About Arikia

Photo by Nariman Hallet.

After attending the University of Michigan, where I was a psychology major and an editor at The Michigan Daily, I packed my bags and moved to New York City. I currently live in Brooklyn in a neighborhood called Bushwick, which is where people who lived in Williamsburg retreat when they are over the scene. I used to moonlight at an awesomely defunct computer lab called The Internet Garage, where I authored a pseudonymous blog that started a huge blog trend. Everyone who copied me now has  a blog-to-book deal, FML.

I interned at Seed Media Group and Psychology Today. At Seed, while working on ScienceBlogs.com (formerly the world’s largest science blogging network), I was promoted from intern to full-time after 4 months. Then I was the first person to get laid off when the company started to tank (you know how that works), though I am convinced to this day that I could have single-handedly saved the company if I was given the appropriate resources and reign over ScienceBlogs.

After that, one of the Science Bloggers recommended me to Nate Silver‘s literary agent. He hired me as his research assistant for his book project, which later when I asked him why he picked me over the Ivy League people he interviewed, he said it was because I ordered a beer instead of coffee at the interview. Those were epic days. We traveled around the country interviewing the most interesting people we could find about the most interesting topics we could think of.

Then I started freelancing for Wired.com. Alexis Madrigal pulled me out of the Twittersphere and hired me as a community manager for Haiti Rewired, a website created after the earthquake to talk about technology and infrastructure solutions for the devastated country of half my origin.

A few months later Seed sold a blog to Pepsi (see Pepsigate) in an attempt to make-up lost advertiser revenue, which resulted in the exodus of about half the science bloggers on the network. Knowing Seed was bound to ruin ScienceBlogs, I awaited with my rescue ships. I helped gather a group of renegade science bloggers and provided them with a domain that I own, Scientopia.org, upon which a new independent science blogging collective was built. I also went and scooped up some of the more “high profile” bloggers and joined forces with Wired Science editor Betsy Mason to start a science blogging network on Wired.com — Wired Science Blogs.

In January of 2011 I was given the task of taking on Wired.com’s How-To Wiki, a database of DIY instruction guides, and was appointed as the first ever Community Manager of Wired.com. Here, I have been building a team of unstoppable hacks and hackers who, if our plane to Defcon crashed on a deserted island, I wouldn’t be at all worried.

I’ve contributed to The Atlantic Tech, Gizmodo, Thought Catalog, and Longshot Magazine in my spare time.

I’m now a full-time editor at Wired.com and am trying my hand once again at my original passion, writing, while I continue to cook up a plan for world domination.

The fastest way to put a smile on my face is a parrot.

Enjoy my blog, and check out An interview with Arikia Millikan, by Bora Zivkovic of A Blog Around the Clock.

♥ Arikia