Taking STEEM and my Witness Role Serious

in #steem5 years ago

Yesterday I powered up just over 2K SP.  I’m feeling rather proud of myself because to me it’s a show of my faith in STEEM and my commitment to the blockchain.  This comes as Steemfest starts, an event I would so love to have attended.  Many say if you are serious about STEEM you will go to Steemfest.  Actually, one person told me that I’m obviously not that serious at all because I am not going.

But not everyone’s life circumstances will allow them attend.  Some people have work they can not get away from, some people can’t not afford the costs and some people are not in good health.  For me, well it’s as simple as family commitments.  I have two children, 5 and 10 and I just have no one that could take them for a week. In fact, I have very little support and I am lucky to get one night off a year.

I have put a lot of effort into STEEM.  I came here knowing nothing about blockchain and very little about cryptocurrency.  Joining last June when the price of STEEM was around US$2 I have seen both good times and bad and I have continued to post and work hard despite market conditions.

Earlier this year I set up a witness server with my witness partner @abh12345.  We started this server to raise our profiles on STEEM,  to show our commitment to STEEM and help strengthen the network.  Before setting this up I set up a couple of master nodes, just to get some experience (and maybe make a few $$ but that didn’t happen lol) and I thought I was equipped with the skills to be a  backup witness.

The witness account @steemcommunity has powered up all its earnings.  We have not used any funds from this to even pay for the server.  For the moment we have decided to cover the costs personally because we would like to have some power in this account to support the efforts of communities by way of upvotes.  And although we are giving upvotes, our growth is slow and so the votes not worth much.

 

I have a lot invested in STEEM.  Over a years’ worth of posts. Countless hours of analysis. Hours upon hours of time spent in discord, helping, chatting and supporting other users. And I have also made a financial investment in the witness server and now also by powering up.

The social witness, no doubt, adds massive value to the blockchain.  I can assure you if we didn’t have social witnesses, churn would be way higher and retention a lot lower.  One of the advantages created by social witnesses is the ability to now use the loyal user base as leverage, as a USP to attract new app developers.  With SMTs on the horizon its more important than ever to keep the community motivated.  And as a social witness, I will continue to engage, be engaging and to curate.  I will continue to work with the redfish and minnows and offer training and guidance where I can.

But it’s not enough.  Not if I want to be a high ranking back up witness.  And really, I would like to get to the top 50.  The top 50 would allow us pay for our servers and have some growth.  This growth is really needed if we want to support the efforts of communities.

My background is not in IT.  I have more degrees and letters after my name than I care to count.  I have worked online for over 10 years now and can navigate the online social scene with easy.  But the reality is, these are not the skills that will get the witness votes.  STEEM is still in its infancy, still under development and the main role of a witness is to run a server that does not miss blocks and has no downtime.

We all remember HF20, sure it was only a few weeks ago. It was a frantic time for many witnesses.  Especially our voted top 20. Like many other witnesses, some of which ranking far higher that @steemcommunity,  I found myself scrambled round looking for help and guidance on running the updates.  It became rather obvious; a good server administrator is hard to find.  Very hard to find.


So I have decided to invest some time up-skilling.  I have started some training in Linux.  The aim of this is to fully understand Linux Command Line and Linux System Administration.  Its going to take me about 4 weeks to complete the training and during this time I will be doing a lot of playing around before I get myself stuck into creating a server building steem without steem in a box.

By the end of this training and practice work, I hope instead of me asking people for help, I can help others and @steemcommunity will have a stronger set of skills to what we had before.

If you like what we are doing, please do consider @steemcommunity as one of your steem witnesses.


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The steem blockchain is lucky to have you @paulag, and as another one of those that takes steem seriously (even though I prefer to make my time here as fun as possible!), I didn't make it to steem fest either!

I am watching the live feed to keep upto date.

hay @kabir88, steem should be a bit of fun, there is no denying that. The more fun the better. Thanks for your support

Your contributions to the community speak for themselves. Don’t worry about naysayers.

I think the importance of technical skills in our witnesses is underestimated. We really need witnesses with C++ and sysadmin skills to keep the network healthy. Good on your for upskilling!

Posted using Partiko iOS

One thing at a time. when i master server admin and have done 2-3 HF,s with no issues and no missed blocks then I might look at c++

I want to thank you for the stuff you do here. I don't think that anyone who says your not serious for not making it to steemfest yet is not really looking at what is going on here. A lot of us love steem but are not making enough money here to stop working or travel a lot. I would have loved to go but I couldn't afford it and leaving my wife alone with the kids would have been really hard to pull off. Good job on starting to learn linux I hope it all goes well.

