The heart of any website or blog is its community of readers, contributors and commenters. At TechCrunch, part of that has been the guest columns that we publish each week. We have provided space for contributors to enlighten the tech community with their industry insights. And now, things are changing.
We’re building upon the foundations we’ve laid with guest columns and expanding the scope of our coverage beyond the startup chief executive, the venture investor or the occasional technology analyst or banker. While the basic guidelines for what makes a good guest column haven’t changed, the way in which we’re approaching content has.
As technology shapes every human endeavor, we encourage contributors spanning a broad range of industries, including academics, politicians, artists, philosophers, doctors, ethicists and everyone else to lend their voices to our community. The goal is to make TechCrunch a forum where anyone who has anything interesting to say about the ways technology is shaping our present and setting the course for our future can offer their thoughts and spur conversation.
To that end, we’re experimenting with an editorial calendar — a guide for things we’ll be tackling thematically over the course of the year in our guest column inches. We’ll still be taking all of your best thoughts about startups, entrepreneurship, technology investment and any other well-written, technology-related musings. The difference is that, now, if you’re at a loss for inspiration, or feel strongly about a particular issue or topic, there’s a thematic flag in the ground that can guide you.
For instance, we’ll devote parts of January’s coverage to the broad theme of consumer technology (thanks, CES!). Anything anyone is doing or thinking around consumers is fair game. It’s a fascinating area where there have been two tons of technological development, investment and activity, so there’s a lot of fertile material for all kinds of stories and op-ed pieces.
February will be devoted to arts and media, again predicated on outside events like the Grammys and Oscars. In addition to commentary that covers television and film, we’ll be looking for content from artists, musicians or academics with thoughts on the subject.
In March, as the presidential race starts to warm up ahead of the 2016 election, we’ll be turning our editorial eye to the political environment and the ways tech is shaping politics, as well as how regulation and legislation is shaping tech.
This is just some of what we have planned for the beginning of 2015. In the coming months, we’ll publish the editorial calendar for the rest of the year to give you a sense of where we’re looking to take coverage. In the meantime, we believe in the idea, as well as the intelligence, wit, talent and insights that you’re capable of sharing. Reach me at shieber@beta.techcrunch.com. Let’s do this.