Chris Unitt

Backwards and forwards

Chris Unitt -

I’ve been looking back at the past year of posts on this site to see what I want to carry on and what I want to rethink.

It’s pretty easy to bundle 2013’s posts into a few themes – arts analytics, big data, monthly links, thoughts on research and notes from talks/events. A loose kind of structure has worked pretty well for me, letting me settle into subjects more than I might if I was being a bit more scattershot.

The mailing list was a good addition too. I’ve not sent out as many emails as I should have, but sign-ups have far surpassed what I expected (in terms of quality and quantity).

Overall, I wrote fewer posts in 2013 but got roughly the same amount of traffic as in previous years. That suggests I’m either writing about more interesting stuff or I’m promoting it better. I’m reluctant to believe it’s the latter (I don’t think I go particularly overboard touting these posts around) and the former, if it’s anywhere near the truth, is a happy accident.

The outline plan for 2014

Firstly, I’m going to stick to broadly the same themes. In the immediate future I’m going to:

  • Publish a post explaining the Mitos21 talk I gave back in November. That’ll come out in four parts over Jan. There’s quite a bit to write and that’ll save me having to wait until it’s 100% done before releasing it into the wild.
  • Revisit and finish off the Big Data posts. Life got a little hectic around the time I was thinking about that stuff, but I’ve got a couple more things to say before I’m happy to put that to bed.
  • Pick up the Arts Analytics series again. Those posts tailed off in the latter half of 2013 but they were quite fun to do and I’ve got a stack of topics to work through.

An email to the mailing list will go out every couple of months. It’ll feature highlights from the blog plus some extra goodies. Sign up for that here.

I’m going to stop the monthly link round-ups. If you want to see the interesting stuff I come across then you’re welcome to take a look at my Pinboard account. Check in on CulturalDigital – I’ll be posting links to things on there and hopefully others will too.

Oh, and I’m just in the middle of sorting out a new theme for this blog. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause to your journey.

Finally, if there’s anything you’d like to see more do more (or less) of then let me know – I’m listening…