Currently the fastest way to open a Steem account is to register for a paid Steem account. When you go to the sign-up page it shows two option - 'Free' and 'Third party/Paid'. The 'free option' would take 1-2 weeks of waiting time while the 'paid option' is instantaneous. When you choose the pay to sign up option, then you'll see this on screen:
I think if you are already using steemconnect then it is the simplest and the best way to create an account. Open this link https://v2.steemconnect.com/accounts/create
1. Fill in the name you want for your new account.
2. Be ABSOLUTELY sure to save that password very carefully at a safe place (if you loose it, you loose the account)
3. Fill in "3.000 STEEM" as the fee (make sure that you have that liquid steem in the account that you are using to log in from steem connect)
4, Press continue and log in from steemconnect to complete the transaction
5. You have your account
NOTE: As far as I know the promise of HF20 was of having the ability to get more accounts open. That was due to the scalability issues of the Steem Blockchain. This means that we have two advantages now:
1. Before the HF20 the number of Steem accounts that could be created were dependent on the number of Steem tokens in circulation. We can now have more accounts opened since now the account creation is subsidized by the blockchain. Basically as long as the witnesses think its safe to create more accounts, we can have as many as we need.
2. The Dapps are no longer dependent on steemit.com for account creation.