Tuesday, March 2, 2010

New & Improved Natural Capital: Thanks for Your Feedback!

ripples in water
Photo credit: Claudio.Ar
Thanks again to everyone who participated in our survey over the last several weeks! We're feeling all warm and fuzzy, because your comments were overwhelmingly positive, with a good dose of constructive ideas. (Although one reader called the rest of you "lame" for not commenting more on our posts!) We're so glad you think we're mostly on the right track.  And a few lucky winners will get their native plant seeds in just in time for the spring thaw. (They've been contacted, so if you haven't heard from us, try again next time.)

Here's what we heard from you, and what we're doing about it:
  • Your favorite posts are the "look for" series and posts about local places to go. We'll keep lots of those coming.
  • The calendar is used heavily by some of you, but some of you aren't really interested in group activities. We'll keep that part of the website going for now. But in keeping with our local focus, we are going to simplify by listing only trips that are close to the DC area -- "close" being a subjective term that may vary from month to month. We've also added a copy of the calendar as a permanent fixture in the right hand column of the blog.  (Bear with us while we figure out how to make it match our color scheme!). Even if you don't want to go out in a group just to go hiking, there are often workshops and lectures mixed in that you might find interesting.
  • Links are less interesting to many of you. We'll stop putting them into stand-alone posts. But we can't help it:  there's a lot of cool stuff out there, and we like to share. So we'll keep posting things we find interesting via Twitter. If you have no interest in joining the "Twitterverse," you can find the links we've shared most recently in a feed in our right-hand column. Check them out when you feel like surfing.
  • You like the photos, and wish there were more. Stay tuned for an experiment on that tomorrow.
  • We didn't think to ask about this, but we've been working on our layout and design. If you're reading us by RSS or email, stop by and check out the new look! Let us know what you think.
Thank you so much for helping us make the Natural Capital a little better.