I wasn't partner with Ned. I plan to go to Steemfest 3 (and I hope he will come, too). I'll seek him out and try to persuade him. If the arguments are good enough and repeated often enough maybe there's a chance he'll begin to consider ? I don't know but it's worth trying.

Yes there's a risk that by then the competitors will have won but what we should rather focus on is: would creating a "steem cash" - like fork do more good than harm or the opposite ? How does that risk (of a fork proving actually detrimental) compare to the risk of "competitors winning before Ned starts listening" ?

I don't claim I have the answer to the above but my gut feeling tells me that the latter is lower than the former; I don't know Ned's propensity to listen but the risk of diluting the steem brand seems so high to me that I wouldn't take it (as a shareholder who's invested above $15K of own hard-earned money in steem)