Unit 2 – Individual Project
Tyler Scafidi
Colorado Technical University
January 19, 2025
Initial Blog Post
My name is Tyler, and I am currently a doctoral student in the Doctor of Computer Science in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance program, since August 2023. I have an Associate of Arts (A.A.) in pre-med/Liberal Arts (2010), a Bachelor of Applied Science (B.A.Sc.) in Project Management and (Gov) Acquisitions (2012), and Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Computer Information Systems (2017). I post any decent papers, coursework, or documents that might be useful at https://coloradotech.academia.edu/Tyler_Scafidi, for now, but would like to start publishing on more prominent university/research-based databases. I know that I can shorten links/make them “prettier”, but I like to put the full link to be transparent. Also, sometimes links are lost, but the text stays present in pastes/embeds. So, this helps me keep track of broken links as well.
This class, Futuring and Innovation (CS875), is designed to “[d]evelop[s] the skills in futuring through a variety of techniques.”, and “[i]ntroduces formal methods of innovation and diffusion of innovation.” (Colorado Technical University (CTU), n.d.). I have many online and blog-type accounts, and that’s why I started to setup a Substack blog site (Tyler’s Pro Substack) at https://tylerscafidi.substack.com, so I could have a place to submit work that may later lead to subscription-based posts. However, I ran into some issues with formatting/publishing rich blog posts. So, I decided to just host the blog post on my main site here. The Substack’s main topics would likely be about Technology, Business, the United States, an extension of my main business sites, useful, and popular topics.
This blog is a professional/external-facing blog for general discussion, posts, and social networking. However, I do have another Substack blog (https://scafidi.substack.com), which can be for more mature/private content later. In either case, these are both very new blogs, and there may be some styling, links, or pages that are off/default; they will be updated. The biggest challenge about starting this blog was setting up payments, subscriptions, separating multiple accounts, post filing by page, formatting, embedding with previews, import/export of posts, feeds, and figuring out how to segment posts. On my own site here, I ran into some issues with the no header/footer template I never use, but I decided this would be a more appropriate template so that it seemed somewhat isolated from my business.
However, the site, Substack.com, is very popular among technical and renown publishers, and offers many monetization, cross-posting, structured data, and rich media features. The blog is currently comprised of a public posts page (unpaid), a Colorado Technical University posts page, and will eventually have a premium/paid content page, at minimum. I also enabled referrals, group discounts, and self-sign-up links to encourage others to collaborate, share, and start their own Substack site(s). As a reminder, back-up your posts/data, diversify your online presence, and consider hosting your own site/blog in case of any losses, site closures, and to increase your reach! Let me know what you think.
References
Colorado Technical University (CTU). (n.d.). Doctor of Computer Science. Retrieved January 19, 2025, from
coloradotech.edu: https://www.coloradotech.edu/degrees/doctorates/computer-science