Re: PostgreSQL Magazine #01 : Let's get it started ! help wanted !

Le 25/08/2011 23:51, Josh Berkus a écrit :
> Damien,
>
>> The issue #00 of PostgreSQL Magazine was a demo and it proved that
>> there's a public for a regular magazine dedicated to PostgreSQL. The
>> stats from the pgmag.org website show that the PDF version is the most
>> popular : we got approx. 4000 readers for the demo issue. Meanwhile the
>> paper version was warmly welcomed at pgcon and others conferences....
>
> And I'm still planning to distribute it at pgOpen.
>

Cool.

Did you distribute some at OSCON ?

>> Although I did a lot of work by myself for the issue #00, i want to be
>> clear that PostgreSQL Magazine is intended to be a community driven
>> project. So if you are interested by this projetct, come on board !
>
> Well, in the course of the US Letter stuff, I had to figure out Scribus,
> so I'm now able to help with layout. One request though: can we use
> standard TrueType fonts, and not Ubuntu-specific fonts?
>

Actually this is even worst than that. I accidental choosed "Trebuchet"
as the main font for most of the texts. I realized my mistake only a few
weeks ago, when i discovered this font is owned by Microsoft. I don't
even remember how i managed to install it on my computer...

Anyway, of course the next issue will have a free-software and TrueType
typeface. For now, i thinking of DejaVu which is quite popular in many
linux distributions and shipped by libreOffice.

>> We need Editors, Graphic designers, Reviewers, Translators and of course
>> writers. Even if you don't a previous experience in the media, you can
>> help the project in many ways !
>
> If we have a budget, I have a good graphic designer who is inexpensive
> but not free.
>
>> I've open a dedicated mailing list for the project so that we don't
>> flood the psql-advocacy list ;-)
>
> If you want. This list is nonbusy enough that it could host magazine
> discussion until people complain.
>

I may be blindly optimistic but i'm expecting some serious traffic,
maybe more than the whole -advocacy list itself :)

@Raymond : i'm not a big fan of Google Groups, but that's best service
i've found so far. I don't want it to be hosted on a personal linux box
and google seems to me as less crappy than of free mailing list services.

>> According to me, here's a basic idea of what the pgmag #01 would look
>> like : The obvious theme for the issue will be PostgreSQL 9.1 ! This
>> time i'd like to have 48 pages, with richer content and graphics.
>
> I think it would be better to have less pages of higher quality. It'll
> be hard enough to produce another high-quality 24-page magazine. Heck,
> I think you should consider 16 if you're planning to publish twice a year.
>

16 seems very small. There's always the generic pages (cover, back,
table of content, news, editorial, etc. ), so that gives you approx. 10
page of "pure" content....

While making the issue #00 i realized that content is not a problem.
Actually i had to much articles and couldn't put everything i wanted
to... If think the PostgreSQL community produces a great amount of
content every day : blogs, wiki pages, twitts, slides, docs, tutorials,
etc... I don't have the stats but i guess that even
planet.postgresql.org in itself aggregates more than 500 articles per year

That being said i agree that we need to focus on quality rather than
quantity :)

>> * Business model (advertisement ? sponsors ? let readers pay ?)
>
> I think we should have sponsored advertisements.
>
>> * Even the name of magazine may change if someone comes with something
>> better ;-)
>
> Gods, please no naming arguments! ;-b
>

;-)

--
damien clochard
dalibo.com | dalibo.org