This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Today is the first anniversary of the Scientific American Blog Network!!!
The SA Incubator was launched, like most of the blogs on the network, on July 5th, 2011. It had a pretty slow start, as I had my hands full with all the other blogs. But, with addition of Khalil as co-blogger a few months ago, the blog got into its rhythm of roughly one post per day, and the traffic has been steadily rising ever since.
Here at The SA Incubator we profile new, young and/or up-and-coming rising stars of science writing. We promote their work, describe student-run magazines and blogs, and link to their publications. But we get very few comments here, so we are in the dark as to who exactly reads The SA Incubator. Is it just writing hatchlings reading about each other? Or their parents? Perhaps their professors? Do veteran science writers have this blog bookmarked? Are established researchers checking in regularly? How about science students considering writing as an alternative career if the tenure track does not pan out? And most importantly, is this blog read by editors in various publications, scouting for talent to hire?
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Four years ago, Ed Yong started a tradition, picked up by many science bloggers, to ask readers who they are and why they keep coming back. He just did it again recently. So we thought it would be interesting to ask you the same questions (#1 and 2), as well as question #3, later added to the tradition by Drugmonkey, and a fourth question devised specifically about this blog.
Commenting here is really easy (and will become even easier by the end of the year). "Registration" is a misnomer, it's just a login on a separate page from the blog post. When you click on "Register" you are taken to a page where you give us a name/nym, an email address and a password. Pseudonyms are welcome. Then you come back (there is no confirmation email you need to wait for, etc), click on "Log In" and enter the same name/nym and password and are ready to commment. Please do - here are the questions:
1) Tell us about you. Who are you? Do you have a background in science? If so, what draws you here as opposed to meatier, more academic fare? And if not, what brought you here and why have you stayed? Let loose with those comments.
2) Tell someone else about this blog and in particular, try and choose someone who’s not a scientist but who you think might be interested in the type of stuff found in this blog. Ever had family members or groups of friends who’ve been giving you strange, pitying looks when you try to wax scientific on them? Send ‘em here and let’s see what they say.
3) Where did you come from? I'm interested in whether you found us, or regularly follow us, through Twitter, Facebook and/or other beyond-RSS mechanisms that you may use to corral your information stream.
4) What is it specifically about The SA Incubator that you like? What posts do you remember well? What types of posts do you especially like? What keeps you coming back again and again?