Newsletter Team
2007 was an excellent year for development and growth in Drupal. With so much going on, it's no surprise that we only got one issue of the newsletter out. I think it's imperative that we help solidify this feeling of accomplishment, to go along with the upcoming release of Drupal 6. There are a lot of people who would like to contribute, but may not be comfortable or accomplished at contributing code, so the newsletter might be a great way to find this involvement.
I'd like to propose some ideas to get something moving quickly. Some of these may already have answers, and I hope no one feels like I'm stepping on anyone's toes. I'm just excited about getting this thing going.
Roles
We need some well-defined roles. Such as, someone needs to be responsible for publishing the newsletter, as in taking what's in the wiki (or whatever future repository a WOP is kept, and putting it at http://drupal.org/newsletter). Is that Robin? Is he still interested in doing this? Is there someone else with the proper access to do that at d.o?
Another role, which may or may not be the same, would be 'Chief Editor'. This person would have the final say over what goes in or stays out. This could be a shared role as well, obviously. Or even some kind of democratic system with a larger group. Ideally, it would be this entire group, if we could pull that off.
Next would be 'Editors', which would probably be everyone in this group. Not much needs to be said, except they do the grunt work of finding authors, writing articles themselves (traditionally as 'Contributing Editor'), and editing the content to keep it up to par. I hope that everyone on this list will volunteer to be an editor.
'Writers' goes without saying. A lot of overlap, although writers from outside this group would be recruited for specific pieces.
Organization
I think we could create a decent organization with the 81 current subscribers (plus new people as things grow). This could be spontaneous like it currently is, or we could shape it to be an official committee of the Drupal Association. In any case, I think it could easily be a lean, efficient, and democratic promoter of Drupal and open source.
I recommend we continue using the wiki to create articles. I also propose we use the Polls to vote on tasks and structure as they come up. To facilitate this process, I'll volunteer to set up a weekly agenda of items for discussion and action. I think we need regular communication to get things rolling again.
The agenda would be a wiki posted and sticky'd each week, with a list of items that need action, discussion, and perhaps votes (although Polls could be used for this as well). The newsletter would also be a wiki. Well, actually, let me get that started to show you what I have in mind.
Thanks,
Aaron Winborn
Awesome!
Aaron, this sounds like an excellent plan to get things rolling again. The newsletter has often languished because the handful of volunteers who jump onto it are usually already swamped with community and code responsibilities. Recruiting more folks who are excited to help is a great start. :-)
The wiki page that's currently being used to generate the newsletter already has quite a bit of queued up content for it (http://groups.drupal.org/node/4988), it appears that it just stalled in the scramble of activity after Barcelona and never caught back up. I've done a fair bit of publishing and editing, and I think that over the long term it might be more effective to find people interested in (and willing to commit to) focusing on a particular area for the newsletter -- covering a particular 'beat' so to speak -- than having a large, diffuse crowd edit the entire thing. It's easy for things to stall when energy levels flag because no one person is responsible for any particular part of the newsletter.
My only other concern is setting up a secondary domain for the newsletter. Long term it's probably an excellent idea, but given the existing difficulty of keeping the newsletter going regularly, it seems like building up the team of contributors is critical. Something like newsletter.drupal.org might even be possible, given the number of sub-sites we're spawning, though I can see that taking some additional time.
Is there any way we can sync up and collaborate on this? :-) I'd love to see how we can get the Association in on it to help.
Whoo hoo!
Jeff,
Love your ideas. Let's definitely get this thing going again. We're probably not ready yet for formally democratic system, and it's probably better to let that piece of it be more organic. We can also combine that with your idea of having people in charge of pieces of the newsletter. And I'm increasingly excited about the idea of a separate site for the newsletter, although there's time to do that, and as you say, it's far more important we get the newsletter going.
Maybe we can figure out some people to be the main "editors", each of whom would be responsible for heading up a particular section. It would be up to them to round up people to help write those pieces, and polish them up. Then we could either have one or two "chief editors", or (my preference) the representative-democratic piece could be the group of editors, who are collectively responsible for pushing the whole thing live.
The open source, organic piece would be that this hierarchy would be for convenience and efficiency, and anyone can step up to help, take over, or start a new section as needed.
