Re: Has GNOME-Journal Died?

[Sriram Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>]

On Sun, 2008-08-10 at 22:54 -0400, Jayson Rowe wrote:
> Absolutely - I'm 100% committed to help make this happen!
> 
> I just need to get some direction to get started - contacts to get info 
> from, etc.
> 
> I'm not drowning in free time, but I can easily devote a couple of hours 
> in the weekday evenings, and usually much more on weekends (naturally).

Yeah, anything you cando would be great :)  When we have motivated
people on the list, it will motivated other people! 


> I'll spend the next little bit looking around (more carefully) the Wiki 
> pages that are out there, and see what can be done (I maintain a couple 
> of different wiki's at my work), and also hopefully Lucas can get in 
> touch with me to get the ball rolling.

Lucas was the man.. all the cool people came out of GJ :)

> As for articles, perhaps someone who is active on the Planet could post 
> an advertisement of sorts to see if there are any folks out there who 

I've traditionally done this.  I can do this again, if you like.

> either have something already in mind to write about, or perhaps we 
> could set up a core group of writers and have folks throughout the GNOME 

I have in fact something to write about, just been trying to find time
to write it.  I've been wanting to review Gourmet Recipe Manager an
awesome recipe manager application.  There are plenty of other cool
stuff, like for instance Nokia helping to fund all these interesting
consulting companies and what not.  They seem to be the primary driver
of GTK+ development.


> community submit stories to those writers. Also, since you mention a lot 
> of folks already use their own blogs, and the Planet, we could scan 
> those for interesting topics, then contact the original Author (perhaps 
> getting them involved) and do a more elaborate, press ready copy done 
> for the journal (i.e. send it through the proofing process, etc.)?

The marketing team is interested in weekly summaries.  I use to bludgeon
people about writing stuff in their blogs when it could be an article.

> My initial thought is, perhaps since the Journal has stagnated a bit, 
> there might be some new community members who do not know it's even 
> there, and we can spark some new interest in it.

Sure, we can do a membership drive which is I think what you're
essentially asking.  But I think we need to do a bit more than that.  I
think we need to look outside our community.  I had long thought of
asking liberal arts students to maybe help out writing content.  Maybe
as a project for a technical writing class or some such.  I will be in
my alma mater, Purdue University in about two weeks I will ask their
liberal arts school if such a thing is an option for credit.  Secondly,
there is the Portland State people as well.  if we can do that, we
should be able to get new blood that have not traditionally been part of
the community.

> 
> I myself am going to freshen up on "The Elements of Style" and see what 
> I can learn about 'Textile'.

Everyone should have Strunk and White on their desk.  ;-)  Wordpress
seems like a good target if we knew anybody who would be willing to do
the work.  I'm not a web person.  If possible, merging with wordpress
that already exists on blogs.gnome.org might be a good start.  I'll ask
Olav and see if that's a possibility.

Thanks for bringing all this up!

sri

-- 
Sriram Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>