Re: Proposal for a PostgreSQL Print Magazine

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).

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.

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
b) printing costs/waste
c) unclear on how to pay for the first issue
d) currently no volunteer as editor

The advantages are:
e) nice piece of swag for conferences
f) gets writing done which can be reused for other portions of
PostgreSQL.org (i.e. case studies)
g) potential new source of fundraising

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.

--
                                  -- Josh Berkus
                                     PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
                                     http://www.pgexperts.com