Thank you for the feedback. I agree about the need to find forward thinkers to prove the concept.
On your last point about finding like-minded people, that seems to be one of the biggest challenges to many aspects of Steem adoption. At the individual level, my efforts at recruiting have met with less than stellar success.
Feels the same for me and I believe that will change only when steem offers something more than a "blockchain solution". I thought about a concept where people can publish academic journals and papers through the blockchain, or maybe offer something like what researchgate offers.
I agree. I think it will take-off when an app emerges that people would want to use, even without rewards. Eventually, I think that will happen, but it's a lot slower than I had imagined when I got here.
I think @steemstem was initially working towards something along those lines. Not sure if they're still pursuing it or not.