep users from defecting. As far as technical specs, we run Dual Xeon L5630 8 Core Processor (16 HT Cores) with 96 GB DDR3 of physical RAM, a 300 GB SSD System Drive and 2TB Data Drive. Backup server is a duplicate mirror of the main system. Failover is scripted and software switched.

In my home state of Virginia, I’m the Director of a 501c3 animal charity. @tarc is an all-consuming endeavor and, while successful in a practical sense, is a huge financial black hole for me. These animals must eat and receive care whether or not our donors and sponsors come through for us in a given month. Needless to say, I don’t have abundant financial resources to afford things like international travel and Steemfest tickets. I do believe our project has enough backers to help me somewhat with travel expenses, but everything I can do to pull my own weight is necessary—even writing a book-length comment to try and win a ticket. Just having that part of the trip covered would be a tremendous help.

When it comes to Steem, I’m all-in—I’m giving the blockchain everything I have in fervent hopes that we all make history together. My wheelhouse is writing and publishing, so it makes sense that this is the area I’m trying to sew up for us. I want to present these ideas at Steemfest and network with the people who can benefit this project, as well as the people this project can benefit. I think it’s a worthwhile effort, and I want to be there in Krakow to talk about it.

Thank you!