It's funny... a couple of weeks ago, I had this dream that there was a 10k SP delegation contest by @theycallmedan. It was a crazy and nail-biting dream, where @steemitbloggers was running from the outside lane with a small but strong and dedicated cohort of bloggers. Sadly, in the dream, we didn't get the first prize, but we managed to punch well above what our numbers would have predicted. So, the community seemed win the respect of other groups on STEEM, in part because of the sheer energy that our entire community put into the effort (led by our leaders @jaynie and @zord189). In the end, we won a generous delegation from @bluemist who recognised the vitality that the community brought to STEEM.

So, it is curious that @theycallmedan is running a 20k SP delegation contest... which is now calling for nominations for worthwhile projects. So, with that in mind, I would like to reiterate why I would like to have people consider @steemitbloggers, and also include some special mentions for @pifc, @ifc and @classical-radio.

Why @SteemitBloggers?

1. SteemitBloggers is a tight community of INTERNATIONAL bloggers with a focus on engagement and quality. You can be let in, but if you don't maintain either of these qualities, then you will be shown the door. Why is this important? Too much of STEEM is based around the easiest and most minimal effort at gaining a bigger reward number at the end of the post. With SteemitBloggers, there is no shortcut, you produce good content, you engage other bloggers and there is NO automatic upvote or anything like that. You work hard for your community support!
2. SteemitBloggers is highly active on promoting STEEM on other social media (Twitter, Facebook and various crypto platforms as well). There is no point telling ourselves on STEEM how great STEEM is. We need more people and a snowballing network effect for this chain to show it's true potential... otherwise, we will pat ourselves on the back and reward each other (or pick fights with each other...) until the ship finally sinks....
3. The tight curation means that @steemitbloggers is not afflicted by the scamming and plagiarism that takes advantage of the larger projects or automated projects. You have a high bar to get into the group and then a consistently high bar to stay in the group, this linked with the NO guarantee of community upvotes means that it is a viciously tough target for a bad actor to take advantage of.
4. Activity and money are not linked for us. We have been here in the good times, and we STAYED in the bad times. This is not a community that comes to take the rewards and then jumps ship when things get tough.... we are here, this is our home!

Other mentions

I would also like to point out three other worthwhile projects that would be nice to get a mention in the contest. These are much much smaller projects that would be overwhelmed by 20k, but would be absolutely grateful for any loose change in the SP that anyone might have to spare!

@classical-radio is a personal curation account (run by @bengy) that supports postings (Performance or Theory or writing) in the #classical-music (@classical-music run by @remlaps), #jazz and #folk tags. As a professional Classical musician, I see way too many postings here that seem to be upvoted by large accounts with no idea of music. It seems like the defining quality for a large upvote is that the music LOOKS good or posts in the right tag, and I wonder if anyone has actually listened to the music on display.... Anyway, this account does it's best to reward the posters of quality music (not quality videos... I listen to the music) with 70% of the liquid rewards of the curation being sent to the featured posters. It's hard manual work, but that's what I'm happy to do here!

@ifc (run by @apolymask) is a long running contest with a weekly theme. Contest entries can take any form you like, from written blogs, to songs to poetry or video. How you decide to approach the creative hook is completely up to you! This community and contest was one of the first that I joined on STEEM, and it has been a great way to hone my writing skills (which were completely neglected before joining this platform!).

@pifc (run by @thedarkhorse) is a weekly curation contest that aims to feature and support new STEEM bloggers (under 55 rep). It is hard to find good new bloggers among the many who are here as either bots or in for a quick low effort reward, the ones that we find should be nutured as their growth and success will attract others to the STEEM platform. These are the people that we need to retain (we need to retain everyone....) the most!