I created a website!

Which is kind of silly, but not really...

As a member of The Short Lab, the Ecology and Evolutionary Department at KU, and the KU Biodiversity Institute, I provide updates each semester for the lab (https://sites.google.com/view/shortlab/people), department (https://eeb.ku.edu/jennifer-giron) and BI (https://biodiversity.ku.edu/entomology/people/jennifer-giron) websites. The way it usually works, is I send information to the people in charge, and they update the corresponding website for me, which can turn into annoying, both for me and the people responsible for the changes in case I forget something or find a typo later. In particular, in the case of the lab's website, it is my advisor who updates it, but he doesn't have time for my manic-obsessive nonsense, so he suggested me to create my own website, so he would only need to put a link to it and that's it.

And of course, it makes complete sense! I have administered and created websites before. Once when I was a Collection Technician at the UPRM-INVCOL in Puerto Rico (It was a Joomla-based site that does not work anymore though), and then I used Google Sites for the Ecology and Research Fundamentals classes I taught at Universidad Santo Tomás in Villavicencio, Colombia. So yeah... I have no idea why I didn't do it before.

In the creation of the website, I have realized several things:

1. It is so easy to make a website, that everyone should have one (at least everyone who wants/need to be visible). There are several advantages in getting a Google site: (1) it is free; you only need a Google account, and it can be associated with your Google Drive to upload pictures and files; (2) Is really quite simple and straightforward to create, delete and edit your website. It has a limited set of customizable templates, which also have limited style options. The good thing about this, is that (if you are like me) you spend less time thinking of something that looks good, the right combination of colors, if things are aligned, time that can be used in creating your contents.

2. It is important to have an electronic presence (at least for people that will eventually look for a job or seek collaborations). In one of the mandatory classes here at KU, the instructors, who are professors often actively looking for potential students, technicians and postdocs, told us that every time there is a suitable candidate, they look the person up on the internet, and it is usually taken as a good sign if the person is not a ghost. As part of the class, I got an ORCID and set up my Google Scholar profile. What better way to showcase your research than your own website??

3. There are so many things I have done that are nowhere but on my computer (not even in my CV) and it would be nice to share them with the world. Sometimes I have needed to access certain information and it is only in a book at my lab's desk for example. That's why I put a list on my website of the genera currently assigned to the subfamily Acidocerinae, and a list of the known species of acidocerines of the New World. I have also tried to add references with links to the ones findable online, so that would save some time to future me or my readers.
There are also scattered (and sort of temporary) efforts like my blogs (Entiminae and Acidocerinae) and a Project Noah account, that would be nice to have tied directly to me somehow.

4. You can share as much information as you want, presented in the way you want to show it (without the usual constraints of institutional websites). It also allows you to be more personal than if someone simply goes through your CV. You can tell stories, put pictures, give more details about what you do. This for me has one good thing: it may serve as a "passive science communication": you are not directly speaking to people (which has proven challenging for me, worse if not in my native language), but you are sharing your experiences by showing how you do science. You may be giving people ideas or encouragement, even for just to reach out to you for help.

5. You can also add information on your side projects. Sometimes people would tell me about this awesome project that a friend/colleague of them was doing but never published because you know, life happens. In your own website you can have space for raw "products" that might be useful for someone else, in terms of methods at least. You already spent time on it, better put those to a good use by giving them the potential to be inspiring.

So here is the link: https://sites.google.com/view/jcgiron/home

As with most things, it does come with a price: you will have to keep your website updated! in this context, there is nothing sadder than outdated websites... occasionally I have found really cool blogs, but you can tell the project died or got abandoned at some point (actually I guess that might be the impression from my entimine blog :'( ), and then the owner is nowhere to be found on the web. If your projects (even if unfinished) can be found somewhere, you will probably shed some light on someone's path, or at least you can feel a little famous when someone contacts you because of your website!