Fedora print magazine

Introduction

This is a proposed project for a print Fedora magazine, published by Linux Pro Magazine (liason: Rikki Kite) and funded by Red Hat (holder-of-the-pursestrings: Max Spevack).

This page is where we try describe the current state of discusions (please contribute!) and solicit feedback (please add your thoughts to the talk page!) Nothing is set in stone. It's a nifty idea - but can it happen? And if so, how? That's what we're trying to figure out right now. Please help!

Summary

• Linux Pro Magazine (LPM) can print a special Fedora issue around the launch of F12. (We can do this for later versions of Fedora as well, but we're looking at the possibility of an F12 issue right now. If F12 doesn't work out, we'll look at F13.)
• This would cost money, which Red Hat would provide (this budget would have to be approved by Max).
• We are trying to work out the #Contribution balance to figure out who would be involved and what they would do. Right now, the players are "members of the Fedora community," "LPM," and possibly "RHT Brand" - Max is checking with Red Hat's Brand team (who are away in Chicago and busy at the Red Hat Summit right now) to see if they would like to help. If you are interested in helping, please #Volunteer!

Contribution balance

The balance of how content creation/editing/design would be distributed between the Fedora community (perhaps with help from the Red Hat Brand team) and Linux Pro Magazine remains to be worked out.

LPM's first proposal explored how easy LPM could make it for Fedora to do this. In other words, how much of the writing/editing/layout etc can LPM handle? (This was very generous of them.) Therefore, LPM's initial proposal was for RH to do nothing but contribute funding, for Fedora to contribute a couple technical articles, and for LPM to do the rest.

This would be great if our goal was to get a great magazine out while minimizing the burden on the Fedora community. (This is probably what most projects would want to do.) However, this... is... FEDORAAAAA - and what we want to optimize for is maximizing the amount the Fedora community can learn from this.

The question then becomes "how much of the writing/editing/layout involvement etc can Fedora handle (without affecting the progress of work on a kickass F12 release), given the chance to work with Really Smart People who are Very, Very Good at Making Magazines?" We're trying to figure out that balance.

Please add your thoughts below.

Fedora to contribute

See (and edit!) Fedora print magazine proposal#Fedora to provide if you have specific suggestions that would go into the proposal. Put any other ideas in this section. And don't forget to #Volunteer if you'd like to contribute something specific (feel free to take ideas from this list!) Remember, awesome things only happen when people step up to do them.

• articles, because Fedora already has amazing writers - can we contribute all the content ourselves? How much Fedora Insight material can be repurposed?
  • interviews (both interview subjects and actual carrying-out-of and writing-up-of interviews)
  • how-tos
• design work
  • photographs
  • drawings
  • icons
  • graphics
  • layout
• editing
  • copyediting
  • improve-this-writing editing
• project management tool hosting and maintenance. I dunno if LPM has a public-facing work-tracking system that they use, but if they don't already have something for this, I'd want to ask them if they could use one of Fedora's ticketing systems, or the wiki, or somewhere the project management would be transparent.

LPM to contribute

We know that LPM will handle...

• final editing, copyediting, layout, and balance-of-content
• printing
• distribution

Basically, LPM will step in to fill in any gaps (in editing, writing, design, etc.) remaining - what do we (think we) know we want them to do? Please add your ideas here!

• Write a review/comparison of F12 (as a neutral third party)
• Translation
• Karsten: since we have actual editors out there at LPM would it help if we had them ride herd? on the production schedule, that is.

RH Brand to contribute

The short answer: We're Not Sure Yet. (We need to talk with Brand folks first, and that probably won't happen until they're back from the Red Hat Summit in Chicago on September 7 or so.) In the meantime, what - if anything - would you like to see the Red Hat Brand team help with?

Others to contribute

Who else should be involved? Put your ideas here, and how they might happen.

