"Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it." – Bob Dylan
As we work to reinvent, reimagine and tinker with the born-digital EDUCAUSE Review Online, we’ve been looking for inspiration and insight in places deemed as exemplars in digital magazine publishing- sites such as the Harvard Business Review, National Geographic, and Smithsonian. Not to be boxed in by the “magazine” metaphor, we also peruse popular technology, higher-education, and mass-media websites, and try to keep up on the latest publishing, technology, social media, and information trends.
It’s clearly a time of great disruption in the publishing industry, resulting in massive experimentation with form, medium and business models. Many publications are taking the “throw-every-form-and-channel-at-the-wall” approach in an attempt to see what sticks, while others are attempting to specialize in niche areas such as poetry, digital storytelling and different short- and long-form media.
Quite frankly, our RSS feeds are filled with masses of contradictory content, and we’re having a hard time determining areas we should be exploring and engaging in.
So we’re turning to you, our readers, for guidance. What would you like us do more, of? Less? What publishing experiments do you want us to conduct? And, as we’re always looking to feed our muse, where have you found inspiration lately? What are your go-to sites, tweeps, blogs and publications? What have you found to make you laugh, cry, evoke a sense of wonder?