Posted by: Brian Krueger, PhD
Posted on: Wed, Dec 01, 2010, 8:28 am CST
Long term goals? Well, world domination of course!
1) I think it'd be cool if we could eventually get a large and sustained readership similar to DiscoverMagazine or Scientific American. They currently see about 10 times more traffic than we do so there's some work to be done. There are a few things that factor in to getting that kind of success. They're really the four pillars of the internet: Money, time, luck, and content. I think we have a lock on both time and content. Luck gets much better when you network and find people willing to help you or trade favors. I'm working on a couple of good alliances now with sites that attract visitors that'd be interested in the content here but that we're not directly competing with. Those are win-win relationships ;) Finally, money. I don't have much to invest in advertising and site promotion. I think we could do a lot better here if we had a couple of booth campaigns at large scientific meetings just to get the word out. I've spent a couple thousand dollars on Facebook advertising over the last couple of years, but I'm not sure that it really did much. Advertising really is a "go big or go home" kind of field. To get the kind of money we'd need for a major campaign would require some kind of investor proposal and I know I don't want to invest the effort they're going to expect (like quit my real job and do this full time) AND I really like the independence we have here to do whatever we want :) Plus, then the site becomes all about returning the investment and profits, etc. and that's not what I want to be doing here! Of course you can all help by self promoting like crazy and telling your friends about the site.
2) Make LabSpaces a science fact check hub. There was a lot of criticism going around about the press releases and I think once I get the press release rating system finished, we'll be doing something much more useful with them. It'd be cool, like you said, if journalists stopped by here to verify if a press release was a good primer for a full blown piece. Additionally, I think it'd be great if the public used the site and our community of scientist expert bloggers to verify or refute things they've heard in the media.
3) Biochembelle's post on how to use social media to expand your network was really good. I think it's important that scientists start to see the value in internet networking. It can have just as much impact on your career as face to face networking if you do things right. Showing our not so internet inclined colleagues that there are potential benefits here would be another long term goal.
But I really just do this site for fun. So these things may be goals, but I'm not investing every waking moment in this website and maybe that's a hindrance to achieving them. At this point in time I'm much more focused on a career in biotech than one in information technology. I guess I'd have to think long and hard if the website became more of job than a hobby. And if I ever need a fall back career, admining and coding this site has given me a crapload of real world experience.
How about you tell me what some of your long term goals are and we can try to figure out how to use the site to make you more successful in achieving them? Maybe that should be long term goal 4) Help my bloggers be more successful in their blogging and their science :)
