Ars Technica UK is one year old today: Here’s what’s coming next

Ars Technica UK launched exactly a year ago today. (I originally wanted to launch the site on May 4th, so that we could make all sorts of bad Star Wars jokes, but unfortunately that was a national holiday.) It has been a busy, exciting, and stressful year for everyone at Ars Technica UK. It turns out that launching a new division of an 18-year-old website is a lot of hard work! Who would've thought it?

But, I'm happy to announce, the first year has been a resounding success. Case in point: look at the awesome community meetup we had in London last week! About 120 of you turned up and spent five hours talking about such wondrously diverse topics as TTIP, cars, GPU overclocking, and the incoming Snooper's Charter. I talked so much, and so emphatically about the full gamut of nerdy topics that I lost my voice!

We've had three meetups over the past year, each a bit larger than the last. The first question I always ask attendees is, "Do you like Ars UK?" followed swiftly by "Is there anything we're doing wrong?"

I'm glad to say that the responses to those questions have (mostly!) gravitated towards "yes" and "no" respectively. If you weren't at one of the meetups, though, and have some feedback for me or the team, by all means e-mail me (sebastian@arstechnica.co.uk) or I'll be hanging out in the comments below. We'll be running a big survey in the next couple of weeks, too; please do provide as much feedback as possible.

We've also tripled the size of the UK team since I first came aboard at the beginning of 2015—no mean feat as other publications and blogs continue to wade through a period of downsizing and austerity. That mirrors the growth of the site, too, from about 500,000 readers when we launched to about 1.4 million today.

So, what's next?

As we move into our second year, there are a couple of areas that I would like to develop editorially: more UK and EU business coverage (including startups that actually have some kind of novel technology behind them), and a closer look at some of the cool sciencey, spacey, and researchy things occurring on this side of the Atlantic. (For example, did you know that the UK is planning to build a spaceport and launch stuff into space from the British Isles? We should totally write something about that.)

We'll also be producing some more video content, which you should begin to see over the next few months. I will endeavour to make said video content as Arsy as possible.

These efforts will be supported by further swelling the Ars Technica ranks, of course, until eventually we have a large enough army of subject-matter experts and veteran journalists to take over the known sci/tech/policy/game/car/culture multiverse. I'd also like to acknowledge that the US has hired some awesome new writers over the past year, helping both sites tackle more topics with authority.

Beyond the website, look out for more Ars Technica UK events: smaller community-oriented shindigs, but larger affairs as well. Our next meetup, which you should definitely come along to, will almost certainly have someone speaking about something interesting, or some fancy new gadgets to try out. (Speaking of which, be sure to sign up to our weekly newsletter so that you don't miss out on upcoming events.)

Finally, two more exciting things: a) In the next few days the Ars Technica website will be redesigned; and b) I'm told that some changes to our subscription plan, Ars Premier, are truly on their way—including a UK billing option.

Here's to another big and successful year—the second year for us, but the nineteenth year for Ars Technica as a whole.

Listing image by Aurich Lawson