Issue 129 – January 14, 2023

What to do with a little CFD newsletter?

Hey there,

It’s Robin from CFD Engine & it’s a short one this week, a sneak peak of what you can expect from these emails in 2023 (plus a reason why not) 🤔

Here’s The Grand Planâ„¢ in two bullet points:

  1. send an interesting note to my CFD friends every week
  2. grow the readership by being more active on social media

Radical, huh? I’m slowly getting better at the first 🤞 but the second one needs a lot of work (plus a big step outside of my comfort zone).

Writing these emails is a non-negotiable part of my schedule, I need to do the same for promotion & see what happens.

But what to write about?

More or less the same

It’ll be the same diet of OpenFOAM esoterica (mainly the OpenCFD flavour), ParaView pipelines, time-saving scripts, command-line tips and must-have tools (plus other cool CFD-stuff that I’ve spotted on the interwebs).

But I’ll be dialling back on the AWS content (unless they do something I think you should know about, or I find something cool to play with). I don’t think that many of you are using AWS for your CFD, but let me know if I’m wrong.

I’m also going to drop the “Three Tiny Tips” series after the next edition. I’ve started work on a replacement, but it may well fall under the next heading…

Products

As a nano-consultancy (i.e. just me), I could do with adding a few assets into the business. There’s no time like the present, so I’m going to try building a few little CFD-related products this year.

Ideally they’ll be revenue generating (otherwise they’re not really assets) but that might be a stretch goal. If I consider myself “uncomfortable” with posting on social media, then I’m positively allergic to selling stuff – should be fun 😬

I’ve no clue how it’ll go, but I like the idea of documenting the process of building something & perhaps that in itself could be valuable, even if the products themselves are a flop.

I’ve got a few ideas, but what do you reckon? What are you desperate to pay me for? 🤔

Or maybe not…

Full transparency: there’s an opportunity for me to go & do something else, for someone else, at which point all of this becomes a bit redundant.

There’s also a possible halfway house where I stop most of my consulting activities, but keep going with the emails.

It’s a lot to think about, but until I know different, it’s full steam ahead with The Grand Planâ„¢ – let’s do this…

Until next week, stay safe,

Signed Robin K