What is the purpose of this blog? Ever since I established husdal.com 13 years ago, and particularly since I started blogging 3.5 years ago, I have thought about where this blog should be heading. In the beginning it was a bit of a mixture of whatever came to me, then I focused almost entirely on literature reviews (academic journal articles, books and research papers), and recently it has gone back to a little bit of everything. Is my scope to wide or should I narrow it down? Surely, I cannot complain about a lack of readers, so perhaps it is fine the way it is? Nonetheless, finally, I have developed a “mission statement” and those of you following this blog on a regular basis will probably have noticed the subtle changes already. So…what is this blog going to be about in the future?
Three-in-One
Initially, husdal.com was set up to disseminate my own thoughts and research, starting with my MSc in GIS and Transportation in 2000. Having a professional background in safe community planning it was only naturally to include Transportation Vulnerability and reliability as an issue I was looking into. That became my first choice of topics, along with Business Continuity, stemming from my jobs prior to my MSc. That is my second choice of topics. My current job as a researcher with the Transport Economics group at Møreforsking Molde, with close ties to Molde University College, the only university in Norway that specializes in logistics and supply chain management, then made Supply Chain Risk the obvious third choice. While they are three separate and distinct fields, they are nonetheless strongly related to each other, and it is near impossible to look at one while disregarding the other two, and providing the linkages between these subject has become the main driving force for this blog, and my mission, a choice of direction I am very happy with.
Mission statement
On my About page I have thus listed my mission statement as such:
To serve as a gateway to
- Supply Chain Risk
- Business Continuity
- Transportation Vulnerability
and related subjects, as found through
- academic journal articles and research papers
- books and book chapters
- company and government whitepapers and research reports
- blogs and websites
- other resources and personal thoughts
Category changes
The last big change in categories was a year ago, when I streamlined some 70 or so categories into 8, based on the supply chain of my blog. I had kept the categories more or less intact since then, but recently it became clear to me that another Spring cleaning had to be done. With the new mission statement, the public (as in “displayed”) categories have now been reduced to 5:
- ARTICLES and PAPERS
- BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS
- REPORTS and WHITEPAPERS
- BLOGS and WEBSITES
- THIS and THAT
There are two more “non-disclosed” categories, HUSDAL.COM, delivering blogging insights, and my PUBLIC PRESENCE, containing my personal presentations and publications. However, from a mission statement point of view, they do not need to be displayed, and the latter can be found through my About page anyway, as it should be.
New branding
Another subtle or rather quite visible change has been done in the header image, going from this:
to this:
Supply Chain Risk was and still is my primary subject, but the old header omitted the two other subjects, perhaps costing me a couple of first-time visitors looking for those subjects, and who never bothered to click further, obviously. The new logo is thus more in phase with my mission statement and conveys a clear message of what can be found (among other things). Another reason for changing the header is that noted some confusion as to how other sites and blogs woud link to me, 1) Supply Chain Risk, 2) Supply Chain Risk – explained, explored, researched and reviewed, 3) Jan Husdal, 4) husdal.com or 5) Supply Chain Risk Research and Literature Review (the “meta” title that shows up in the browser window). The new header clears the confusion…I hope. At least until the next change.
Where did the ads go?
Those of you who have been following this blog very regularly will have noticed another change that hopefully has improved your reading experience: The ads that used to run along the left side bar are gone. Basically, the whole sidebar is gone. While the ads did make a non-negligible sum of close to $100/month, and paid for my hosting and a couple of other nice-to-have blogging services, I felt that they were making my blog look cheap, commercial and not serious about research, which after all is meant to be the hallmark of this blog. Hence, I got rid of them, and isn’t it better now? Update 2011/04/19: The ads are now back in, as the absence of ads was making a non-negligible impact on my finances, which only goes to show that in the end, money always wins over morale.
Mission (Im)possible?
Is this blog a mission impossible? It almost was, until I developed my mission statement. Now, with a clear focus, blogging has become easier, but also more difficult. Instead of being a little bit of everything, without a clear purpose and direction, I now have to think a bit more before writing a meaningful post, but I also notice more easily topics and papers that I can write about.
How about you?
Well, those are my thoughts for the weekend. To those who are reading this and who have a blog…have you thought about why you are blogging and does your blog have a mission statement?
Related posts
- husdal.com: Time for change
- husdal.com. The supply chain of my blog
