The stats monkeys at WordPress created an annual report for this blog for the past calendar year. You can click here to see the complete report if you like, but here’s an excerpt that I find very interesting:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 34,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 13 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
My colleagues and I are reaching an audience that is hundreds of times larger than that of any of the academic journals that we might publish in. So if you have an idea that you would like to communicate to a large audience, get in touch, because we are open to guest contributions. We don’t pay any money, but then neither do academic journals, and unlike the companies that distribute those journals electronically, we aren’t earning billions of dollars off of your unpaid labor. And there are some tangible non-monetary benefits to blog writing.
I suppose any year-in-review post should reference how this blog originated — the APSA Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC), which for 2014 is happening in Philadelphia, February 7-9. I’m not much of a conference-goer. I hate disruptions to my routine, especially those that involve air travel, and let’s admit it, most academics, including myself, are terrible presenters, especially compared to some of the entrepreneurial folks I’ve met in the field. But the TLC has been a consistent highlight of my academic career. Don’t just take my word for it — see what Amanda and Simon have to say. We’ll be doing some live blogging from the TLC this year, but seriously — attend if you can. It will be an eye-opening experience.