Goodbye from Cat!

Today is my last day on the Node, so this is my chance to say goodbye!  It has been 3 very busy years on the Node, but I have really enjoyed myself! When I first started on the Node I was fresh out of my PhD (actually, I was still writing my thesis) and my background was really cell biology. But I quickly discovered how wonderful the developmental biology community is, and you were all very welcoming. Thank you! The definite highlight of this job has been meeting all of you, either online or in person. I had the opportunity to chat to you about science, give career advice, discuss online communication and even, on one notable occasion, a heated but friendly argument on whether anarchy was a viable social system! So it wasn’t all just work, and I had fun as well.

During the last three years I have been involved in a lot of projects on the Node, which I hope you have enjoyed.  The most obvious change was the new look of the site and its new logo, which I hope you approve. This was also when we celebrated the Node’ s 5th anniversary, a very respectable age, and had a great time filming some of you to mark the occasion! One of the series that I launched during my time on the Node was the ‘A day in the life‘ series, on model organisms in developmental biology. This was actually an idea that I suggested at my job interview, so it was great to see it come to fruition. This year we even turned a selection of the posts into a small booklet that you can collect at conferences. Your feedback on this series has always been really positive, so this is definitely a highlight! Other highlights included designing our Node postcards, kicking off the new forgotten classics series and interviewing people at conferences. Ok, ok, and I must admit that the conference locations were one of the pluses of the job as well!

My very first conference location (ISDB in Cancun). It was a tough job, but someone had to do it!

When I started this job I often still had to explain what the Node was, and ensuring that there was a constant flow of content was one of my priorities. Three years on the Node is a household name within the community, averaging more than 1 new post a day, and boasting almost 8,000 visitors a month. This is only possible because you have embraced the Node as your community site, and have read, posted and commented, and shared the word with your colleagues. Thank you for making my job so easy! And this is also a good occasion to ask for your help again. My replacement will only start in mid June, which means that for a few weeks the Node will be without a community manager to keep things ticking at the usual pace. I hope that you will help the Node team by continuing to post and comment during this period!

At the Vienna city hall (European Evo Devo meeting)

 
I hope that this post is not a goodbye, but only a see you later! My new job is based at the University of Oxford, where I will be involved in academic online communications, although not specifically about science. While I will not be travelling to exciting conferences any more, I hope I will come across some of you in the future. If you would like to keep in touch, my twitter account is @catcvicente. Thank you and see you around!

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