My pleasure man. It's always good to see you at the meetups! I did notice towards the end that you were no longer with us, lol. But's it's all good - I like that you were motivated that much by what you learned that you didn't want to wait until things ended to start tinkering. And I'm curious if you learned anything interesting since from your explorations.
I agree that it's been masterfully designed and fascinating to hear someone clearly explain the mechanics. The interfaces of some sights maybe still be a bit clunky and inelegant, but the systems underneath the hood are beautiful. I think a few years from now we may look back at Steem as one of the projects that helped to change the existing paradigms in a major way.
I also like the pay for votes / promotion model that Matt talked about. It creates more opportunity for individuals as you point out, and there are definitely plenty of good content producers that can and do use it effectively. Sure there's opportunity for abuse by scammers and low-brow profiles hoping to get rewarded for garbage posts, but the community I think will weed them out. Overall this represents an amazing shift in power to the community and the end user. Amazing.