Hello everyone, it is time for another interview! Today, we had a great pleasure to talk with the representatives of the awesome community project @helpie. These Steemians are gathered around very important objectives which we thoroughly discussed, so you can learn more about them and understand why people say that helpie is a haven for all great content creators.
CM: Before we get to the main part, can you tell us more about Helpie? You are one of the founders, who are others?
@Helpie is a community project that, as its name implies, was created to help valuable users grow on this platform. We do this through mentoring and curation, as well as many different activities that encourage positive actions among members.
We strive to become a home community for high-quality content creators as well as content consumers while encouraging engagement across all users. We have seen that this improves overall user retention, which is vital for the long-term success of Steem.
We very much want to teach our members about Steem as well though, and do so through educational tutorials, trivia, and weekly meetings where we focus on the ins and outs of the platform. While also encouraging long-term thinking and understanding the true potential of STEEM
Helpie was originally created by @ankapolo and @meno with @pechichemena and @LLFarms joining in shortly after to launch the project. Since then we have also added @eonwarped, @paintingangels, and @carrieallen into the main operations team where we all work together on the day to day dealings in the project.
Though we have a main team of operations many members among the @helpie family add their skills and knowledge to the better of the community.
CM: We understand that you try to keep people active and engaged as much as possible, how do you manage to do this?
There is no trick behind this, what gives a community its value is the people. So, if you want people to feel comfortable, to enjoy their time inside a community, all one needs to do is find the right people to be part of it.
Then, because everyone you've invited is uniquely special, uniquely qualified, everything starts coming together. The blending of ideas and the power of creativity starts to bear fruit.
Helpie started just like that. And all of the sudden we had games, we had events, we had gatherings, things that would make people not only enjoy their time in the community but <b>want</b> to be there.
CM: Behind every community, there is a development plan. What are your plans at this moment? What changes do you see in the upcoming year?
The Helpie community has focused primarily on people, and in this front, it has surely succeeded and possibly exceeded expectation. However, one of the transitions that we want to make is to grow our technical contributions to the STEEM ecosystem.
We would love to have @helpie develop and nourish a team of developers that could contribute to the decentralization of the STEEM ecosystem. You could say that is one of the grand goals for 2019.
CM: Can you roughly estimate how many active authors there are in Helpie at the moment?
The numbers vary, but of course, the price being down has taken its toll. It's usually anywhere between 98 to 120 active contributors per week. We've had peaks of course, and also valleys, but we appear to be down to the core group at this very moment.
CM: Helpie also has a running witness how is it ranked?
It's currently 51 and we are very grateful for the support we've received. We were told from the very beginning it would probably take a year before we broke even. That happened in less than a week! This shows us that the STEEM community has noticed what we do, and that holds more value than words can describe.
CM: Are there any benefits from running a witness during this bearish market?
There's only one that we can think of: It shows the level of commitment witnesses have. If you are willing to run at a loss, if you are willing to add more water to the soup, so to speak, because you believe in what the STEEM ecosystem can do in the long term, then right now is the time to show the community that commitment.
CM: Do you plan on developing apps or add-ons to improve user experience on the STEEM blockchain?
We've developed a few already, more like tools. But yes, there are some things in the works. At the moment we have a particular app designed to make HTML easy to use for non-techie people.
CM: How does the witness node enable you to achieve your planned goals?
We needed a way to scale our operations. The more SP we accumulate (because we don't power down), means the more people we can support. This is key as there is absolutely no plans of slowing down or stopping the course, but we had to be realistic about the support we could garnish in the way of delegations to scale our operations.
CM: How do you think we can trigger activism and take participation to another level? How can we motivate people to take action that is not aimed only at getting rewards?
I think this is already happening, but it's going to take time, just like anything meaningful. What's important to remember is that ROI profit is not only measured in dollars or satoshis, that the value of the community goes beyond those limited concepts.
If more and more people adopt the mindset of inclusion, leave their personal islands and create meaningful bonds with one another, then the desired effect will eventually take hold. The village that takes care of itself, that we all want to see, will be in full display.
How do we get there? We keep on walking and the new leaders keep on rising. The ones that don't give up because of a conflict, or because their rewards are down will surface. Once all the short-term minded "leaders" are gone and the real ones set in, the crowd mind, as you describe it, will take hold and the people will know who to follow.
CM: Do you feel that your closed membership and the exclusive, scalable rewarding system is opposed to the crowd empowering which is mandatory for the total blockchain growth? On the other hand - do you really support the good content or your members?
Our closed membership is more to be meant as a filter to our discord group, we are committed to greeting and getting to know each one of our members and help them in any way we can. Our members come from many backgrounds and also vary in all levels of knowledge in the STEEM world. This way of operation has worked marvels in user retention which has been one of the main problems in the platform. Also, we are not exclusive and encourage the helpienauts to go find more communities they feel a part of, many of our members are also very active in other servers focusing in many different areas.
Our delegation system is also meant for the bigger delegators to take care of the smaller members as we want to help in distributing the support in what we think is the fairest way possible, this is constantly being adjusted to maximize our efficiency in the support of all members.
We support a combination of good content and good users, we are not a strict curation guild but we do expect our members to be supportive and good players in the blockchain, spammers, scammers, and plagiarists will get banned from the group immediately.
We also support our members but reach outside the community through curation initiatives and manual curation. Any member is welcome to bring posts they feel could get an extra vote and our manual curators and/or members will get to them.
CM: What do you think about our project? How do you see Crowdmind in the near future?
We think the breaking down of what you call the 4 key elements of ''empowering a crowd'' is a very effective and intelligent way of breaking down what is needed to balance a healthy STEEM ecosystem. Any lack of these 4 elements and we are missing a wheel in our vehicle. We need to support the users, the creatives, the communities, the developers, projects and such in a balanced way. Bringing together the users from all backgrounds, interests, and goals to fuel this platform and bring STEEM to its full potential should be the goal for all of us.
We think 2019 is going to be the year of the communities, we are on a bear market but we are quite certain that all the projects that are set up in connecting people will become forces of good influence in the platform. We at @helpie wish you for the best of success in your project and count on our support for reaching your goals in the shortest time possible. We are all on the same mission and hope to be walking alongside @crowdmind in the long run.
CM: Thank you for this conversation and good luck in your future work!
Also posted on Crowdmind.io website with SteemPress : https://www.crowdmind.io/2018/12/06/crowdmind-interview-meet-helpie-home-community-for-high-quality-content-creators/