Re: Proposal for a PostgreSQL Print Magazine - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Le 14/03/2011 23:00, Josh Berkus a écrit :
> On 3/10/11 2:53 PM, damien clochard wrote:
>> I think that would be great to have a print media to keep in touch with
>> this large user base, because these are the folks that will recommend
>> PostgreSQL to their clients, co-workers, directors, etc.
>
> Everything else being equal, this is a cool idea.
>
> However, the biggest issue for this is getting enough writers.  We don't
> have that many people in our community who can write well, and those we
> do have, have multiple demands for writing on their time (I myself am
> backlogged a couple months for two publications).
>

The community already produces a lot of information : new projects,
announces, conferences, how-to, use cases, blogs, benchs, twits, book
reviews, etc.

In particular, I think Planet PostgreSQL and the wiki are great sources
for content. I bet that most authors will be ok to give their articles
for free, as long as :

  * The magazine makes no profit from it
  * The URL to the original article is provided
  * A short bio of the author is displayed
  * The author's employer is quoted
  * The author can review the magazine before it's published



> Realistically, we'd need to pay writers as well as the editor and the
> editor/translators.  It is unclear on how we would do this initially;
> SPI has a precedent of not paying for people's time, and US, EU and JP
> only pay for things in their respective countries.  Once we had regular
> publication, we could solicit donations from advertisers.
>

Hum, actually i'd be much more comfortable with very few money involved
in this. If you pay some writers, than you need to pay them all. With
writers all round the globe, different standards of living, different
work laws, different copyright laws, embargos, whatsoever... this is
gonna be a nightmare.

Just to give you an exemple i know : in France, if you're a press media
and you pay a writer for 3 articles in 3 consecutive issues, then you
are bound to him by a de-facto work contract that implies you are
required to offer him to write in every forth-coming issues of the
magazine. If you don't want to do that, you have to "fire" him...

Also a lot images i use are free as long as the magazine stays
non-commercial. If we include advertisings inside the magazine, then we
can't use this pictures anymore and we'll have pay for a photo bank
accout such as istockphoto.com with probably an unlimited reproduction
license option that will cost a lot.

I may change my mind, but for now i prefer to keep things simple and
stay non-commercial.

Of course, there's also the printing cost. I see to simple ways  to deal
with that :

1/ Local user groups pay the printing cost and then let them make people
pay for the magazine. I think 1 or 2€ per magazine could easily cover
the costs. That's still affordable for people coming at booth.

2/ Some company prints the magazine and give it to local use group.
In that case we leave a blank box in the magazine saying : "The magazine
was printed by..." and let the companies put its logo underneath. To my
knowledge, this is what's done for the PGEU leaflets...

Both case avoid any direct money transfer or managing donations.


> I'd think that 3 to 4 issues per year would be sufficient.
>
> To sum up, the drawbacks to doing this are:


> a) would take writing time away from general publications which reach
> new users

Well this depends on how you negociate with those general publications.
In France, Guillaume writes articles for GNU/Linux mag and 6 months
after publication, the articles are released under CC-BY-NC-SA licence,
which means they can be reused in a free-as-beer media.

> b) printing costs/waste

My current draft for issue #0 has 24 pages. My small researches tell me
that we can have 1000 copies ( A4 - CMYK - 135g recycled paper ) for
something like 850 € (without VAT tax)...

> c) unclear on how to pay for the first issue

For the issue #0, i intend to get most of the content from blogs.


> d) currently no volunteer as editor
>

Actually i am. Or maybe i don't understand what you mean by "editor" :)


> The advantages are:
> e) nice piece of swag for conferences

+1

> f) gets writing done which can be reused for other portions of
> PostgreSQL.org (i.e. case studies)

+1

> g) potential new source of fundraising
>

+1

> An alternative option to all of the above would be some kind of fund to
> get people to write articles for PWN, which already gets published
> regularly and has international translation.  Then the last weeks' issue
> could simply be cleaned up and formatted just before each conference.
>

Why not... i'm not sure ppl would read full articles in the PWN though.
The mail format is not comfortable if you have to read large texts.


--
damien clochard
dalibo.com | dalibo.org