Steemiversary- 1 Year, 3691 posts/comments, $30k, 4500 followers, a 5,000 person community, a witness campaign, and a digital Home.

I've been on Steemit 1 year. It's nearly incomprehensible how much I've personally gained from this place or how many hours I've poured into it. I want to take you on a little trip.

I've been a political activist since 2002. I've been protesting war since then. I marched in Crawford in front of Bush's Ranch demanding an end to the war that's still ongoing. While on facebook I used a number of aliases, aggroed, aggroed anonymous, aggroed enonymous, aggroed occupy, aggroed lighthacker. I've gone through those iterations because every time I got up to ~2,000 followers on facebook they would expel my account. They would put me through some identity test making me identify my friend's faces, but of course all these anon folks don't use their face and so it's an impossible task. By the combination of yet another account block when I posted on the Russian Skyscraper Fire, an anger towards using USDs in my transactions, and a censorship resistant blogchain (seewutididthur?) I decided to come to Steemit.

Getting started... the hard way

I made a shitty introduction post stating my name, using the wrong tag, and not including an image. I then posted on Seth Rich having been murdered as I knew then as I know now that his murder is a glaring example of a nearly endless list of crimes by government, especially Clinton family, officials.

When I came I did all the shitty things I tell people not to do. I spammed posts in general, I tried follow for follow, upvote for upvote, and was generally snarky about how my posts didn't get immediate acclaim, I teased other members of the community ie while I was making 7 cents a post Charlie Shrem dropped a post about how to live off of Steem alone so I wrote a response about how to starve to death while living solely off of Steem.

I posted a variety of in your face truth style articles, which were largely to elbow my way into forcing people's awareness to change about events such as 9/11, satanism in government, and rampant sexual abuse sanctioned by the state. While Steemit's audience is generally awake the tone didn't really match. And then came inflation...

Steemit decided to crank up the inflation through the roof. As a consequence the price of steem plummeted. While the value in your account really didnt' change much the post rewards suddenly became unbearable. I literally made 7 cents on posts that would take an hour, but I didn't abandon the platform. I knew that lurking inside of this thing was a bastion of free speech and free trade, but it was broken at the time. I made a few posts that were pretty negative that caught some attention, but if I had to qualify myself on here in my first stage I would use the term "mostly useless asshat."

2 resteems

While I was trying to grow muh account on here I ended up doing two things that forever changed my vector. I started hanging out in SteemSpeak and I started reading @kaylinart's posts. SteamSpeak and @fyrstikken in particular introduced me to a totally new understanding of crypto, what Steemit is actually capable of, a long term trajectory of this place, and I better understood the value of an off chain community. @kaylinart showed me through her own work how to write a good post. I wrote a guide to post writing inspired by @kaylinart and asked her and @fystikken to resteem it. They did!

Holy Fuckballs! I've been on a crazy trajectory since. A few things happened simultaneously. I started picking up a truckton of followers. I basically doubled within a week. That lead to a more sustainable income from posting. I also started having a real sense of kinship to this place and deep gratitude towards the folks that gave me a chance. I suddenly saw how this place could foster wealth, community, help eachother, and do so without personal cost and simply clicks. It all clicked, and I've since devoted nearly every free hour to helping this place.

My immediate response was to use my new follower base to start helping other people achieve the same thing. I created the weekly resteem contest as a way to give back and give others the exact same opportunity that skyrocketed me, but it started taking up too much of my personal wall. So, around the same time I started a witness campaign and thought I should put this resteem project onto a separate account dedicated to it.

As I got into the Witnesses I met @theprophet0. Kid's 15 years old and running a witness and working for steemsports. He's really got his shit together, but he couldn't afford to get to Steemfest. I thought I'm going to change this and help this kid out. I raised funds through a series of posts to fly him and his Dad to Lisbon!!! That felt amazing, but it wasn't enough. So, I created STEEMFEST MINNOW as a project to get the Minnow Support Project off the ground and help a minnow go to STEEMFEST. Over a series of rounds we raised enough money to fly @siersod to STEEMFEST and give exposure to a ton of great Minnows.

MSP really gets going

Along the way I made fast friends with @teamsteem, @ausbitbank, and @canadian-coconut. We shared a general mission of wanting the world to change for the better, and we all had general agreement that War, Poverty, and Chains of the State were to blame for the general rough shape of the world. So, I created the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Discord Channel and brought them in there. It's our plan to change the world for the better by interacting on Steemit and in our community.

As I was talking about the plan Whaleshares was announced and I spoke with @officialfuzzy a bunch and I watched how @banjo could be used to vote from inside of Discord from a community account. So, from Fuzzy and Whaleshares I learned the power of a community bot and from @inertia and SteamSpeak I realized I had the tool I needed. So, we made a simplified clone of @banjo linked that baby to @minnowsupport and then we had a way to let the community in there power the account... but it was broke.

Loanshark and benefactors!

That when I made a deal with @neoxian. He lent me 20k SP and I placed it on the community bot to give every person that came through PALnet a chance to use the bot. We tested the model and it worked, and when I put out a funding call @benjojo answered in spades. We added 90,000SP to the account!!!!

