Well @shayne, really you raised an important issue to discuss so thank you

I am a minnow (less than5k SP) and my experience with HF19 is:
1 - since the HF19 implemented I invited 13 new users to steemit, those are my colleagues and friends. It is easy to invite people to steemit but it is hard to keep and let them see the potential here and what is steemit really about as a community. I was able to do that effectively because my vote relevant, I check their blogs and upvote good content and this makes them keep blogging.
3 - I did 7 videos fully explain steemit in Arabic, and it help many to enter steemit, people impressed by how they can really reach a level when their vote matter and some planning to buy STEEM
4 - Already did a steemit Arabic support website
5 - I decided to go to steemfest2 because I felt that I have influence on this platform.

From my perspective HF19 is the best thing happened to steemit so far and gradual decentralization of power on steemit will make this platform really scale. I think people need time to ajust.
I will upvote this comment for the seek of good discussion