My blog started with a simple post on a SVP conference I had just attended in Berlin and it was a simple starting point for me. I enjoy conferences to meet and mingle with people and talk science, and I was expecting the Berlin SVP to be the last one I attended for a while as my work was looking mainly at modern species. That turned out to not be the case as I attended last year having managed to work on scaling of extinct cats. This year I didn't make SVP as I was finishing my contract with UCL and starting a short-term technician role at the RVC and there were no travel funds, but I managed to attend the very amazing ICVM in July instead. It is still a bit weird for me going to conferences and people knowing your name from work you've done.
The blog has developed covering topics such as my postdoc research, and stuff on ornithomimosaurs - the group of dinosaurs I did my PhD on. I even ventured out of my comfort zone of the strictly scientific into a bit of historical things on how cats and human interactions have evolved and changed through time. It was an eclectic mix of topics as I was finding a direction for the blog. To be honest, the blog remains an eclectic mix of topics as it covers things I am interested in and working on.
I've also spent a lot of time talking about my publications. It helps that I had a productive few years in my first postdoctorate in terms of publications with 8 papers in the last 2 years, 2 in review, 1 about to be submitted, and about 5 more in the works across various collaborations. However, I make a particular effort with the blogs on the papers as I know many of my friends and family aren't experts and can only understand one in every 3-5 words (apparently in some papers, my parents get even fewer) due to the specialist nature of some of our research. I'm still trying to get my first guest blog post from one of my colleagues who was the lead author on two of the most recent papers looking at felid vertebral columns. If anyone does ever want a copy of a paper, just give me a shout and I'll get you a .pdf as soon as I can.
I've also spent a lot of time talking about my publications. It helps that I had a productive few years in my first postdoctorate in terms of publications with 8 papers in the last 2 years, 2 in review, 1 about to be submitted, and about 5 more in the works across various collaborations. However, I make a particular effort with the blogs on the papers as I know many of my friends and family aren't experts and can only understand one in every 3-5 words (apparently in some papers, my parents get even fewer) due to the specialist nature of some of our research. I'm still trying to get my first guest blog post from one of my colleagues who was the lead author on two of the most recent papers looking at felid vertebral columns. If anyone does ever want a copy of a paper, just give me a shout and I'll get you a .pdf as soon as I can.
I've particularly enjoyed getting to show off some of the field work I've been lucky enough to work on, whether it was digging for fossils in India or Argentina, or the postdoc work on cats (1 or 2). A lot of my work is done in labs/my office but I cannot ever fail to emphasise how much I think field work is vitally important for palaeontologists for collecting fossils, or actually getting hands on animals to see how they actually work.
There are some bloggers who are very active in showing the human side of the science in terms of their emotions and feelings, and to that end I've tried hard to show myself in my writing, but have kept a lot of my personal life out of my blog (although kind of got close discussing the job hunt). That aspect is not likely to change even though work and personal life are sometimes tough to tell apart right now. I am hopeful that some of the things I publish are helpful particularly to others in terms of advice and guidance whether that is for people interested in getting involved in palaeontology or young career researchers going through similar things in their academic careers.
I like numbers so there has been a change from how I monitor visitors from just using the blogger details (about 18,250 page views in the last 2 years), and got Google analytics. It's only been active since mid-June but allows me to see better who is reading and what is being read. Each post still has a variable number of reads, but I did have two since June hit 1000 reads already. Unsurprisingly, dinosaurs do better than job search chat. In that time, I've had readers from 79 countries (I have regular readership from about 30 countries each month), with the USA being the largest readership and all 50 states and DC have had people read the blog.
I'd like to thank everyone who has been reading, and particularly those who keep widely sharing my blog and the posts so widely. I know with my Twitter and personal Facebook I don't reach more than about 700 people with a high overlap across the two so getting as many viewers as I have is largely thanks to them.
What changes can people expect in the next 2 years? There will be a general winding down of cat chat as I move away from the project (although there is probably a year or so worth of research that I am involved in). That being said there may be one shortly about the outreach event we did on the evening 9 November where we carried out a postmortem on a cheetah that was donated to us via a museum for science and outreach. The animal had passed away at a UK zoo and we were lucky enough to be able to use its unfortunate death for science and teaching the general public.
What comes next for me? Well, I've been offered and accepted a job at the RVC as a postdoc in John's lab for another 2 years and I will be returning to dinosaurs and crocodiles looking at the evolution of the two groups' locomotion. Expect lots of posts showing "Team Dawn Dino" at work with live crocodiles and tinamous (fairly primitive birds from Central and South America), as well as work on fossils. I am hoping to still sneak out on field work from time to time to get dirty in the field. The quest for a new species is ongoing! If anyone has any digs upcoming and are looking for volunteers, do give me a shout.
The blog is never going to become a massive thing like IFLS (which became click baity and designed to make money). I am going to keep posting my research and things that interest me. I am hopeful to get a few colleagues who I have worked with share their knowledge, particularly on collaborations where I am not the first author. I will do my best to make sure everything I publish is accurate and up-to-date, but feel free to call me out on mistakes or missed citations as I will happily update the blog accordingly.
Thanks again to everyone reading and do let me know in the comments if there are things you like/dislike or think I could do differently.
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| One of the Cat Survival Trust leopards having a yawn |
I like numbers so there has been a change from how I monitor visitors from just using the blogger details (about 18,250 page views in the last 2 years), and got Google analytics. It's only been active since mid-June but allows me to see better who is reading and what is being read. Each post still has a variable number of reads, but I did have two since June hit 1000 reads already. Unsurprisingly, dinosaurs do better than job search chat. In that time, I've had readers from 79 countries (I have regular readership from about 30 countries each month), with the USA being the largest readership and all 50 states and DC have had people read the blog.
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| Readership of the blog since June from Google Analytics. Darker colours are higher numbers of views. |
What changes can people expect in the next 2 years? There will be a general winding down of cat chat as I move away from the project (although there is probably a year or so worth of research that I am involved in). That being said there may be one shortly about the outreach event we did on the evening 9 November where we carried out a postmortem on a cheetah that was donated to us via a museum for science and outreach. The animal had passed away at a UK zoo and we were lucky enough to be able to use its unfortunate death for science and teaching the general public.
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| Picture preview of the postmortem. Myself in the middle working on the forelimb. Photo from the RVC link above, Photo credit: Oliver Siddons |
The blog is never going to become a massive thing like IFLS (which became click baity and designed to make money). I am going to keep posting my research and things that interest me. I am hopeful to get a few colleagues who I have worked with share their knowledge, particularly on collaborations where I am not the first author. I will do my best to make sure everything I publish is accurate and up-to-date, but feel free to call me out on mistakes or missed citations as I will happily update the blog accordingly.
Thanks again to everyone reading and do let me know in the comments if there are things you like/dislike or think I could do differently.
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