Nice post @paulag, nice to be caught up on Steem fundamentals, I haven't tuned in for a while.
I agree with your points about manual curation, it's great for everyone and we could all use a bit more incentive to do so.
it's also nice to see you putting marketing on developers to talk about.
It often feels like development and marketing are two very far away poles/disciplines which rarely overlap or appreciate each other; the functional & performance aspects of development vs. the appearance & communicative aspects of marketing are pretty different contexts.
Are there any marketers on here really having good discussions about this? Who's around? I see you calling on developers to taking on a bit more of a marketing perspective and I think this is good, and I think bringing a problem-solving/engineering mindset to marketing can be really effective; but it's not an easy task. What are developers planning to do with marketing? Do they appreciate marketing? Or is there still a level of ignorance/naiveté towards it?
I'm all for organic growth from the development of good tech, but marketing for the purpose of community engagement is so effective particularly in the short-term at early stages.
Development and marketing ARE poles apart. This is common in every industry. The trick is to try and blend them. STEEM has amazing developers in the community. but we also have amazing marketeers and we can leverage these as well as we leverage the developers.