It’s that time of year when many of us look back on the year and reflect on what a fun/boring/busy/exciting/phenomenal/crappy/sad/difficult/uneventful/forgettable (take your pick) year it was for us.

For me it was the year I became a web journalist and a blogger. It was the year that Nature Network Boston turned from an idea on a page into a real website. It was the year I learned how difficult, and satisfying, it is to create a new website from scratch.

To those of you who come to NNB on a somewhat regular or semi-regular basis, thanks for sticking with us during our fairly quiet beta phase and thank you for your feedback and for contributing to our site, whether it was posting an event, posting a blog post or comment or creating and joining a group. This beta phase has lasted longer than we wanted it to, but I can assure you that we’re on track now to make your experience with NNB hopefully a little more interesting and satisfying in the coming months.

We’re hard at work on an overhaul of NNB, which includes a brand new look and feel. We’ll soon have discussion boards so that those of you who have joined a group will be able to have online conversations with other members of your group.

And we’ll be going live with Nature Network, the global version of Nature Network Boston, where we will be encouraging scientists from all over the world to join the online community. Nature Network Boston will soon be joined by Nature Network London, both of which will exist as local channels within Nature Network. What cities we’ll go to next, I’m not sure yet. Let me know what cities you think Nature Network should set up shop in. Singapore? San Francisco? Shanghai?

I want to give a shout out to the dozen or so freelance writers and copy editor whom NNB relies on so heavily for its stories about the Boston research community. Thanks guys for your work and creativity.

And thank you to the Nature Network project team for pulling this off and for continuing to spruce the website up.

I hope you’ll keep checking us out. I also hope to meet and chat with you more in the new year. I’m going home to Toronto tomorrow for a week but will be back in the blogger’s chair on January 2.

Have a great holiday and new year.