16 December 2000
Christopher
B. Wright is, for the moment, the Editor in Chief of OS/2 eZine, a title he
tried to duck for many months with little success. When he's not working on OS/2
eZine (what? he's not supposed to have any other jobs!) he works on his web comic
strip, Help Desk.If you have a comment about the content of this article, please feel free to vent in the OS/2 eZine discussion forums.
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From the Editor
After announcing my "retirement"
last issue, I was inundated with emails from people who wished me well. I'd like
to thank you all for that, and apologize for not getting back to you -- at the time,
I was also starting a new day job, and the transition was taking up a great deal
of my spare time.A number of you also emailed me,
asking for more information concerning the position fo Editor in Chief. I figured
I'd take this time to talk about what exactly the Editor in Chief of OS/2 eZine
does. If, after reading this, you're still interested in doing this job, email me
and we'll talk.
OS/2 eZine is currently in the process
of being rebuilt. We now have a small but fairly reliable set of contributors who
send in articles every month, as well as people willing to volunteer their time
for one-or-two-shot articles. Beyond that, there is a much larger group of people
who have volunteered to write that I haven't had the time to get back to.
One of the things I do is keep track
of who is writing what article, for each issue, and make sure that it's different
enough from past articles to warrant posting. I also look for articles that need
writing, then look for people willing to write them. This is a pretty challenging
task, because everyone works different hours, keep different schedules, and live
in different time zones.
Once I have all the articles I need
for an upcoming issue, I start building it. Currently, eZine is not automated (though
I've wanted to set that up for some time). So I have a few stock html templates
that I use for eZine's basic format, and dump the text of each article into that
format, adding whatever links and graphics are necessary. This is easily one of
the most time-consuming aspects of the job, and the one that, with a little work,
can probably someday go away entirely if eZine switches over to a cgi-based, database-driven
format.
Once I have the issue in place, I
check all the links and edit each page. This is probably the part of the job I am
poorest at (which I find ironic), since I generally require more time than I have
in order to edit documents properly.
Once the issue is edited and ready
to go, I then set up the discussion forums for each article, and link the articles
to each forum. Once all that is set up, the only thing that remains is to create
the archives, update the back issues page, and move all the latest files over to
the eZine web site.
That is eZine at its simplest...
that's what needs to be done just to keep it going the way it exists now. The trick,
of course, is to make OS/2 eZine better than it is now, and in order to do
that it needs an Editor in Chief who has the ability to do things differently than
I do.
eZine needs someone who can manage
their time better than I do, for one thing. It needs someone who can organize our
volunteers and make sure they can handle the work they offered to do -- and if they
can't, to find someone who can so the next issue doesn't get caught in a bind.
The Editor in Chief doesn't necessarily
need to have any high-end web programming skills, but he or she does need to have
competent knowledge of HTML, and needs to be comfortable working with developers
in order to automate the site.
Did I mention that, whoever you are,
you have to be able to manage your time well? :-)
Are you scared yet? If you're not,
you might be able to pull this off. Post in the forum if you have any other questions,
and email me if you're still interested.
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