Restarting PostgreSQL Magazine with a new Format

[daa...@gmail.com]

Hey guys,

----------------------------------------------------------

TL;DR : With the kind support of PostgreSQL Europe, I am launching a new edition of the PostgreSQL Magazine in an innovative paper format. The primary goal is to publish it and send copies to PostgreSQL Conference Europe in Tallinn in November. If we're sucessful, additional copies will be sent to other events. 

----------------------------------------------------------

I’m here to talk to you about the new direction for PG Magazine. So far, we’ve produced 2 issues of the magazine and we’ve received an entousiastic feedback from long-time community members as well as complete newcomers. I still believe that paper is a great medium to promote PostgreSQL and there’s a need for a regular printed media in the community.

However we've been struggling to find a stable economic model to ensure this media remains a community-driven effort. So far the balance we’ve found is that the content is produced, edited and controlled by community members, while  the graphic editing, printing and shipping is done by professionnals and paid by non-profit associations (PG Europe, SPI, and others) or commercial sponsors (EDB for instance)

This model works with the current format of the magazine (36 pages) but it’s very slow. Producing a new issue requires a lot of time to gather the articles, edit the content and proof-read everything. It's also very hard to translate. So far only the Chinese community has been able to fully translate the magazine.

Based on this considerations, here’s an attempt to make the whole process more dynamic while switching to a more appealing format.

Over the last month, I’ve worked on what I called a “folded magazine”.  The basic idea is that the magazine is presented as an A5 newspaper. Then you unfold it and you get an A4 newspaper. Then you unfold it and you get an A3 newspaper. Then you unfold it and you get an A2 poster that you can take back at the office...

I used this concept for the 2016 PG Day France booklet. Here’s a video :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9tbCGsb2Ak

------------------------------------

This format has drawbacks

a- The graphical editing needs to be done by professionnals. A PostgreSQL community member with basic graphic skill can no longer participate to this effort. Previously some Chinese guys where able to produce a translation of the magazine, this format will be harder for them

b- The printing needs to be done by professionals. You can no longer print it at home unless you’re the happy owner of an A2 printer.

c- The PDF version will be weird

But also many advantages :

1- It requires less content and we’ll be able to produce the magazine on a regular basis.

2- It’s easier to give away  : giving away a 34 pages magazines to random stranger at a booth was sometime a waste of paper

3- The A2 poster is a great way to provide more visibility  for PostgreSQL inside the PostgreSQL our users workplace.

4- It's easier to translate

------------------------------------

If you want to join the effort here's an optimistic roadmap : 

Step 1 : Gathering content (deadline 31/07/2016)

Step 2 : Editing Content (deadline 15/08/2016)

Step 3 : Reviewing (deadline 31/08/2016

Step 4 : Layout (deadline 24/09/2016)

Step 5 : Last Check (01/10/2016)

Step 6 : Printing (15/10/2016)

• The 3th step (reviewing) and 5th step (last check) are the ones that require more manpower and time. So prepare yourself for some proof-reading in august and september :)

• --
• Damien Clochard

[Joshua Drake]

Hello,

I think it is great that the community is picking this back up. What type of content do we want?

[Edward Hooper]

Damien,

How about an ePub version?  PDF doesn't play well with mobile devices that have screens smaller than 10" but ePub works great on small screens.

Thanks and regards,

Edward Hooper

2016-07-14 10:16 GMT-07:00 Joshua Drake <linux...@gmail.com>:

Hello,

I think it is great that the community is picking this back up. What type of content do we want?

--
Vous recevez ce message, car vous êtes abonné au groupe Google Groupes "PostgreSQL Magazine".
Pour vous désabonner de ce groupe et ne plus recevoir d'e-mails le concernant, envoyez un e-mail à l'adresse pgmag+un...@googlegroups.com.
Pour obtenir davantage d'options, consultez la page https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Luca Ferrari]

Ciao,
first of all I'm available for proof reading of a few articles when
the content has been gathered.

On Thu, Jul 14, 2016 at 6:49 PM, dam...@dalibo.info <daa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> a- The graphical editing needs to be done by professionnals. A PostgreSQL
> community member with basic graphic skill can no longer participate to this
> effort. Previously some Chinese guys where able to produce a translation of
> the magazine, this format will be harder for them
>
> b- The printing needs to be done by professionals. You can no longer print
> it at home unless you’re the happy owner of an A2 printer.

a) and b) seems to me a very bad drawback and something that suggest
we should investigate another path.

