Regulars Said "Hey"

Wednesday last I asked Aard's growing ranks of regular Dear Readers to say "Hey" and introduce themselves. And the response was great! Many, many thanks for all the appreciative comments.

My purpose in asking this was twofold: a) I wanted to get to know you guys better, b) I wanted to know how I could improve the blog. The first part of the plan worked fine: I am very honoured to have such a diverse and insightful readership! But the second part kind of backfired. In fact, it's a classic case of a poorly thought-through research design, and I should really be ashamed of myself. In fact, my dad, who's spent decades designing marketing surveys, will laugh when he reads this.

Let's say we have a somewhat popular product that we consider changing in some way to make it appeal to even more consumers or to consolidate our existing market share. In order to do this, we get a focus group together. Now, what happens if we select this group entirely from people who are returning customers? Duh. They will tell us "Don't change anything, your product rocks!". This of course makes us feel happy about ourselves, but doesn't teach us anything we didn't know before. And that's basically what you guys said, with a few suggestions for change (mainly regarding the ratio of archeology to other stuff) that tend to cancel each other out.

But still I'm satisifed with the result, because I now have a better idea of what kind of people like what I do. And it turns out that to a great extent you guys do things that I like and are the sort of people I'd love to meet socially. This means that from a qualitative perspective, it would be unwise to change my blogging habits much, because doing that I'd be unlikely to attract a steady readership I'd feel more comfortable with. So I won't implement Plan B, to blog exclusively about Swedish soccer and the greatness of the Pentecostal Church. Not just yet.

Here's a regulars gallery. This self-reporting sample of 35 people in two days does not cover the entire median number of daily returning readers (c. 45), and there is a suspiciously high frequency of bloggers among them, suggesting that non-bloggers just can't be arsed to comment as they stand to gain no blog hits from it.