If you (or anyone) wants to catch me live, I'm usually on IRC as aaronwinborn M-F, 9-5EST. (I was out the last couple of days visiting the cool NYC/PA Drupal folks).
Aaron Winborn
Advomatic, Web Design for Progressive Advocacy, Grassroots Movements, and Really Cool Causes
Aaron, I handled the Getting
Aaron,
I handled the Getting Drupal Done interview in the Jan 08 issue, and would love to continue with that - though we may want to discuss how much space it takes up...
I really appreciate all you've been doing to get the gears moving with the newsletter!
mlsamuelson
Nice. By all means, go for
Nice. By all means, go for it! Ultimately, once we have a stand-alone site, the length of articles won't matter as much. We could have a shorter version in the newsletter, then a link to 'read full interview' or something.
Aaron Winborn
Advomatic, Web Design for Progressive Advocacy, Grassroots Movements, and Really Cool Causes
volunteering for graphics
I'm happy to help with any graphics needs.
Graphics, Cool...
Nice! I'm working on some wireframes and work flow for drupal-newsletter.org this weekend. We'll definitely need some comps once we have an idea of where we're going. Maybe a druplicon for the newsletter too. I'm thinking of an old-time publisher's visor maybe, if you (or anyone) wants to take off on that idea (or has another).
Aaron Winborn
Advomatic, Web Design for Progressive Advocacy, Grassroots Movements, and Really Cool Causes
like
like http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://bp0.blogger.com/_NuG-np0L1... or http://mooreslore.corante.com/archives/images/hat.jpg for inspiration
Aaron Winborn
Advomatic, Web Design for Progressive Advocacy, Grassroots Movements, and Really Cool Causes
Druplicon / Masthead
I'll take a swing at the druplicon this week, do you have any thoughts on doing a masthead?
Can't wait to see the new
Can't wait to see the new druplicon! A masthead would be cool too. Haven't thought what that might look like, but I know we have some creative folks (including yourself) here.
Aaron Winborn
Advomatic, Web Design for Progressive Advocacy, Grassroots Movements, and Really Cool Causes
Hello
Nice to see a newsletter option.
I almost thought you were going to build a newsletter module!
Can I ask what you will use to distribute the newsletters?
Hal
It's been months since we've
It's been months since we've had a newsletter. I'm not even sure how it's distributed anymore. Robin or someone should be able to answer that. I think maybe it goes out to subscribed users at d.o? In any case, it gets its own page there at http://drupal.org/newsletter, and a fancy block rotating on the front page.
Aaron Winborn
Advomatic, Web Design for Progressive Advocacy, Grassroots Movements, and Really Cool Causes
simplenews
It's the simplenews module.
There is discussion to change that to a mailman integration based system since simplenews has some scalability problems, but it's not that big of a deal at least right now.
--
Open Prediction Markets | Drupal Dashboard
Yes, I do have the power to
Yes, I do have the power to publish the newsletter, if you get what you want published on a wiki page and then ping me, I'll be able to make sure it goes out though the newsletter mailing list.
Robin
Just about ready to go!
Robin,
Amazon & I have been coordinating things to get this thing pushed today. Are you on IRC?
Aaron Winborn
Advomatic, Web Design for Progressive Advocacy, Grassroots Movements, and Really Cool Causes
PUBLISHING
So, it will be published on d.o. and sent out to registered emails.
Any chance you can get a hard copy for those members who either invest or want it at the drupalcon (sadly I wont be there).
It would be nice to have a 4 page insert into the 'con brochure.
Interesting idea. That
Interesting idea. That requires a budget, and I guess the DA would decide that. Maybe if we can make a kick-butt issue, that would be a possibility.
Aaron Winborn
Advomatic, Web Design for Progressive Advocacy, Grassroots Movements, and Really Cool Causes
A budget would need an
A budget would need an account.
How about a contributions account at paypal say or something similiar.
I think if you can keep up the kick butt issues, then eventually it would be. Who and what is the DA? Dries?
Are you going to the drupalcon?
Maybe a 100 prints would be less than 100$. They might even do it for free with a little advertising. If they know its happening, then a local one might actually consider that option.