Emily Sweeney reviewed my website this week and gave me some excellent feedback to think about. I in particular appreciated her feedback about the public I am creating and the audience I am trying to reach with my website. As Michael Warner writes in his essay Publics and Counterpublics, a public is different than the public. Through my website I was trying to address the entire public – the entire internet. Emily pointed out that it may be more effective to target a public, like women, previously homeless folks, or Vancouverites.

I do often have a tendency to “bite off more than I can chew”, trying to address all aspects and perspectives on an issue in an 800 word essay, or address the entire general public with a website. Even knowing this rationally, I am too stubborn to narrow down my population too much (to just women, or to just previously homeless folks). However, narrowing the scope of my blog to just Vancouver is a good compromise between me and the rest of the world.

To change the blog to make it more centred on Vancouver, I will make a few small tweaks in presentation and wording, and the majority of the photos I use will of Vancouver, covering the homeless epidemic locally instead of province- or nation-wide, or globally.

I’ll also change the tags in each post to put more emphasis on Vancouver, instead of homelessness broadly speaking, and change the “About Me” section of my blog to establish the locale of the blog.