Everything's on the move this week! Steemfest, witnesses, Steemit, and our own projects have all got a lot going on.

Since you're reading this post right now, it's pretty likely that you already know that Steemfest has been happening in Lisbon. Regretfully, I had to miss Steemfest this year, but I've been enjoying watching all of the coverage and reading everyone's posts! While I've been at it, I've been using this time to keep getting some work done on all the exciting things we've been dreaming up — which means we're going to get some more free tools launched for Steemians to use. Please note that I'm declining payout on this post since it's just a round-up style update and some thank-yous.)

While we did miss being at Steemfest this year, we know we won't next time around, and we're already getting our A game ready.

We've kept at some of our big ideas and are pretty excited to say that with some hard work, we now have a new tool we plan on launching tomorrow. I think a lot of steemians will find this one super useful! Our goal for this witness project is to continue to release free tools that will help steemians of all account sizes better understand, use, and ultimately succeed on Steemit. We don't do a lot of campaigning here in posts... I am of the firm belief that our tools and our efforts across a number of communities speak for themselves.

With that said, we're grateful for those who have seen value in our work and who have voted for us in support.

Our witness received a few more powerful votes this week, and we are currently sitting at position #24. This is pretty exciting, and lets us know that the hours we put in and the contributions that we have been making are in line with what you want to see out of community leadership.

Since we're getting to the point where the blocks are coming faster and faster, we've made sure that our backup witness server with failover safety is installed and working well. This means that if our main witness server goes down for any reason, our back up will kick in and takeover so that blocks (and therefore your steemit transactions) aren't dropped. As a precaution, this backup server is located in a different country and different datacenter than the main.

I've been so happy to see how many people have been placing trust and faith in our work.

Our goal is to be a solid witness, grounded in the community, at as high a level as we can. I truly hope that this means that some day we'll be a part of the top 20, for a chance to bring new perspectives to the leadership here. I also realize that we need to earn this, and feel really great about the contributions we've made so far. I've always been the careful sort, so I'm getting two more back up servers set up this coming week, in anticipation of any future growth or requirements.

So, now what, you guys?

Both @crimsonclad and I work full time on Steemit, in various communities, and on the tools that we've been releasing for everyone. For our craziest ideas, when we're not sure how to make it happen all by ourselves, we have a couple of developers working with us full time — they help us make our tool and project dreams a reality. If you haven't seen the stuff we've already released yet, please go take a look at http://steemistry.com! You might find something there you really like. 😉

It's important to us that we are open and accessible.

If you ever want to chat, discuss anything about Steemit and Steem, or want to give us feedback and ideas on our work, feel free to get in touch with either @crimsonclad or myself, on Discord or Steemit.chat. Both of us spend most of our days working with Steemit users and community members, and we always want to know how we can improve, or to hear your ideas.

Some other fun stuff this week: more live radio!

I had the opportunity to be a guest on The Writer's Block radio show State of the Witness Friday evening with @swelker101 and @anarcho-andrei as hosts. I loved it! They were great, and I had a really good time; they are both seasoned radio hosts, excellent witnesses, and really likeable guys. They both have some incredibly intelligent viewpoints, and it made for some excellent conversation. If you ever want to learn more about what witnesses do, this is a great program to catch. Both myself and Crim hope to pop in to the show more in the future, if they'll have us! (Also, if you didn't know, @crimsonclad has a metal show on MSP Waves Radio on Thursday nights, so you can rock out with her. She'll be starting a community talk show soon too, and is looking for feedback on what you want to hear.)

That's the week in a nutshell. It's been a fun and exciting one.

My promise to you is that we are here seven days a week, and usually at minimum fifteen hours a day. We want to see users succeed on Steemit, and we want to see Steem and Steemit rise to their full potential. Part of the reason that it will is you. We're going to keep doing our part too.

Bring on next week!

Image of Steemfest courtesy of @rolandp

I'm Jeff, and I'm @followbtcnews.
I'm a top 30 witness, along with my project partner @crimsonclad. Feel free to reach out to us on Steemit Chat or Discord any time! If we haven't earned your vote yet, please take some time to look at our tools and our work. We hope you decide to place a vote for followbtcnews at https://steemit.com/~witnesses