Now we started metioric growth. Some of our earliest and most active members became mods and @swelker101, @gmuxx, and @sammosk have been there nearly since the begginning helping to manage this baby as the Minnow Pond has been growing. As we grew we added channels, voice channels, and brought in extremely skilled people and new projects to help folks out. Many of us started creating additional bots to help power curation, training, creativity, or just upvoting folks that dedicate time and produce resources in there.

We needed help managing and maximizing the bots

I knew that Minnowsupport could be doing more, but I didn't have a way without giving lots of people the keys, which had a danger. Fortunately @netuoso came along and built us MSP3k, a voting program allowing individuals to have a password, which would grant them access to the community account. Now all the mods have the power to curate with the team of bots under the MSP banner. He won the first Medal of Honor for this!.

We needed a website

Steemit has a way of burying posts. So, we couldn't use the wall to share what we needed. While we have a general charter on the block it got lost too easily. What we needed was a website to help us. @followbtcnews and @crimsonclad came out in spades to help us. If you want to know what a gorgeous website looks like then look no further than @minnowsupport. That baby is exceptional. They both earned the Medal of Honor for that, and now we have a way to communicate the projects we're working on and the general guidelines for success in there.

minnowsupportproject.org

We needed a bigger voice off the block

So, now we built a radio station. You can listen to over 18M songs on MSPWaves.com. We have 20 DJs 15 shows and a background music bot too. We're playing tunes, forming communities, facilitating discussion, and helping folks learn to Steemit and headbang to ACDC while they do it. @sircork, @r0nd0n, and @ma1neevent all won a Medal of Honor for that.

Now we have new minnows who are entering the top 50 witnesses

I don't think it's by accident that @netuoso just hit the top 50 witnesses. The guy can program like crazy and has a community behind him. We're helping elevate witnesses to the top 50 list, minnows to the trending page, and we're really starting to see community members go from Minnow to Dolphin in 2 months months. It took me EIGHT MONTHS!!!! So, this project is literally shaving 75% off the incubation time for minnows!!!!

Steemit has changed my mindset

When I started MSP I had no idea how quickly it would grow or how successful it would be. I was stoked when we had 100 people. I was excited when we had a 1,000. I basically shit my pants when we hit 4k. It was unexpected and with it we've had some encounters. We've been exceptionally lucky to run into only a handful of scammers, trolls, and geniuses hell bent on flag wars. While I've been talking about Peace, Abundance, and Liberty, it's been personally challeneging and rewarding to figure out to execute on those values. We have a simple mantra in the group. "Deescalate." And now I use that approach, which I largely learned through trial and error here to help heal communities, calm Steemit elders, and even in my real life encounters.

So, I devout a ton of time and resources to my mission

I have only made 3 promises as a witness. My comedic one to be better than a dead witness, and my true missions of helping draw new users to Steemit and helping Minnows grow. Minnow growth has taken the majority of my time, but I'm happy to report now that I'm traveling to University Campuses again for work I do sneak in some visits to Communication and Journalism departments to talk about our Lord and Savior Block Chain technology. Hopefully you're going to see a few professors and graduate students joining the platform and I'm stoked to see what that brings with it.

What do I get out of this?

Well, I mostly feel like me and my family have enough. I'm in the top 80-90% income earners in the world. We have a nice family, nice house, nice cars, nice schools, nice fence, and that whole deal. That's why almost all of my SP remains delegated to projects to help others. We're ok, but other people aren't. I have the sense that all our souls are linked on this planet, and I'm using my time, energy, and resources to help others. That can be incredibly rewarding. I helped a mom and her kid eat. I kept another similar pair from getting evicted. I've taught peace over and over to those that display violence. I feel like I'm changing the world one person at a time.

All of which is for me personally to answer the question I fear my kids will one day ask "Dad, you knew about how fucked up the world is? What did you do about it?" I'm terrified my answer and the world I leave behind for them won't be good enough compared to how much I love them and how much they deserve a better place than this. So, I'm here. I've staked my claim on some digital real estate. I'm in there daily trying to make change.

When Trump won and some dems were crying havoc I saw a great little cartoon.

Dem- This world is so fucked now? What do you think will happen?
Gardener- There will be flowers.
Dem- How can you say that? This world is so terrible, there are so many problems, and everything is going CRAZY!!!!
Gardener- Because i'm planting them.

This is the option, and this is where I stake my claim

Steemit creates abundance at a click. It provides an avenue for uninhibited trade and nearly censorship free communication. It teaches peace on a daily basis. So, here I've staked a digital claim. Here is where I'll call home. Here is where I'll help grow and help people learn.

Thank you to those that support me. Thank you to 850+ Steemians that vote for me. Thank you for those that contribute to the Minnow Support Project. Thank you to those that contribute to the Minnow Support Project. Thank you to those that help make this a better world for all of us.

I'm intensely grateful. I started off on the wrong foot, but I've learned a ton since then. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to serve this community. It's one of the highest honors I've found.

Namaste and with Love,

Aggroed

If you would like to help

Please delegate steem power to @minnowsupport.
Please upvote witnesses from the Minnow Support Project. www.steemit.com/~witnesses
Please upvote and resteem minnows. If you want to see excellent articles make sure you're doing your part to be the curation you want to see in the world.

There are close to 400 people delegating to this project through a variety of ways. Many thanks to them and we need you to help us too.

Part Milestone, part lovefest, part manifesto part, part witness update, and all gratitude! Thanks for a wonderfully amazing year