moutreach lives!

Now it’s time to gradually upload content…so let’s start breaking the ice. The first feeling of being online is a mix of excitement and fear.

Excitement for having succeeded with the practical implementation. I am so happy to be using Jekyll to put this blog together. I have taken the minima theme and modified only a bit, can’t do more with my current skills, but honestly I am not interested in graphic layout too much anyway. It has been a steep learning curve since I am not a web programmer at all (didn’t even know what html was before starting…). Almost a DYI project. However, great satisfaction and feeling of ownership now that everything is settled into place!

Excitement because this space opens for a lot of new communication and dissemination possibilities compared to my current academic outreach. I felt for a long time the need to bring my work to the attention of a larger public. I don’t think it makes sense to keep it confined to the academic audience. Not because what I do is more important or deserves more attention than what others’ do. It is more like a (moral?) obligation. Bringing the research results to the public, and making the effort to communicate them in comprehensible ways…I think is part of my job. As simple as that. Also, this is a space to present views I have on general research topics (peer-review, authorships, etc.), and teaching that I can’t publish elsewhere. Hopefully I’ll get feedback to initiate some discussions.

Fear because I hope to live up to the blogging task…so far so good though, fingers crossed and looking forward to the rest.

Some people to thank already:

  • Emanuele for technical support in general and in the domain choice
  • Simone for encouraging me to start a blog
  • Matthew for discussing the potential and feasibility of a research blog
  • Anita for saying the graphic layout was not that terrible after all…
  • who wrote this blog post on domain settings. THANK YOU, I was completely lost with DNS, CNAME etc…