Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody! I hope you all had a fun time relaxing the last few weeks.  The holidays are a time to enjoy with family and friends, and that's been true for OpenScientist too.  Looking back it's been a busy year of collecting citizen science projects and finding creative ways to convince people how easy it is to get started.  There's also been a lot of fun starting a few original projects and analyzing the amateur science field as a whole. But all this took a lot out of me.  So I've taken a few weeks off but am gearing up for a brand new year of citizen science excitement.    What does the new year have in store for OpenScientist?  Glad you asked!

1. Describing More Citizen Science Projects:  Although I've collected over 80 of the most popular citizen science tools and projects currently running, more are being created every day. So OpenScientist will continue being the place for learning to participate in the most exciting projects around. It will also be a great time to update all the projects featured last year.
2. Diving Deep into the Weather:  Every year I like to pick one field of science and immerse myself to gain a fuller understanding of it.  Last year's experience with Skywarn and the citizen weather observation program inspired my renewed interest in climatology and I want to learn as much as possible about it this year.
3. Analyzing the Citizen Science Field: Collecting information on all these projects is the perfect way to identify trends and figure out what works, and what doesn't, in citizen science. These posts were very popular last year so I hope to have even more for you in 2012. With any luck we can help advance the field a little bit too.

Of course this isn't a complete list.  I'm also planning to greatly expand my outreach with an increased social media presence and greater dialogue with the community as a whole.  There will also be more book reviews, profiles of historical citizen scientists, and improved web site navigation.  Not too mention a few surprises I've also got hidden up my sleeve.

So join us here each week for more projects and opinions from the world of citizen science.  Because getting started is easy.