Editorial—Survey Says… (2018 Edition)

We now have the results of our Voice Survey, emails to the winners have been sent, and we’re just waiting confirmation from them so that we can proudly trumpet who they are before we spill the beans.  So, if you haven’t received an email from us at the address you gave, then I’m afraid you weren’t one of the lucky 16 people who got drawn.  However, you can take heart in that you’re helping to shape the Voice Magazine, sometimes in ways we didn’t expect.   I’ll be doing up a fuller article on the results of the survey once I’ve read through more of the free form comments, but it certainly has been heartening so far to see the number of people who think that we’re doing a pretty good job already.

After all, we don’t get a lot of affirmation here if we’re hitting the mark, or those who read are more doing it out of a sense of hope and duty than actual enjoyment.  And I get it, people are busy, if they took the time to let every place they enjoyed know they actually enjoyed it, they’d have less time to, well, enjoy the things they’re enjoying.

Which means that all we usually see are dry quantity statistics.  How many looked at something, not how many like it.  So, communication like this just feels amazing.  Once again, a big thank you to everyone who filled one out and even more so for the comments.

The survey also gave us a couple of surprises, such as only a few of you think we should move more toward video or audio.  The way that everything on the web is going these days, I know that I’ve just kind of assumed that’s what people wanted, even though I’m not that big on it myself.  Turns out I’m not the only one.  Don’t get me wrong, there are some perfectly appropriate places to use video or audio broadcasting, but I find that more often I’m wondering why on earth a story needed video or audio, or why they couldn’t at least put a transcript underneath so that I could skip down to the part that interests me.  Maybe all the other broadcasters are just making the same assumption without asking.  All of which means I’m sure glad we asked before spending the effort trying to do something most of you either don’t care about or actively don’t want.

Meanwhile, this issue, we have a good interview with graduate student Katie Bradley from the AUGSA, the second part of last week’s “Fly on the Wall”, where Jason Sullivan digs into the risk of our studies creating barriers to our education—when we become invested in a certain viewpoint—and how we need to be active learners to keep that from happening and realize the full benefits of our own educations.

We also have some advice on everything from organizing to picking people in your life or getting involved in a new activity with your dog of all things, plus scholarships, a whole bunch of events (meaning that there’s probably one near you), interviews, and more!

So, while I’ll be enjoying reading your comments, I hope you enjoy the read!