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What We Blog About
Thu, 06/19/2008 - 17:55 — wpomerantz
We're starting to think seriously about some potential changes to our web presence here on the Space side of the X PRIZE Foundation--including some thought about changing up this blog. Perhaps we'll fold it into a larger group blog, so that you can hear more voices and see more frequent posts, giving you even more access to the behind-the-scenes info I've tried to provide here on the Pomerantz Report. If you have any suggestions about what you'd like to see, we'd love to hear them! Please feel free to comment on this blog post, to contact us via Twitter or email, or to comment in the General Discussion area on the Google Lunar X PRIZE Forum. As part of this thought process, I've been reviewing what I normally blog about to find common threads as well as indications about what readers enjoy. One fun way to visualize that is through cloud from Wordle, which highlights the most frequently used words by making them larger. It's a fun visual tool... (Click the image below to visit a much larger version).
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Comments
what we blog about
I think the web presence is good, and has improved over time. I guess you could add a group blog, but you already have guest posts here, and others could make their own blogs, so it might not be all that different. Probably the best of both worlds would be to keep personal blogs with personal views, but also combine these into a "X PRIZE Space" blog that also contains XPF space news, press releases, and other non-personal-blog content.
I actually think the other XPF areas (Automotive, Genomics, and Under Development/General) should be more like the space area, at least when it comes to web presence, both for consistency and because I prefer the space version. The Progressive Automotive PRIZE blog has been pretty quite. I don't think the AXP blog needs to duplicate outside news articles or the X PRIZE Cars blog. I do think somewhat more commentary there would be useful, though. A voluntary GLXP-like AXP Teams template might be good, too. A Genomics blog, Forum, and team area might be useful, too.
I might also consider a Lunar Lander Challenge Forum and voluntary team blogs, although those teams from earlier years that want to already have their own.
As for actual content, I might suggest XPF space interviews on the Space Show or Planetary Society Planetary Report. Space Show callers might give an idea what the public is interested in. Such interviews would probably result in some interesting topics to discuss here.
Some other ideas: You could include guest posts from outside the XPF. For the GLXP, this could be people like lunar scientists, astronauts, and engineers. It could also be potential GLXP suppliers, investors, sponsors, preferred partners, or customers. For the LLC, similar ideas might work, but slightly adjusted. For example, instead of a lunar scientist, you might have an Earth scientist or Earth viewing satellite instrument engineer that could use an LLC-derived suborbital vehicle for remote sensing science or engineering data.
One other possible topic: future prize ideas (sent in from the outside, discussed internally, etc), and (if applicable) how they might complement the existing space prizes and other XPF areas (energy/environment, life sciences, etc).
Any news on education/student competitions, the X PRIZE Cup (even if it's "we're still working on it... but this is what we hope for"), and the Lunar Lander Challenge would be interesting.
That's a lot of ideas and opinions I just threw out - more than I'd want to take on if I were you. Hopefully 1 or 2 ideas in there are useful.