I fully support the break. You guys deserve a rest (more than a week in my opinion) as I know many of you have full-time jobs outside of steemstem and restructuring how you handle things can be greatly beneficial.
I'll be one of the first to admit that I need to engage with more steemstem authors. There are a few authors that I read and interact with almost every post as I find their content very interesting and well-written but I should definitely give more authors and topics a chance, which I'm definitely going to start doing.
I currently only look at physics, (some) space articles, ecology, geology, and biology posts and there is so much more that is offered by the community that I need to read on as I am fairly ignorant of the topics.
In regards to engagement with other authors outside of the community, may I suggest adding a discord chat room that allows people (who want to co-write an article, series, or something ) to post a topic and connect with potential co-authors. I know they can do this on their own, but I imagine it would be easier to find like-minded individuals this way.
Another suggestion is having a requirement of community activity in order to receive upvotes from @steemstem. This activity could be non-spam comments, upvoting, re-steeming, etc. I know there can be issues with that, but I bet the community engagement would go up because, as you guys said, a lot of people are just waiting on a payday and they will probably do whatever it takes to get that payday.
Thanks for passing by. Admitting one is not engaging as much as one should is already a good first step.
All suggestions have been noted and applied (some coincidences, but this means our ideas are independently the ideas of others too, which is a first sign they are not crazy): we now have an ideas-room on discord and we have a mentor program.
More information on the new steemstem post.