08-09 Feb | 1st meeting on Leave Topics
2023-02-0917 Feb | Brainstorm while Helping Friend
2023-02-17I have decided I need better support to share my notes. I got positive feedback and questions that could not be answered by the basic version: How can I read in Portuguese? Do we receive alerts if a new article is published? Can we comment? Additionally, I wanted to have some stats on how many persons are reading this and other technical benefits…I am a technical and data person 😁
I am really satisfied with the end results but it took me much more time than I expected (10 total hours across 6 days) becoming, up to now, the lengthiest “task” of my Sabbatic Leave. Also, it felt too much related to my non-sabbatic routine: adapting technology to deliver a mission. I should do less of it in the rest of the Leave if want to have a sensation of breaking from routines.
Anyway, I learned a lot and (as with everything else here) was a basis for some interesting conversations with people around me on why was I doing this new website and what would allow for.
In an optimistic takeaway: To build something new is a mix of risk, investment, joy and shared learnings.
Current and Future Use
The website’s current version allows visitors to:
- Automatic (not perfectly) Translate to Portuguese. Logical since I want to engage people around me.
- Send me messages to start conversations, give feedback or make suggestions. I will then answer by email.
- Subscribe to a Newsletter I will send (not in spam mode) on relevant changes or challenges to engage
- Leave comments or articles that I will answer by email, show publically or use to improve content.
On my side I want to evolve the website to include:
- Organized content, apart from Journal Articles, like more deep explorations or solutions sharing.
- Include Visual content based on Data Explorations, either made by me or sharing what others did.
- A way to enhance cross-topic navigation, maybe based on Tags or some visual solution.
Anyway, now what I want is to use it as a tool for Explorations and Conversations. To escape the trap of focusing on adding features or being hay on “having a website”.
Inspirations and Tools
- The site is very much inspired, both in format and content in a similar personal notes website by Stephen Wolfram writings.stephenwolfram.com. I follow his story for decades with curiosity. He started as a Physics wiz kid, founded a digital company to develop and market his Mathematica code language and was also involved in the initial works on complexity at the Santa Fe Institute. Apart from sharing, at my own level, his life path, his notes have a balance of personal, technology and data-wise that I really like.
- The style and colors were based on Medium.com, the current Blogging standard platform. This was not easy to do. Maybe 1/3 of the time on this visual part.
- I used a series of tools that can be useful for others
