This is the 400th post on the Fuse blog and in the spirit of using arbitrary milestones as worthy of note, I thought it was time for some (blog) post-match analysis.
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| Brian Lara who holds the record for the highest individual score in a Test innings after scoring 400 not out against England playing for the West Indies in 2004. |
Over the last five-and-half-years, we have had 399 posts, written by 116 authors, and more than 395,000 page views. There has also been a lot of #fuseblog twittering, coffee room chats, and (you surely didn’t think it could be any other way?) blog-related committee discussions.
We even won a UK blog award last year (not that we mention it much!) and were shortlisted in two award categories earlier this year. But shortlisted isn’t winning and on the train back from those awards in April, I contemplated what we could do to improve the blog or - dare I say it - if the blog had run its course, done its job, had its time.
In academia, more than any sector that I’ve worked in (and I’ve worked in a few) you are encouraged to STOP, put down your machete, and climb above the canopy to see if the direction that you’re heading in is getting you to where you want to go. Academics will quite happily interrupt you in mid-flow to ask: ‘so what?’, ‘what impact are we making?’, ‘who are we reaching?’.
Since taking the wheel from blog founder Jean Adams I have enjoyed myself. I have learnt a bit about community and herding cats, I have made some real-life and virtual friends. I have written the odd post, although admittedly not as many as Jean, and I have enjoyed the discipline of having to write 500 -700 words for public consumption (usually when I can’t find anyone else to post).
I think the other writers have enjoyed it too, once they’d got past their initial reservations.
From all of this, I surmise that people value both reading and contributing to the blog. But I don’t have a clear view of who you are. You also seem to be discussing it in some forums. But you aren’t leaving comments on the blog itself. We have had a grand total of 480 comments posted, of which 234 were spam. So that’s 246 sensible comments. From 395,000 views.
So, I would now like to invite you to use the comment box below to post your thoughts on the blog so far. What sort of things do you like? What stuff would you rather we skipped? What would you like more of? Who are you? You don’t need to tell everyone your name, but what got you here? Why are you interested in this blog? What would make you more interested?
It isn’t that tricky:
- Depending on how you got to this page, you either start typing straight in the white box, or you need to click the orange link “No comments” at the bottom of the post to get the white box to appear.
- After writing your thoughts, click on the “Comment as” pull-down. If you know what any of the branded options mean, select one. If not, just chose “Name/URL” or “Anonymous”. Then do the ‘prove you’re not a robot’ thing and you’re done.
And, just before you get to work: thanks. Thanks to the writers, the readers, the reviewers, the commenters, the retweeters, and the lurkers. See you all again at the next arbitrary milestone.
Hi Mark, I don't think the blog has run its course but I do wonder if it's stagnating. Also, it only reaches those who engage with social media. Although, many practitioners, public, and academics are now operating in this virtual space, I think to push ourselves more into the open we need to think of ways to get this blog into another more accessible space. I don't have the answer for how to do that and it's possible the content isn't sexy enough* to grab wider attention so a push into wider virtual space or public realm may be fruitless. I realise that doesn't offer much in the way of suggestions, but I think there's some thinking to be done about how we widen our audience.
ReplyDelete*sorry folks, my non-public health friends would be hard pushed to read this on a regular basis - unless I've written the blog and spam their inboxes with it :)