Steady stream of information
Much of this blog’s new design revolves around the idea that similar information should live together. This is why the three categories in the header bar – Scientific Administration, Admin Hacking, and Miscellaneous – are do more than just show you posts. They also display the most recent bookmarks from my Diigo account. In the future, they will include links to relevant podcasts among other still-emerging ideas.
Whether or not there has been a new post in that category, there’s usually something new to look at. This is part of positioning a blog to be relevant. It’s something I’ve thought a lot about and will be working toward over the coming year.
There’s a great article about this (by Mahendra at Skeptic Geek) and even though it’s focused on the business world, it’s really about the world of ideas.
The “Influence Management” entry links to a post by Mia Dand who describes how leveraging social media is often about using a handful of influencers (read: with large follower numbers) to spread your message. Contrast that with Dynamic Social Graphs as described by Robert Scoble, where influence is dynamically determined based on relevance and not just numbers.
My take-away is that there will always be big sites with many pageviews, but I’d rather cultivate a small audience of interested collaborators. The idea behind this site is to share knowledge. Involvement is not the path to reward, it’s the reward itself.