After much thought and deliberation, I've decided to become a STEEM witness. I'm not a developer, nor am I certified in anything technical (unless you count a MOS cert I got back in 2001), but I've been dedicated to running Steem projects and servers for nearly 3 years now, and I am up to the task.
Some of the projects I'm involved in:
MSP Waves
I took over this project at the end of 2017, and have kept live streams running 24/7 on Steem's first and only broadcast network. Keeping a server alive year round is one thing, but keeping a real-time stream live while pulling from hosts all around the world and transcoding to multiple outputs is a whole other beast in itself, and giving dozens of hosts a voice every week has been a very rewarding experience.
Freezepeach
This is my personal pet project, and it's near and dear to my heart. Even back in the bull run of 2017, I saw a need for differing opinions on Steem, and after seeing many people get "demonitized" for stating the "wrong" opinions, I decided to do something about it. Since then we've helped a lot of people ignore troll flags and keep posting, had several apps created to manage the service, and haven't stopped since we announced over two and half years ago.
PALnet
I have been one of about a dozen wonderful moderators on PAL for over 2 years now, helping shape the community into what it has become today. Over the course of that time, I've helped new users with new user questions, given tips, and helped retain people here in this often confusing and chaotic platform.
SteemSafe
This is the newest project I'm spearheading with a lot of help from @firstamendment, and hopefully people with a Steem account will be able to Save the Internet within a few weeks from now. Stay tuned for more announcements on this.
As you can see, I've been dedicated to helping grow and retain people on this chain for quite a while, and while I'm not one for politics in my day-to-day life, starting a witness seems to be a good choice in my current situation. If any of my projects have helped you on your journey here, please leave a comment or share this post and spread the word. It's hard starting out as a witness, and even if your vote isn't big, getting the word out will help a lot.
If you want to vote for my witness, you can manually search r0nd0n via the following options:
https://steempeak.com/me/witnesses
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Or click this link to vote with steemconnect.
Big thanks to @someguy123 for his awesome guide that made this process much easier.