Hey, I don't know what happened with openmic....Luzcypher just stopped posting. But we have a new open mic contest you can check out. We just finished week 8, so the week 9 entries will be open in a few days. https://steempeak.com/sgl/@sonicgroovelive/submissions-for-week-8-of-sgl-are-now-open
Also, yes, the tribe tokens are linked to Steem. So, if someone uses the tags creativecoin, or palnet, or sonicgroove etc, and you have those tokens staked, then you will be upvoting them with those tokens as well as steem.