13:55:54 #startmeeting 13:55:54 Meeting started Wed Sep 2 13:55:54 2009 UTC. The chair is mchua. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot. 13:55:54 Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic. 13:55:56 w00t 13:56:01 soooo - Mel we were talking about the magazine 13:56:09 and the echo is deafening :) 13:56:21 ke4qqq: Yup yup. So, 24 hours ago, I hadn't heard about this idea before (but it's super-cool) 13:56:41 yeah so at the last fudcon in boston and at scale 13:56:42 ke4qqq: can you splurt out or copy-paste or whatnot the nutshell of the idea and what's up with it right now? 13:56:52 ke4qqq: ah, you're beating me to it :) 13:56:53 * mchua listens 13:56:56 we have tossed around the idea of having a print Fedora magazine 13:57:15 at the same time both quaid and I have talked to Rikki Kite about the possibility 13:57:36 Independently? 13:57:39 soooo - Rikki has told me they have a 'special issue' release available that coincides with the f12 release 13:57:48 yes - or at least separately 13:58:24 btw, for those in the audience, Rikki == Rikki Kite the editor of Linux Pro Mag. in the US and Linux Mag in the rest of the world 13:58:51 (she is awesome) 13:58:58 "Special Issue" release? What does that mean? 13:59:12 soooo - that puts us at a decision point: 13:59:28 we rapidly need to decide if commarch/$foodisionatRHT 13:59:50 can commit the initial funds (my understanding is that we could recoup this based on sales of the magazine) 14:00:09 find a fearless-leader-of-this-project or two 14:00:26 and get content authors. (assuming we generate most of the content from the community) 14:01:06 unfortunately - I have been sooo busy with other things, I haven't kept up with this, and LPM would really like to know our intentions this week. 14:01:09 This week. 14:01:11 * mchua blinks 14:01:25 yeah - I suck 14:01:33 for letting this slip so much 14:01:38 Formal intentions, with a "we will publish Y content on X date and here is $Z?" or... what needs to be decided by when, exactly? 14:01:52 don't think that formal 14:01:53 ke4qqq: no, no! I'm glad you're bringing it up now, and you've arguably had a crapton on your plate 14:02:17 * mchua is learning that the most valuable skill is knowing what to drop and what not to do and what to say no to... 14:02:21 but more the 'agreement in principle' from people with authority to make those commitments. 14:02:29 Ah, okay. 14:02:39 which really means Max I think 14:02:44 * mchua trying to get a sense of the order of magnitude this work would be. 14:02:53 * mchua nods, I think so too, yay spevack! 14:03:15 Right now I know I don't have the bandwidth to drive this myself for F12, because we've got Marketing gearing up and FI going and... all that 14:03:25 I'm wondering how much extra work this would be on top of what we're already doing to make FI fly 14:03:35 in terms of deadlines we'd need to hit for print publication 14:04:08 ke4qqq: do you have a sense of how much on-top-of-FI work would be needed? Would we need to totally rewrite/reformat/lay-out everything, and do so much earlier? 14:04:10 sooo it's printed in DE 14:04:24 or can we say "hey, here are the URLs for the FI items we'd like to have in a magazine, go crazy" 14:04:28 and content typically needs to have first draft into LPM about 1 month before release 14:04:42 and this is scheduled for release in mid november iirc 14:04:51 ...meaning the content would have to go to LPM in... a month and a half. 14:04:52 they'd prefer to have raw text 14:05:30 I think - but those are details to do with the people at LPM 14:05:42 we really need to drag Rikki onto IRC 14:05:53 I do a poor substitute for answering these questions 14:06:03 (and most of my knowledge comes from writing for her for other things) 14:06:46 * ke4qqq wonders what else I can answer for you regarding this and wishes someone other than he and mchua would join this conversation 14:06:50 quaid: ping 14:07:05 ke4qqq: order of magnitude of funding involved - are we talking $1mil, $1k, $100? 14:07:10 ke4qqq: for how many issues? 14:07:12 it's 7am cali-time 14:07:18 single issue 14:07:32 ke4qqq: whoops, i mean how many copies of that issue? 