One of the things I like about the turn of the year is that, as a culture, we essentially schedule optimism. We stay up late—during nearly the darkest time of the year—to spend time with family, eat good food, set off colorful explosives, and look forward to what may come.

At Alaska Business, we have a lot to look forward to.

For example, I’m personally excited about the challenge and opportunities presented by our newly crafted editorial calendar process. In past years, we finalized industries and headlines for a set number of articles for an entire year all at once. This year we’ve pulled back slightly on the concrete planning and we’re putting down flags and stakes instead. We know what our special sections will be, we’ve planned areas of focus, and we know what industries we’re going to highlight, but some of those details are still fluid. We have guidelines, but we also have more freedom, and with that we plan to provide our readers with articles, photo essays, columns, profiles, and other features that are even more timely and informative.

This year we’re not publishing a directory every month. Our lists, packed with data on Alaska’s businesses across all major industries, will still be available online, in print in our annual Power List, and through an Excel spreadsheet download that’s available for purchase. We’re filling what was directory space in our special sections with additional stories, guest authors, and as many pictures as we can manage. We will still publish, in print, the Corporate 100, Best of Alaska Business winners, and Top 49ers, and for the accompanying special sections and events, we already have plans. Big plans. Expensive plans. Big, expensive plans that will be pared down (because we don’t actually have a multi-million-dollar budget).

In 2022 we are launching our online Career Center, which will help Alaskans with their workplace needs, whether that’s focusing on getting Alaskans employed or getting Alaskan managers and business owners the workers they need.

Speaking of getting the right people in the right position, we added two new people to our team in the later part of 2021, and we’re welcoming two more this month. We’re going to train them as quickly as possible on our day-to-day publishing routine and then immediately shove them out into the world to find new stories, meet new people, explore new spaces, create new things—and then share it all with you.

There’s something about two years of feeling stagnated, locked in, and uncertain that has made us determined to push back at the universe with optimism and enthusiasm in the coming year. As our partners in the Alaska business community, thank you for joining us.