Getting the monthly Joomla! Community Magazine back on the rails

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Arlen Walker on October 20, 2009 at 12:50pm

I find all three slots oddly tempting, but I fear the only slot I actually have the time to fill is an Occasional Columnist. (I claim dibs on using "Curmudgeon" in my column title!!!)

Permalink Reply by Mark W. Bender on October 20, 2009 at 1:00pm

Can we perhaps make this THE V LIST

Volunteers for Leadership:


Volunteers for Monthly Columnists:
Amy Stephen
Chris Szabo


Volunteers for Occasional Columnists:
Mark W. Bender

Permalink Reply by Brett Hooker on October 20, 2009 at 5:25pm

Something for everyone to consider as well.

It would be feasible for us to allow anyone in the community to submit stories, case studies, tips etc to the magazine site on an adhoc basis. These would be our "news hounds", and there are lots of these types of contributors across the entire community. These would simply feed into a couple of "on the ground" categories on the site.

The the editorial process becomes one of collating the hot topics from the "on the ground" cateogies editing them into stories, along with the production of regular articles as discussed elsewhere.

By combining these approaches, you end up with a real time social "Joomla Daily Tribune" that the editorial team then turns into a more formal bimonthly "Joomla Times". I'm also talking to a local magazine producer here to cost out the feasibility of turning the bimonthly editions into a six monthly printed magazine that we can get onto shelves at newsgents, Barnes and Noble etc.

See http://www.businessacumen.biz for where something like this is happening already. Business Acumen publishes business articles on a regular basis online, and then produces a monthly professional printed glossy magazine.

Permalink Reply by Brett Hooker on October 20, 2009 at 6:40pm

A quick scan shows that Fatica's Workflow Extension is close that what has been asked for:
http://www.fatica.net/products/joomla-workflow.html
... commercial single site license for USD29.99
Their license FAQ says it's GPL:
http://www.fatica.net/support/documentation/4-workflow-for-joomla/2...

Side thought... Does that mean that I can buy a copy for "Joomla" and include it in 1.6?

Given that this comes up regularly, perhaps THIS is the project for us to specify what we want in the core project, and just build and contribute it. There are models we can look at for this in the GPL CMS space to get the business rules right.

Permalink Reply by Brett Hooker on October 20, 2009 at 10:41pm

I would like to introduce Mike Moloney to the community.

Mike has come on here at ROARZ as our general manager for projects. Mike has experience in the chemicals industry, worked as an analyst for a VC firm in Massachusetts, and spent the last four years as General Manager for Business Acumen Magazine here in Brisbane.

See http://www.businessacumen.biz which is a Joomla! powered news portal. The news portal supports a monthly glossy print edition; very professional.

Mike has been a user of Joomla for almost four years now, having been responsible for the implementation of a number of Joomla! powered websites for Acumen group over that time.

In addition to his GM role, Mike was a contributing writer for the IT section of Business Acumen.

Thus, he has solid experience with both writing and producing both print and online periodicals, and has a project manager and user insight into Joomla!

Having already sought his permission first, I would now like to volunteer Mike for the Leadership position for this initiative.

Permalink Reply by Amy Stephen on October 21, 2009 at 12:33am

Excellent!

Mike -

Thanks so very much! It is really great to see someone with experience and knowledge willing to help the community in this way. The leadership position is so important, helping people collaborate, find interesting stories, and hit those deadlines. The magazine is a great way to showcase interesting and fun information on a regular basis.

I'd like to give folks a day or two to respond to emails I sent out, looking for commitment as columnists and regular article authorship. Then, with a magazine staff and expectations on involvement sketched ou, you take the lead and help everyone frame what this might look like and figure out the basic process.

I really appreciate your willingness to guide this effort, and thanks, Brett, for helping find an excellent candidate!
Amy :)

Permalink Reply by Chris Szabo on October 21, 2009 at 2:49am

Brett, you have been a great help. I saw you as one of the leaders in this and the cooperation of Mike Moloney in a leading position is just what the Joomla! rag needs to get back on its feet.

I do believe we have all the necessary acumen now on the starting blocks to begin. Once Amy has received final commitments - nothing more stands in the way.

Are we really going to see this in print? As much as I would love to see that come together I somehow don't envisage the Joomla! magazine as a sustainable project fro the printing press. Too many popular magazines have already folded and gone purely digital. But who knows - where there is a will......

Permalink Reply by Airton Torres on October 27, 2009 at 6:15pm

Hello all,

Sorry for taking so long to join this group, but real life kept me really busy until now.

As Paul Orwig said earlier in this discussion, we are both webmasters for the Joomla! Community Site. So, we have a special interest in the outcome of this endeavour.

Please, feel free to ask us both if you need any help regarding the Community web site.

Thank you all for your commitment with Joomla! and it's community.

Permalink Reply by C O'Shea on October 27, 2009 at 7:52pm

i would consider a proof reading role as i can ave gud gramma

Permalink Reply by Arlen Walker on October 28, 2009 at 11:41pm

OK, a couple of questions about layout possibilities.

Can this be laid out more like a real magazine and less like a two-column blog?

Can there be some actual art direction? (By this I mean can articles be assigned different looks based on their category, or column/feature, or something?)

If this is supposed to promote Joomla, it'd be nice if we could make it pop, or if not that, at least look different from 98% of the rest of the web.

(BTW, since I'm starting in on my first column for it, it'd be nice if I had some sort of layout guidelines at hand, so I could know what, if anything, I could count on having to hand.)

Permalink Reply by Marcos Peebles on October 29, 2009 at 5:03am

About print or not: Before and after magazine (bamagazine dot com) has a nice in-between solution, it requires some more work though, as the content has to be ported into pdf, dunno if this can be applied to all the magazine but at least some parts (tips, tutorials) could be that way. This is what they do: they build pdf to be readable online (slideshow) and the second part of the pdf's are vertically centered (2 slides per page) to fit in a page for classifying and reading after. Very handy solution.

Permalink Reply by Amy Stephen on October 29, 2009 at 6:39am

I'm going to go ahead and close this discussion - and point everyone to the new Joomla! Community Magazine group. If you have not already, please join that group and continue your discussions in that location. I don't like to close discussions, except when a possibility exists that people don't know where the action's at. In this case, it's in the new Joomla! Community Magazine group, and we would love it if you joined us there.

Chris - thanks for getting this rolling again!

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