Timeline

• Wednesday, September 2:
• Thursday, September 3:
• Friday, September 4:
• Sometime during the week of September 6: LPM needs the go/no-go from Fedora (and funding from Red Hat) for an F12 issue. The timeline for everything else would be worked out at this point; for some idea of what this might look like, see Fedora print magazine proposal#Important Dates

The proposal

LPM's Rikki Kite is being absolutely awesome about transparency for this entire process, and has given us permission to share LPM's proposal document with the community - financial details and circulation numbers have been removed, but otherwise, this is literally everything they (and we) have. Please help us edit it!

See and edit the proposal at Fedora print magazine proposal.

History

• Wednesday, September 2, 2009: David Nalley pings Mel Chua in #fedora-mktg and gives a basic overview of the LPM proposal.
• A few minutes later, Mel sends notes from the conversation to the Fedora Marketing list, and David emails Rikki to let her know what's happening.
• 1 hour later in #fedora-mktg, Karsten Wade suggests asking Red Hat's Brand team if they'd like to partner with Fedora on this. Max Spevack begins to contact Red Hat's Brand team; this is tricky, as they are in Chicago and ridiculously busy at the Red Hat Summit.
• 1 hour later, Rikki Kite joins #fedora-mktg and catches up with David, Mel, Max, and Karsten on what's going on. (Sadly, Mel Chua has no logs for this.)
• The next day (Thursday, September 3, 2009), the proposal from LPM is published, this wikipage is created to summarize the discussion, and various Fedora teams begin to talk about the proposal (these conversation threads are still ongoing):
  • Marketing: discussion on the proposal and on the existing magazine work being done in LATAM
  • Design: On helping out with art/layout/design/etc
  • Legal: Trademark issues to be aware of, and analysis of the proposal
  • Ambassadors: what does this mean for Ambassadors and outreach media?
  • Add your group/thread here!

Precedents

Of LPM magazines for other distributions

See http://www.linux-magazine.com/Resources/Special-Editions

Of Magazine work done by the Fedora community

• Fedora Insight is a community-driven portal for publishing Fedora marketing materials (also community-contributed). It is under construction for the F12 release, but some of the material for it may also be the kind of thing we'd want to put into a magazine.
• The Brazilian Ambassadors, led by Teseu and Henrique, are in their 6th edition of http://www.projetofedora.org/Revista, which is entirely community-contributed - and the layout is gorgeous.
• Bolivian Fedora Ambassadors contribute to the Fedora sections of http://atix.opentelematics.org, an online magazine focused on Free and Open Source software.

Of Fedora outreach and publication work supported by Red Hat Brand

• They've filmed and edited kickass videos for Fedora outreach, like this FUDCon film.

Questions

Please add your questions here - we'll do our best to get through them in the Friday 2009-09-04 call, and will publish answers here. We know this is short notice and will also try to find a way to deal with questions posted after the call.

• What license will the magazine materials be released under?
• Will they be available online? Where? Who would be able to access them?
• Would preexisting open-licensed content (such as material from the Design or News teams be published in this issue?
• What are the deadlines and length of the articles that the Fedora community will be writing?

Volunteer

One of the things we need to figure out is how much the Fedora community wants to get involved with this, so that we can make sure we'll have the opportunity to do so. If you're interested in participating, please add your name below.

• Rahul Sundaram has offered to write an F12 overview; he did this for Linux Identity magazine for F11.
• Mel Chua offers to write a "Join the Fedora Project!" piece, fix the http://join.fedoraproject.org page to work with it, and make sure the resulting influx of new contributors are given a warm welcome.
• Yaakov M. Nemoy is offering to write an article on how to go from being a Fedora contributor to using those skills in a mixed RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora environment in the enterprise.
• Steven M. Parrish offers to write an article on Fedora's use as the base for the Sugar Desktop and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project.
• Paul F. Johnson offers to edit the whole thing as it's something he has a fair bit of experience in doing
• Michael Beckwith offers to help with image optimization and preparations for the final product.
• Aditya Patawari offers to assist Mel Chua to write "Join the fedora project" and also offers to write short tutorials and How-tos for newbies on various general topics. Also a short tutorial on creating a Local Fedora Repository.
• Karsten Wade offers to write an article covering why the Fedora Project focuses on contributors over directly pleasing end-users (better summary needed.) Basically, an article explaining the pyramid of contribution.