Every day is a school day and really as I witness, I need these skills. I love to learn so it shouldnt be too much of a bother.

Yea I get the 'life' stuff that goes on and its nice that you understand leaving someone alone with kids for a period is difficult. Many husbands do not value that!!!!!!

To bad you can't go to Steemfest. Perhaps you can bring your children in a few years?

I do have some good news for you. You can power up another 600 SP 😀

cant power all that up. current server costs for the next 2 months, backup server to come and prizes. im hoping to put enough in saving to cover all these costs for 6 months, then i will start powering up again.

Woops I fully forgot about that.

I didn't realize that, but now I do I think you are trying to become a witness (not yet top20), which means that you don't earn anything at all as witness right now, correct?
But you do have some expenses.

no, we do produce blocks and earn a little from that, but we want to grow some SP in the witness account so we are not using these funds yet to cover the cost. That way we can support community accounts with upvotes from our witness account. So I guess you can say we have been investing in communities by not using these funds to pay for the servers and using it to give upvotes instead

Love to see the dedication - you've got my vote! I'm glad that you see the importance of community too. At first I came for the crypto but it is the community that keeps me here and where I found the real value! Thank-you for upgrading your tech knowledge to upgrade @steemcommunity!

I am a beneficiary of your project and indeed I can only say you are fantastic. People will talk you out of your goals or gainsay. It is your responsibility to make sure that what they are saying is just nothing but trash. Keep doing what you are doing for the community, help is on the way...
Also, a secured vote from me all for your witness.

hay @mediahousent and thank you for the support. Looking forward to seeing your witness vote for @steemcommunity, every vote counts these days!

I did not know about the witness until now actually ...
Thanks for your work and your seemingly endless amount of energy!

Learning how to work with Linux is always a good thing. I'd suggest to use the machine you are training yourself with for some more training topics (bash/ksh/csh scripting, awk/sed, perl, python, apache and its extensions, php, json and its relatives, smb protocol/samba) before focusing on the setup of a new witness server. You could also use the prospective server for mining for some time to help get it refunded to some extent.
Linux is such a fantastic means to widen someone's view on IT ...

Some of the stuff you recommend is included in the course, bash python json databases. 2 nights a week for 8 weeks. I though with self study i might be able to fast track but now i have started i think if i can keep up with the pace of the couse i will be happy 😁

Posted using Partiko Android

Some of the stuff you recommend is included in the course, bash python json databases.

Awesome.
I trained myself on Linux back in the 90s on my own and most is forgotten, new developments are unknown to me.

Paula, I just voted you, best of luck. Great article, I noted on the witness list several have been disabled, a lot of changes, a lot of people who used to be big players, not so much anymore. Seems like things are capitulating in crypto space maybe and we'll have a shake up to the upside once again soon. Peace, Gene

All the best I'm wishing you, Ma'am. You told me once, "Everyday on Steem I learn something new." Now Steem makes you learn something new.

well the good news is that I love to learn. Hope you get better soon @aneukpineun78

The top 50 would allow us pay for our servers

How many servers do your witness have? How much they cost?

Your witness got ~260 STEEM in producer rewards in last 30 days. Even expensive server don't cost that much. Do you have backup or seed node too?

Posted using Partiko Android

The top 50 would allow us pay for our servers and have some growth. You cut my sentence in half? We want to grow the account to so we can support communities.

Right now we don't use witness rewards to pay for the server so we can grow and support, therefore we are fully investing this fee personally. We pay US$112 for our server each month. Now that we will be adding a back up, thats going to cost us more. so if we want to grow, and cover the cost we need to make it to the top 50. We could just cover the cost and not support communities, but thats not what we are about. lol in a perfect world, I would like to not power down for at least 5 years and I am willing to try invest the time and money to do so. Its our choice to do it this way and I just hope that the steem community can see that we are really investing here in the communities and in steem. We don't self vote, and we dont delegate for a 'fee' or 'profit'

The 260 we earned in the last 30 days is amazing, its increased a lot this last month. We also had a good week the week of the HF as so many servers were upgrading at one time, we got a nice little boost. We had been floating around 72 place till recently. so please do keep in mind, we have not always earned 260 steem and for many months the witness rewards would not have covered the cost we are currently paying.

I am hoping that the new skills and other changes we make will help our growth an achieve our goal of reaching top 50. here's hoping :-)

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