It's Saturday, once again... and you know what that means: CATURDAY!

My favorite day of the week, and time to freely share all your photos of the Feline Friends in your lives!

Of course, for many Hoomans who live with cats in their lives, every day is Caturday... and that includes around here.

*Contemplating the sunny spots..."

Minnow Making and Steem's "Middle Class"

Because I probably "go on and on" about this more than I should, you know that I have recently been quite involved in the various "Minnow Making" initiatives currently active in our community:

The @steemcommunity witness team's efforts to create 250 new Minnows in a month — which was quite successful, read here — then there is the #tenkminnows project originated by @steevc which now has its own @tenkminnows account; and there's the #minnowasap initiative from @hitmeasap from which I personally got a two-week boost.

All of these fall under the greater umbrella of the idea that in order for our community to grow and thrive, we need to build a larger Steem "Middle Class" because the "wealth" here is too concentrated among just a few people. I believe this was an approach originally popularized by @tarazkp, who's one of Steem's more energetic and prolific thinkers and "community builders."

Watching the Mom-Hooman work, in the pink room!

Shoutout to @dswigle!

Before I get any further, I want to give a special shoutout to @dswigle who very generously donated 10 SBD to my own "drive" towards reaching Minnow status.

Thanks to your generosity, I was able to power up another 22.934 SP this morning!

Do check out @dswigle's blog and give her a follow; she is — among other things — one of our community's most active curators!

Thank you again!

Napping with Daisy. Can you see the cat, in this picture?

Where is the VALUE? A Cat Blogger's Perspective...

Shortest possible version: Communities — active communities — are built by people who take an active interest in those communities. It's a self-perpetuating thing.

In order for that to happen, those people have to feel like their participation has meaning. In the context of SteemLand — after more than a year here — meaning to me comes in the form of being seen when you first arrive, and being able to meaningfully give back and encourage newcomers, once I have become established.

When I first arrived, I was fortunate to get help from several "newbie boosting" initiatives, so I got off to a fairly quick start, compared to many.

But who boosts the newbies?

In order to materially encourage someone who's eager and just created an account somewhere in SteemLand, you have to have a certain amount of SteemPower in order for your encouragement to actually have meaning!

In the current market environment, you realistically need about 1000SP to leave an upvote that certain to be above the infamous "dust threshold." But simply getting to "Minnowhood" (500+ SP) is a really good start.

Paying attention!

Whales and Orcas and Dolphins and Minnows, Oh My!

Now, some make the case that "The 'Whales' need to help redistribute some of all that wealth!"

That's a nice idea, but not really a very functional one. Let's get real here: A single person doesn't have the time and ability to visit and upvote 500 or 1000 pieces of content per day! There are only a few hundred big players here, and tens of thousands small active accounts. It's a logistically impossible proposition.

But if we build a bigger "Middle Class" through which Whales/Orcas can substantially support "Dolphins" (both directly and with delegations); enabling those Dolphins to more effectively support and build 500-1000+ SP Minnow accounts.... who can then more effectively support newbies and "Redfish" then everybody wins.

You might wonder both how that helps the Whales and what the incentive is. Well, a more active community makes it more appealing for new people to sign up. And it improves our currently pitiful member retention rate. In turn, a strong and active community makes it more attractive for app creators to build their apps on the Steem blockchain, because there's already an active BUILT-IN market. The greater effect become that "demand" increases, which drives up the price of the Steem token... which, in turn, boosts the value of those Whales' large investments.

Would you rather have 500,000 Steem worth $0.42 each or 500,000 Steem worth $7.00 each? Pretty much a no-brainer, I'd say!

I KNOW there's water down there... somewhere...

To those whales I say: "Putting your 500K into a bid bot might give you a nice income stream RIGHT NOW, but chances are Steem won't budge much from it's current levels because your investment doesn't help BUILD COMMUNITY. If you instead accept a lower rate of return in the NOW by investing in long-term community building, in exchange for a chance that your root investment becomes 10x larger... which would you choose?"

If it were MY dime, I'd be looking to build something for the duration...

Sorry about the very long Caturday post... which got altogether too serious, but I wanted to put this out there! If this resonates with you, and you feel inspired to re-steem for more visibility, that would be awesome!

Hope you are all having a beautiful day!

=^..^=

20190413 0210
100% Powered up!
86.30% of the way to 500SP goal!
Target date: June 30th, 2019