I’m doing this blog for lots of reasons
A big reason is that this is a testbed for ideas. I alluded to this on Wednesday, but broadly speaking material that will appear here – material written by me – will at some point probably end up edited and reworked into books. Those books will probably cost money, but at the point here it will be totally free. You don’t have to pay any money or do anything in order to read it. You don’t have to sign up for anything, give me coin or contact details or even tell anyone in order to read these posts.
If you would like to tell people about this writing though, there are lots of ways to do that: follow me on Twitter (@DrRyder and @VivaSurvivors), like the Facebook page, put the Google+ page in one of your circles. I’ll be mentioning the Viva Survivors Podcast from time to time as new episodes come up, or if there is something new and interesting over there that I want to share more widely. Follow, like, put it in circles – and I’ll keep you up to date with posts and other things as they come up.
All of the posts have share buttons underneath as well to make thinks straightforward if you see something and want to pass it on to others; when things get shared that will give me an indication – before any other feedback – that something I have written has connected. I might not know the reason, but I’ll have an inkling that an area might be worth exploring more. I have ideas and half-thoughts – both for content and for how to run this blog – but it’s all up for exploration really. Figuring things out as I go along.
One of the things that I’m going to be exploring is Patreon. I’ve liked the look of the platform for a while now, and I support several content creators through it. I think that this blog might be the first project on Patreon that will have a postgraduate researcher development connection (I might be wrong though, so let me know if I’ve missed something!), and that is neat too!
I’m still working out the details, but essentially if you like what you read, if you have a little spare cash and if you want to support writing and help for postgraduate researchers then you can pledge a little money per post. There will be more details about this very soon. Patreon is currently all in dollars, but from $0.10 per post (less than 7p per post) you can support the blog – and me – and there will be benefits for patrons’ support, including ebooks, podcasts and more.
Posts start on Monday – I hope to have a basic Patreon page up and running by them. The blog will be starting with a short series of posts, just ahead of the start of the academic year. To begin with I’m sharing the quick ideas that I’ve found massively useful when helping postgraduate researchers – and I’ve found them pretty helpful too.
See you on Monday, and thanks for reading.
Nathan (@DrRyder and @VivaSurvivors)