SΩ14 - 2015 and Slack to the Future

Feels like 2015 just flew by! A year ago I wrote my first post, in which I shared my vision for ‘Society Ω’. Thus, it feels fitting to write a post reflecting how the blog has evolved and the plans for 2016! Ask for your slack community invite: here (explained below).

Discover a Better You by Blogging

The blog has often surprised me as if the blog has developed a mind of it’s own! For the most part this blog has acted like a playground for soul searching. As cliché as it may sound, blogging has helped me become a better person.

It’s allowed my creative side to flow and discover some of my closest interests: questioning the norms, bridging cultures, and shaping altr-umanity. Another outcome was uncovering that educational technology feels like the career path for me. I also discovered that every word counts and strive to keep a one-page limit per post. This has greatly improved my communication skills.

Most importantly, I’ve come to enjoy producing content that provides value to the readers! This got me thinking of how some of my posts entertain people and other posts can provide some guidance of issues I’ve faced. On a deeper level, it’s exciting to get people to question the world around them!

2015 in a Nutshell

Looking at the numbers, the blog was viewed in 44 countries and had over 1,600 page views.

Based on page views the top posts for 2015 were:

1. Global Kindness: Cultural Tales II 
2. Our Global Impact
3. Exploring the Job Jungle 
4. Cultural Tales
5. Culture Talks: Digi-Comm & Laughter

Clearly the cultural posts are the most popular! It’s great that the top two posts also had rather deep messages. However, with limited numbers and feedback, it’s tricky to tell what made these posts so appealing!?

Slack to the Rescue

In fact that’s a constant struggle! How can I give readers what they want, while sticking to my beliefs and the aim of this blog? Furthermore, how can I push the blog into actions? That’s when I realized all you readers deserve a voice as well! If used wisely ‘slack’ is a tool to develop and strengthen such a community. So here it is: societyomega.slack.com! Please ask for an invite: here.

I’m also considering new ways to present my ideas. Although text is here to stay, it’s clear that video is dominating the internet. I hope to create a video of sorts in the near future! I could definitely use some collaboration with that.

The target for 2016 is to have been read in at least 100 countries! Do you have some brilliant ideas of how to achieve that? Please share them in the slack community!

Finally, here are a few teasers to possible posts. Please tell me, which you'd like to see:

• Exploring Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) 
• Idea for the ‘Giving Vacation’ 
• The bliss of a minimalist life

SΩ4 - You: The Reader

After only a week, since ‘Society Ω’ became public, I’ve been blown away by the praise and support. I’m genuinely surprised that so many enjoy my writing! From the feedback I received, most found ‘Cultural Tales’ entertaining, while ‘The Pursuit of Curiosity’ and ‘Society Ω’ got many people thinking and sharing their own ideas. That’s perfect, since that's the aim of this blog! In case you’re wondering about fellow readers, here are some stats:

Page Views  - 100+ (Blogger counts my views, so exact number unclear)

Number of Readers - 20 to 30 (estimate based on feedback & page views)

Countries - US, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Japan, Australia, Canada, Malaysia, & Slovenia

While pondering the next topic to write about, I asked myself: how should this blog develop? Either I could stay focused on a few topics or write about every tangent I think about! In some ways, I believe its quality versus quantity. My opinion is that a more focused blog with quality posts has a deeper influence. For now I’ll stick to this path and in the future will add other topics. My plan is to write around 4-8 posts per month.

Apart from this, I’m thinking of ways to get readers involved in the development of this blog. Would be greatly appreciated to receive honest opinions on what should be improved or changed. Maybe this is only possible if the identity of the person is kept anonymous? Will look into adding an online suggestion box to test this out.

On a similar train of thought, I was toying with the idea of letting readers vote on what the next topic should be! Here you can vote to choose the next blog topics: Blog Poll. Feel free to write ideas to be voted on for future polls.

Last, but not least, I’d like a better name for the blog. It should be something that describes the topics well and be easily found on Google. A search for the blog name should only return a few thousand hits, if possible. 

What would be incredible is getting all the readers in the same room and having a discussion! Since most of the readers are spread across the globe this isn’t possible. In the near future, I think a brainstorm via group video chat would be great. Let me know if you’d be interested in this!

In the future, I’m imagining a merge between a forum and group chat. Or perhaps create something new entirely! I think ideal would be if different platforms were made optimized for brainstorming and problem solving. Below is a concept I have for a brainstorming platform that’s a mix between a group chat centered on an ideas list that’s voted on by the present members. The central piece could alternatively be a shared whiteboard.

Looking forward to your remarks, comments, queries, and more!

Blog Poll