Whenever you put a bit of yourself out there you are bound to learn something. Here at OPIEWeb, I try to get a blog post out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in addition to lurking around the site and making sure things work as well as possible. Needless to say there has been a lot of learning on my end. Here are a few things we’ve gleamed in the first month of OPIE*.

Announcing on Listservs is a great way to get a big spike in site traffic. In our first weekend, we had a peak of 162 visits. That would be a good thing if we had content for them to see and interact with. The rest of the month was a nice slow smolder as folks checked back in that were interested. Most people answered questions, some made accounts and a few even asked new questions.

We’ve interacted with some IO Bloggers who have been giving us some fantastic feedback. We’re listening to our users and you should start to see site improvements very soon. There is a certain sense of irony involved when an IO focused web site has usability issues. To that end, we’ll be making adjustments in button positions, the wording and visibility of the side bar and generally making OPIEWeb a more pleasant place to be. The feature spotlight series will hopefully make it easier to explore all the hidden features of OPIEWeb in the meantime.

If you remember our RSS feature spotlight (and really, who doesn’t?) then you may also recall all of the different ways in which OPIE broadcasts site updates out into the world. We’re harnessing 2 of those in order to power the militant social wing of OPIE. On LinkedIn, the OPIE Groups news feed is powered by the blog RSS feed, as is the Facebook fan page’s status. On our Twitter page (say that 5 times fast and try not to think of Bambi™) you can see when a question or the blog has had activity as powered by the standard question feed. All of these announcements combined have been great at keeping OPIE fresh in your mind and new users are finding us daily.

We have 5 research methods tagged items on the site already. That’s great as OPIE is well tuned for such things. Over the next month I suspect that more people will start asking questions and will push the boundaries of what OPIE is good at. We intend to keep pushing out with new layers of functionality. The job board is almost ready. After that we’ll be looking to add a document library for uploading and classifying course materials.

Enough about us. Now, lets talk about you, the reader. The potential OPIEWebber who is just here for the articles. What can we do for you? Tell us in the comments section below, or by sending an email to OPIEWeb@Gmail.com. If you will be at the OHP Conference in Puerto Rico this weekend, drop OPIEWeb a line. I’ll be watching the email address for impromptu meet ups and you can deliver your feedback in person!

*Technically, the 7th is OPIE’s launch anniversary. However, Professor Bunk and I, along with some OPIEWebbers, will be in sunny Puerto Rico for the OHP conference on the 7th.