14:07:38 (though it's good to know this would be a one-time blast) 14:08:01 iirc it was up-front 10k, with potential recoup based on sales (they can also mitigate that with ad sales, but that's a to be negotiated thing 14:08:10 Do we have any fallback options if we can't get an official LWN thing going but want to have Something In Print for FUDCon? Local print shop running off some stuff, self-publishing? 14:08:29 ...wow. Okay. No idea how that compares to available budget, but that sounds like a lot to me 14:08:32 I haven't even begun exploring that. 14:08:53 me either, and to me as well - though Greg didn't seem fazed when I talked with him about that....soooo I don't know 14:08:56 (then again, anything over $100 is still really expensive in my book; I've been on a student budget for too long.) 14:09:21 Yeah, Max and Greg and Karsten and such would have a way better sense of scale on this, I think. I do not trust my sense of proportion on anything financial (yet; developing it). 14:10:30 LPM has done special editions for Ubuntu and opensuse in the past 14:10:44 and ubuntu developed into a quarterly magazine (Ubuntu User) 14:10:47 ke4qqq: Ok. Actually, here's the most important question, in my mind: Why F12? Why would now be better than, say, F13 or F14? (Would it be?) 14:11:23 Because if this is something that's F12 or nothing, then that's quite different than if we could pick it up (and possibly do it better, with more bandwidth) for a later release. 14:11:51 soooo I initially thought about F11- but couldn't get critical mass - F12 works because they have an open slot that coincides for release. We could possibly pick it up and do it better at some $pointinfuture 14:12:08 * mchua mostly thinking about Marketing bandwidth right now, which seems pretty sucked up with FI launching. Docs/News/someone else might have the capacity to take this and really run with it, in which case they should do that. 14:12:10 * mchua nods 14:12:27 Print is a big deal, imo. I'd rather do it right at $somepointinfuture than badly now. 14:12:52 that capacity is a big deal too - and LPM even offered to supply all the content, though that seems wrong in my mind. 14:12:55 ke4qqq: any idea how far off $somepointinfuture might be, how long it might take to get back into (reasonable) alignment with the fedora release schedule? 14:12:59 ...wait, they did? how would that work? 14:13:17 * mchua would feel funny about a fedora magazine written by non-fedora contributors exclusively, though 14:13:17 they essentially ask us what we want to see and hire authors (like me) to write 14:13:21 me too 14:13:27 we have plenty of good writers here 14:13:33 and no need for outside help 14:13:42 it's also more expensive as they have to pay those authors 14:14:04 where as we wouldn't (I don't think) pay community authors 14:14:12 * mchua nods. Well, I could perhaps see getting one or two articles written by outsiders - a review of F(Latest-Release), for instance, so it would be more neutral-third-party. 14:14:14 But by and large, yeah. 14:15:01 so is this enough to digest for a bit?? any chance I could hand off the liaison with Rikki to you? 14:15:52 This is definitely enough to digest for a bit, I'm happy to take the liasoning (I should ping Rikki on a few things anyhow), and we can take the discussion to... marketing list? Does that seem like the right place? 14:16:09 yeah I think that's the right place 14:16:11 (copying quaid and spevack for Wisdomness and Budgeting, and all) 14:16:53 Ok, I'll send this log to list then. I think I've done all the mental digesting that I need to / can do right now, though 14:17:15 and "when can we do this next, and what would be involved / when would that be" is where I'm headed with it 14:17:21 ok - cool - thanks for the help - I owe you $beverage at the next fudcon 14:17:27 ke4qqq: if that sounds reasonable to you 14:17:34 so, no F12 magazine unless a miracle occurs 14:17:39 but maybe think about it for f13 or f14 14:17:39 certainly does to me 14:17:41 cool. 14:18:23 * mchua ending logs, sending logs... 14:18:25 #endmeeting