Help Us Resolve Our New Year’s Resolutions

It’s the first day of 2015, and all sorts of people are stating and explaining their New Year’s resolutions. We here at Nerd Caliber also have some resolutions for the coming year. Of course, we call them “business goals,” but the spirit is still the same.

Also, we started discussing these resolutions months ago, which allowed us to achieve some of, or parts of some of, the resolutions before the end of 2014. Among those is the new Disqus comments system. To comment on any article, at the end you will see a green button that says how many comments it already has. Clicking on that will bring you to the very bottom of the page where the comments box is. You will have to log in, but if you don’t have a Disqus account, you can use Facebook, Twitter or Google.

And we want you to use that comment feature — after you read about our resolutions, we want you to help us by making suggestions in the comments. That said, here is what we resolve for 2015. In a word: Growth.

Growth in number of contributors
We have already started to do this, adding Chris “Gallant-Z” Ruiz as a blogger focusing specifically on indie game reviews. But because he is also an excellent cosplayer and the drummer for the outstanding band A Simple Complex, we may have him branch out very early in 2015. We also have a handful of new videographers and photographers ready to join the team and bring us their convention content.

Growth in the frequency and variety of content
In 2014 I strove to post at least once per day, but the demands of daily life and of convention coverage on the weekends kept that from happening, although we came close. In 2015 I want that to be not only a reality but to exceed the number 365. But also I want to increase the areas of nerdy interest we cover. I started covering some New England renaissance faires this year and plan to continue that and hopefully expand it. But I also want us to cover more things of interest to our nerdy readers. One thing I’ve been unsuccessful doing in 214 is recruiting a regular comic book reviewer, so if any of you have suggestions for someone (including yourself) please let us know.

Growth in geographic reach
Since both our Fearless Leader (Emmanuel, the publisher and founder of Nerd Caliber) and I are both based in Massachusetts, the bulk of the site’s coverage of conventions and other nerdy activities have been mainly confined to the East Coast (with occasional expansion into the Rust Belt). But we want to also bring you content from conventions and events in the West and the Midwest. We have begin recruiting some contributors, but we plan to add many more in 2015. Getting local contributors is vital as it is tough for those of us with day jobs (meaning, all of us) to justify the time needed to travel to a multi-day convention all the way on the opposite coast. And that leads us to…

Growth in revenue
One way to make it easier for us to get current members of Nerd Caliber to far-flung big-name cons is for the site to actually start making money. The Google ads supply a trickle of pennies, but for all intents and purposes, the site is a money loser and all of our efforts are volunteer (with love, of course). Having some revenue source would allow us to do many more things to serve our readers and our community. We have some ideas which you all will see in 2015, but we are always interested in more.

So down below in the Comments box, give us you ideas for how we can achieve any of these resolutions — or any ideas that you would like to see on the site, no matter how seemingly far-fetched. Just know that you can suggest things like we become a hardcore porn site, but linking porn pages or photos will get you blocked and the comments deleted. (And no, we won’t take such suggestions seriously.)

Thanks for taking the time to contribute back to us, and from all of us at Nerd Caliber, Happy New Year!