1. Lina: a 23-year-old archaeology student from Gothenburg, who owns too many shoes. Concerning archaeology, especially fascinated with gender/queer issues and landscape research.
2. The Ridger would like to read about actual digging, and the way people lived a long time ago.
3. Rebecca is most interested in the archaeology posts, especially those with photos of artefacts.
4. Arby is curious.
5. RBH has studied anthropology and cognitive science. Administrator on Infidels and a founding contributor to Panda's Thumb. Mostly interested in Scandinavian archeology for his wife's sake -- she's of Norwegian descent.
6. CFeagans is finishing his BA in anthropology with a focus on archaeology in May and will be starting graduate work after that.
7. Frank at Bourgeois Nerd is an American in his mid-20s and has always been interested in archaeology, mainly non-Scandinavian varieties. (The things I make this poor man put up with!)
8. Flitcraft loves the archaeology posts & pics, finding it fascinating to compare/contrast with Scottish archaeology.
9. Brian teaches archaeology at a small college in Minnesota and does most of his fieldwork in Alaska. He likes Viking archaeology (such as the Skamby amber gaming pieces) and discussions about the practice of archaeology.
10. Paddy K is an Egyptian prince with 600 wives.
11. Kai is a fellow Swede, working with "IT". He feels that the mix was more eclectic and fun at my old site, but still I haven't managed to scare him away entirely.
12. Malin is a PhD student in computational neuroscience, born and raised in lovely Östergötland, the area where I currently do most of my research.
13. Lycra is a Brit involved in archaeological research with a thing for bracteate iconography.
14. Henrik owns most of Denmark's Medieval/Renaissance archaeological record. Need a cathedral or a castle? He's got loads.
15. Thinker is another Swede, living in an area littered with rune stones, who came here from bioscience (which is hes professional background) and general skepticism. S/he'd like to see more posts that link yesterday to today, that illustrate the differences and similarities between societies then and now, as well as some geeky stuff about the application of science to archaeology. And pretty pics!
16. Lester's based in Puerto Rico, where he teaches humanities at a local science and engineering university. Reminds me of that early Pixies song, "Isla de Encanta".
17. Karen the Canuck Hockey Girl knows about lithics and is a real sweetie.
18. Denis is a 25-y-o Russian from Saint Petersburg with a PhD in Int'l Law. He's a leader for the community urnordisk on LiveJournal, which is devoted to Old Norse and Scandinavian culture and runology.
19. KevinC lives in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and is just about to get a BS in Environmental Science, Biology. He likes the wide-ranging topics but enjoys the archeology posts the most.
20. Steve F. is a PhD student in middle Pleistocene climate and ecosystem change and spends a lot of his time looking at pollen and charcoal. He wants to read about Icelandic and Palaeolithic archaeology. Which is kind of cool because the Palaeolithic is way, way back in time, while Iceland has among the world's shortest and most recent archaeological records along with other recently colonised areas such as New Zealand and Antarctica.
21. Lord Runolfr is a technical writer, an re-enactor and a history geek.
22. BLF isn't French but lives in France. S/he has two BSc (Maths and Engineering) and needs a vacation.
23. David Reiner enjoys the archaeology-oriented posts but finds the personal ones quite interesting too, especially the music. He's a math PhD and especially likes to know how scientists in other fields [think they] know what they [say they] know.
24. J-Dog has dug up bones (woof, woof) and has an anthro degree, but wound up in sales / marketing.
25. Julie's surname means "Steel Hat" in German. She's an insect molecular ecologist and a postdoc, living and working in Rochester, New York. This remarkable woman reads all the ScienceBlogs regularly.
26. Ted is a self-described history mega-geek.
27. Christina likes the blog and lavishes praise on my archaeological book reviews. I'm really curious about which of those books you've been assigned, Christina!
28. Pierre is a Småland-based archaeologist.
29. Venerable Clem lives in Michigan. He likes stories about local digs and incidental finds, and would like to see a dig diary project: following a project from "This site would be interesting" and why through organizing, bureaucratic navigation, staffing, the dig itself and strategic decisions made, all the way to paper published (or not) and disposition of artifacts.
30. Jorg's background is in astrophysics/Scandinavian studies: open star-cluster kinematics and metallicity and Finno-Swedish folklore! He grew up in Russian Karelia, which is incidentally where my son's maternal grandma once came from as a refugee. He's also got excellent taste in music. (-;
31. David Haskiya is an archaeologist specialised in computer applications who works at the Swedish National Heritage Board in my home city. He enjoys beating the crap out of squash opponents and watching high-brow and low-brow films.
32. Magnus Reuterdahl is another Stockholm archaeologist, in his case with an osteological speciality. He's into the period AD 400-1250 in Scandinavia and Northern Europe, as well as Neolithic China. (Magnus, I bet you just go there for the women.)
33. Bob O'H, a Brit with some Scandinavian experience, is a bio-statistician.
34. ANF is a godless American with an MA in Chinese Art and Archaeology, and a Ph.D. candidate and ABD in perpetuity in Chinese Art History. And s/he's got a thing for animal art!
35. Meghan has a BA in anthropology and did contract archaeology in the upper midwest US for years. Now she's a grad student studying health behavior.
36. Martin C. is a Stockholm reader affiliated with a major college of medicine.
37. Hans Persson is a computer wiz, a voracious reader and a friend of mine.
38. John McKay is a a librarian/technical writer with an MA in Balkan History. He lives in a part of Seattle that was once mostly Norwegian and loves archaeology and paleontology.
39. Kristian Wager is a Copenhagen-based IT consultant with a passion for science.
40. Mustafa Mond is a man of wide-ranging interests who is known across Scienceblogs as a particularly smart and witty commenter.
41. Sehl is an archaeology student.
42. Anatoly Venovcev is an archaeology undergraduate at the Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
43. Anne-Marie is student in Alabama, majoring in zoology and minoring in anthropology and ecology. She's interested in political ecology and how conservation action can be improved by cooperating with local people.
44. Spyderkl the Evil Mommy is a music teacher from the Rocky Mountain foothills, who's interested in archaeology, particularly cemeteries and funerary art.
45. Amanda is a country music fan doing a an MA in egyptology in Sydney, Australia. I wonder if she's heard that perennial country classic, "Blind Man's Penis".
46. Mick is an archaeologist in Australia.
47. Eleanora is a pagan Medieval re-enactor with particular interests in textiles/sewing/costume and cooking.

Now, kids, keep on commenting and I'll update the gallery successively.

Here and here are earlier regulars galleries from my previous blog.