>
> If you want to join the effort here's an optimistic roadmap :
>
> Step 1 : Gathering content (deadline 31/07/2016)

There is not a lot of time to gather content, in other words I see we
are asking for already produced content to be published. Why not
feeding the magazine with articles also from the planet (if the
authors allow the reprinting)? This could speed up the content
gathering and could give us time to gather more content for next
issues.
Another idea is to publish articles and summaries about conferences.
I've done it in the past with regard to PGDay.IT (on BSD Magazine): a
couple of pages and a few photos and another little content is
provided.

Please consider also that the italian pgday will take place at the end
of november too, so it would be nice to have some material to promote
the magazine (and hopefully gather some new contributor).

Luca

[Damien Clochard]

The magazine will be composed of 12 A5 pages. The first page is the
cover. The second is for the ToC and credits. That leaves us with 10
pages to fill. Each page can contain 1000 to 1200 characters (space
included). An article can be spread on several pages. And we also need
to find a A2 poster.

Here's my first ideas of content

* 1 page about the 20th Birthday of PostgreSQL. Maybe a quick article
about the good old days or something like that.

* 2 pages about the new Version Numbering. The blog post on Josh Berkus
blog would be perfect. We need to ask him if he's ok to let us republish
it :

http://www.databasesoup.com/2016/05/changing-postgresql-version-numbering.html

* 2 pages about a cool feature of PostgreSQL 9.6 : Maybe parallelism,
Maybe remote_apply, ideas welcome...

* 4 pages about NoSQL : I was thinking about gathering various text
about hstore, JSON, etc. but Craig Kiersten nailed it yesterday :)

https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2016/07/14/choosing-nosql-hstore-json-jsonb/

Again we need to check if he's ok to be pusblished in pgmag.

* 1 page for a quick interview of Paul Ramsey from the PostGIS project.
I already have the interview , I just need to remember where I saved it

For the poster, I was thinking about this one :

https://github.com/postgresqlfr/pgfr_materials/blob/master/advocacy/posters/20th_anniversary/poster1.A3.fullbleed.pdf

This is just some quick ideas, if you have other propositions, some
articles to submit or a specific topic that seems important, let us know
!


--
Damien Clochard

[Damien Clochard]

Le 14.07.2016 20:28, Edward Hooper a écrit :
> Damien,
>
> How about an ePub version? PDF doesn't play well with mobile devices
> that have screens smaller than 10" but ePub works great on small
> screens.
>

I agree that epub is better than pdf on mobile devices.

However the magazine is primary medium is paper. I convinced that the
PostgreSQL community needs more promotional content on paper : the
magazine will be given away (or sold at production price) during event,
meetups and conferences.

In a second time, if we'll try to produce a PDF file and spread the
magazine on the internet too. That's the same for ePub but it's not that
easy to convert a PDF file to ePub, especially if the document contains
bitmap images (jpp, png). I'll talk with the graphic designer who will
work on the layout of the magazine and see what if he can produce an
ePub.


--
Damien Clochard

[Damien Clochard]

Hi Luca !

This is a great idea. If you want to distribute the magazine during
pgday.it you can either

1/ find a local printing company to print & fold the number of copies
you need

2/ I can manage this for you with a printing service I know in Paris.
The price estimation is 1120 € for 500 copies (shipping included).

To cover the expense, you can either :

a/ sell the magazine

b/ ask a company sponsorship

c/ ask for PostgreSQL Europe's financial support


--
--
Damien Clochard

[Damien Clochard]

Actually I made a mistake. The new format is composed of 8 A5 pages (not
12). That means we pretty much have all the content we need, except for
the article about the PostgreSQL Anniversary...

Here's a recap :

http://www.pgmag.org/wiki/03/gathering_content



--
--
Damien Clochard

[Osvaldo Tulini]

Hi Damien, 

great news :)  I'm available for proof-reading

--
Vous recevez ce message, car vous êtes abonné au groupe Google Groupes "PostgreSQL Magazine".
Pour vous désabonner de ce groupe et ne plus recevoir d'e-mails le concernant, envoyez un e-mail à l'adresse pgmag+un...@googlegroups.com.
Pour obtenir davantage d'options, consultez la page https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Bye

Osvaldo