Don't be too sorry, I think it's reasonable that people still have lots of suspicion because those things haven't been explained clearly enough. Generally I think @ned is great guy but sometimes he is just not very good at explaining basic stuff. He and @dan are constantly looking forward and rarely stop and look back.
This was a big problem also for Bitshares. It made some seriously great innovations but @dan didn't take enough time to explain those for general audience.
@dan wrote this post before the launch of Steem: https://bytemaster.github.io/article/2016/03/27/How-to-Launch-a-Crypto-Currency-Legally-while-Raising-Funds/
"You just need thick skin and the ability to ignore the Bitcoin pharisees and the angry mob they incite to nail you to a cross for failing to sacrifice your creation to the prevailing mining gods."
This happened, and @dan and @ned have had thick skin. But there should have been much more thoroughly explanation why the launch was made like that. It's just really bad PR that there is still lots of people who believe that Steem is a scam. Very little have been done to fix the situation.
Also IMHO @ned failed in the interview because he didn't promote the innovations that Steem blockchain has. It's transactionfeeless blockchain, which is one of the biggest innovations of the year in the blockchain scene! That would have been a great talking point for your audience who are probably more interested in underlying technology than most people.
And the whitepaper is becoming obsolete because there have been so many upgrades to the system. Currently it doesn't give a clear picture of what Steem is and how it actually works. Hopefully it will be rewritten in the near future.
I do think the complexity of Steemit is a serious issue. Reading through Tone Vays' tweetstorm on Steem he points out at various times that mechanism and entire paragraphs are incomprehensible. Perhaps that's not intentional, but when one can't understand the structure and economics of the system in a reasonable time, it contributes to people looking at it with suspicion. I think focusing on that is would help Steem a lot.
I don't think that Steem is actually too complex or hard to understand. We just lack good documentation for the system. Devs haven't understood yet that documentation that is comprehensible for layman is very much needed for marketing purposes.