[Journal] FOSS4G 2011 Special Edition

[Sunburned Surveyor]

I know there has been a lag getting the annual report published
because my own time to volunteer is limited. I certainly think there
would be some benefit to having funds to pay for at least some work on
the journal.

There are a number of things that would likely need to be done for
this to happen. We'd have to get the boards approval, of course. I
also think we'd need an advertising policy of some sort.

As far as the annual report goes, I'm committed to getting that done
before the end of the year. We'll round up whatever chapter and
project reports we can before the end of the month, and then we'll
start working on our rough draft. We can take the month of October to
work on any regular or peer review articles that will be included in
the annual report issue.

As soon as we are finished it we should start work on the annual
report for 2011. :]

Perhaps this is a good time to assess our current volunteer resources
and take a realistic look at what we can accomplish. Ultimately the
Journal is being put together by volunteers and as with many things in
the open source world the major contributors will have the greatest
influence on the outcome.

While we work out the challenges to paid help with the journal,
perhaps we should talk about better defining some of the roles and
responsibilities of the Journal team. This is just a suggestion.

At a minimum, I can see the team being made up of the following positions:

- Editor: Oversees the basic operations of the journal. This includes
gathering/soliciting content, ensuring review and editing of
individual articles is complete, and making sure the post production
process runs smoothly.
- Assistant Editor: Assists with the editor duties as needed.
- Peer Review Articles Editor: Coordinates peer review of peer review
articles and deals with issues surrounding peer review standards.
- Post Production Lead: Coordinates the post production of the Journal
after the reviewed and edited content has been made available. This
currently includes converting the articles to LaTex and producing a
PDF.

I can also see us having the additional positions:
- Graphics Production Editor
- Advertising Coordinator

I'll be around to assist with the Journal editing for the foreseeable
future. However,  it is certainly more work than I have time for on my
own. People may get frustrated with the slow pace of things under my
watch. On the other hand, if there is someone else who'd like to take
a stab at helping as editor or assistant editor, I'd be glad to jump
into another part of the process. I'd really like to tinker around
with producing the journal in EPUB and HTML for example.

I'm curious what the other people who are working (or have worked) on
the Journal think.

Landon


On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 10:41 PM, Tyler Mitchell <tmitchell at osgeo.org> wrote:
> Hi all Journal friends,
>
> As you have probably already saw, I will no longer have a job with OSGeo in two months.
> It doesn't mean I will run away but, as you can imagine, being surprised by job loss
> means you cannot speculate on your time availability in the near future.
>
> I may have time to help with the current annual report if needed, but for the next
> edition I'm not so sure.  I'm in the process of handing off my primary responsibilities
> over to the OSGeo board, though I don't expect directors will be available to help
> fill in on my journal tasks since it was often out of scope for my position.
>
> So, we should talk about finding the smoothest way
> through this change, because we had committed to publish a handful of paper
> proceedings from the FOSS4G 2011 event.  Papers will be reviewed and
> submitted by end of year and require a 1-3 month turnaround.  We can even
> required them to be submitted in latex so conversion requirements are minimal.
>
> Any thoughts?  I'm happy to pass the reigns or remain officially until I know
> that I absolutely cannot help - either way works for me, I just don't want to be a
> bottleneck.
>
> This is one of my most
> personal special projects so it's hard to even think of stepping back more than I
> already have due to priorities I had at the time.
>
> Perhaps it's time to consider a topic several of you have brought up before: advertising
> and sponsorship?  If I was able to acquire some funding to help fund my editing
> position, would anyone be opposed to having these used in the Journal.  I'm not
> sure I'll ultimately need it, but thought I'd check to see what you thought.  In the last
> issue we had a great contractor also help and I think that eased the pain for all
> of us.  Having some cash for this might help on a few fronts.
>
> That's not be all and end all of brainstorming but thought I'd start the ball rolling.
> Share your thoughts on next steps :)
>
> Best wishes and officially, thanks for all the hard work going into the project
> historically and presently!  It's been a pleasure working with you.
>
> Tyler
>
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