Well, are you a human? It is a problem I have only noted in humans so maybe you are a bot or an alien in which case, no, I do not mean you. "The professional blind spot" is a real thing, and when there is money on table, when one's livelihood or even reputation or peace of mind is at stake, humans DO lie to themselves. And we are total suckers for the most ridiculous bullshit when we are feeding it to ourselves.
Tell me, if you heard ANYONE else tell you they could work for Microsoft and Apple and always have the best interest of Microsoft AND Apple customers at heart, you would laugh at them, right?
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I think so, though I hear there are theories out there about the other two possibilities :)
I'm not denying that humans do these things. What I'm trying to suggest is that it's not a guarantee that all humans will do this. You're right, humans DO lie to themselves and humans are suckers for absolute bullshit.
The comparison to Microsoft and Apple is an interesting one, albeit somewhat misleading. Microsoft and Apple do the same thing for the most part - Steem and EOS don't. A better comparison would be something like "Do you think someone could be on the board for Microsoft and Medium", in which case, I'd say "yes".
Actually being educated about what these products are and comparing them properly is one of the biggest problems I see with nearly every concern I've seen raised so far.
Let's look at what I think is a closer example, let's look at Josh Elman. He is on the board of directors for Medium (blogging social network), Discord (chat social network), and Musical.ly (video social network). This (IMO) is a far closer analogy since these platforms are fairly similar. Far more similar than Steem is to EOS. Those companies all seem to be doing pretty well (I read medium, I use discord), so I have to assume that he's able to operate, on the board of all of these companies, in a way that keeps all of those different businesses best interests at heart.
I am not sure what to tell you, and I'm honestly not sure what you (and others with similar opinions) think I should be doing. Do I have to quit working on Steem to dive into a (in my mind) non-competing platform? Is that what people want to happen here? Am I going to be forced to disclose all non-Steem work I do? I just don't understand where this is heading. I am not here to create drama, I'm here to contribute to the advancement of blockchain technology.
If your heart and imagination are captured by EOS, then that is where you should be putting your time and energy. What I want is witnesses who are putting steem first, second and third - at LEAST until this platform is fully functioning. Hearing top witnesses say things like/ "We do not want new users, we are not ready" almost made me quit about a week ago. I NEED NEW USERS. I am not part of the old boyzngirlz club, I am not going to ever be a "big player" but if new users were coming AND STAYING my blog would probably grow. It feels, from my perspective, like all the folks who made their money early are pretty content to coast and those of us who got here late keep getting told "You are an early adopter, just hang in there!" are, well, hanging out there.
I will say, I am quite impressed with how much time and effort you have spent to respond to me and to others; brownie point and duly noted. ;)
I've appreciated the conversation! It helps me think about these issues as well, and put pen to paper to push some of these thoughts out into the ethos.
I really do wish it were that simple, time will tell if this is true or not. Over the past couple days even though I've been away from Steemit, I've still been thinking about this topic a lot.
At this point my imagination isn't captured by a single project, I have my fingers in dozens of different technologies that I'm researching and evaluating for various purposes. EOS is one of many, and while I'm attempting to be a part of it (with a larger team) - time will tell if that's even an opportunity I'd be lucky enough to have. For all I know we're going to be 80th on the producers list and not involved in any meaningful way.
What I will say though is that if at some point my focus becomes completely consumed by another individual blockchain (whatever it may be), I do agree that it would be best for Steem if I were to step aside. That point isn't now - and funny enough I'm actually excited by some of the progress I've made on wallet tech, which I'm looking forward to reusing when SMTs are released.
At this point I think I just need to let the next few weeks unfold. Everything is incredibly uncertain right now.
To shift into Steem topics, I get this, from both perspectives.
The hard part about it is what you capitalized, the AND STAYING part. It's a chicken or egg problem - with the divide being users won't stay until the experience is good enough vs users won't come back if it's not good enough.
Witnesses on Steem, when it comes to onboarding and growing Steemit.com, are largely powerless. Each one of these Steem powered sites, Steemit, Busy, etc, are all in control of their own destiny. While they may take a witnesses opinion more seriously than a random person, they are the ones ultimately deciding and the witnesses have no direct control over what these sites do or do not do to encourage growth.
That's why I set out to build chainBB and Reprint in the first place - to take that control and try to better improve the user experience. The problem I ran into though is that I couldn't do the things I wanted it to do - 90% of the time it was because the technology I needed didn't exist. That's why I've been working on more boring projects recently, that aren't user facing, because I want those tools to exist for the next guy like me who wants to come along and build something better.
I'm getting a bit rambly, it's been a long day. I hope I've at least shed a bit more light into what's going on... at least in my head :)
Ya' know, I am starting to like you in spite of myself... You earned my respect, and that is not really easily done.