Proposed production process

Hi colleagues

I'm trying to break down discussion of the newsletter into different (but related) areas. So I hope you don't mind another message suggesting how we could go about producing it.

One way of sharing out the work, in order to make it less onerous, would be for a different person to volunteer to take responsibility for each area of the contents. I guess that for most sections we could find somebody who already took an interest in what was new in that area anyway

I had been working on the basis that someone would take responsibility for an issue, for for the user or developer section of each issue.

Splitting it out in this way means that it is not reliant on one person and that if somebody falls by the wayside either other people can cover temporarily for that issue or it can still go ahead missing that section while we look for somebody to take over.

Boris helpfully suggested a wiki page for each issue which I think is a useful way to move ahead. If this had a heading for each section, it's editor could add stuff during the course of the month as they became aware of relevant items.

Yup, it's here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/4075

Following a check to make sure all items were in, there was not too much repetition between sections and the total length was OK we'd be ready to go. At this point it would be transferred (by a mysterious process I'm not currently aware of) into an email that was sent out to subscribers.

Simplenews module. It's basically a node that is then sent out using the mail.inc process. Currently only I have access to it, but I can set up access as soon as we have the other editors sorted out.

And the next wiki page would be started....

I don't see a problem in this being public as it makes it easier for everybody involved in producing it to know where we were up to. I'm not sure what harm would be done if somebody from the target audience viewed the proposed content before it was distributed.

Sure, they get the content in the end at least, just ruins the surprise :-P I suppose we could do some "secret" things from month to month, like big interviews and news, etc.

I don't know if the newsletter necessarily has to come out every month but at least that gives an automatic deadline in order to concentrate our minds. If so, then perhaps we should give ourselves a break and aim to produce 10 a year with joint issues for July/August and December/January.

I like that idea!

Does this sound a workable way to move forward? Perhaps it's better not to try and over-stretch ourselves and go for 6 issues a year?

I like the 10 issue per year idea, better, and we could even do some special issues from time to time to get to 12 if we get really board between issues...not that that happens...

Robin