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GNOME Journal

GNOME Journal Issue 21 is out!

The GNOME Journal team has released the latest issue, featuring five brand new articles.

We have three articles based on talks and experiences at GUADEC 2010 in The Hague and two interviews.

What are you waiting for? Go read it!

GNOME Journal is licensed under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. Translate it, podcast it, share it!

Write for GNOME Journal!

With GUADEC having just ended, we’re looking for some GUADEC related stories for GNOME Journal.

Here’s a few examples:

  • Was it your first time at GUADEC? Share some thoughts about what you liked, saw or who you met.
  • Did you give a talk at GUADEC? Write it up as an article! Or, we’re happy to do an interview with you about your talk. Here’s a great example with J5 after last year’s GUADEC.
  • Did you see a new application or new technology that gets you excited? We’re always looking for app reviews. Write it up and we’ll include it!

If any of these interest you, please drop me an email at pcutler at gnome dot org. Don’t be shy – if you want a member of the GJ team to interview you, just ask!

GNOME Journal Issue #19 is out!

The latest GNOME Journal is out!

We have six articles in this issue:

  • Will Kahn-Greene writes his first article for GNOME Journal about the GNOME Miro Community. Want to watch videos about GNOME? Will has all the information you need.
  • GNOME Bugzilla was upgraded late last year. Sumana Harihareswara writes up the case study on the partnership between the GNOME Foundation, Canonical and Everything Solved, a consultancy focused on Bugzilla.
  • Stormy Peters interviews Juan José Sánchez Penas, who works at Igalia and sits on the GNOME Advisory Board.
  • Jono Bacon writes about a topic I’m personally passionate about – tools for opportunistic developers who want to write small, focused and fun applications for GNOME.
  • And another topic I’m passionate about – Shaun McCance introduces Mallard, the new XML schema we’re using to write help and documentation in GNOME.
  • And last, but not certainly not least – Jim Hodapp writes a Letter from the Editor – thank you Jim for all your hard work on GNOME Journal as Editor in Chief and your kind words.

Thank you to all our writers and editors for this release. Want to write an article or get involved? Join the mailing list here.

Go read it!

GNOME Journal #18 – Multimedia released!

Just in time for your weekend reading pleasure, GNOME Journal #18 is out. Issue 18 is a special edition focusing on Multimedia & GNOME, as well as recap of the recent Boston Summit.

  • Writing Multimedia Applications in Vala by Jim Nelson
  • Pitivi by Jono Bacon
  • What’s new with Banshee by Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier
  • An interview with Jonathan Thomas, creator of the OpenShot video editor by Paul Cutler
  • Boston Summit Recap by Jason Clinton

This issue features four (4!) new authors and the GNOME Journal team is thankful for their contribution. We also couldn’t have done it without our editors: Stormy Peters, Sumana Harihareswara, and Jim Hodapp.

Go read it now!

GNOME Journal Issue 17 out!

I’m two days late blogging about the latest release of GNOME Journal (and thanks to Danni for mentioning it!).

This is a very special issue written by women in the open source community. It’s the first time we’ve done a themed issue and all articles are by women in the open source community. Also, with the exception of Danni and Stormy who have written for GNOME Journal before, all are first time writers for GJ!

Women in open source (and the IT industry in general) is a topic I’m passionate about, having seen it first hand in a few different ways. My wife worked in the IT industry (at the same employer I did) for 8 years and I also helped manage the Geek Squad at Best Buy for a number of years before leaving 2 years ago. Having over 10,000 computer technicians there was definitely a lack of diversity and talent, including women, which is / was a focus area for the organization.

I’m proud to have helped manage the release (though it was a bit later than I had hoped due to my lack of time management skills). The idea for this issue came from the GNOME Women community, and they found the writers and drove this issue. Thank you!

We have eight articles in this issue (a record!):

  • Telepathy, Empathy and Mission Control 5 in GNOME 2.28
  • Telepathy Overview
  • The Un-Scary Screwdriver
  • Where are they now? The Participants of the 2006 Women’s Summer Outreach Program
  • Easy Breezy Beautiful GNOME Shell
  • GNOME desktop testing automation and how to use Mago
  • Epiphany from a – not so experienced – user perspective
  • An Interview with Leslie Hawthorn

We also had a number of new editors help out, and I’d like to personally thank Zonker and Sumana for all their help in making this release happen.

Go read it now!

GNOME Journal

I’ve been feeling a bit down about GNOME Journal since our last planned issue for October fell apart at the last minute. There were a number of reasons and nobody’s fault but after the great success we’ve seen this year in having multiple issues published after not having published in 2008 I was afraid we were losing momentum again. (I’m very excited about our next issue, Women in GNOME, but was concerned about issues after that).

I am glad to have been proven wrong, and in the process, re-energized about GNOME Journal.

I had the opportunity to have lunch with Stormy earlier this week and mentioned to her that one of our authors, after seeing his article just not be ready, ask if there were any other articles he could write. After reviewing our article brainstorming list, I was stumped for ideas to give him as a number of the ideas were out of date. Having mentioned this to Stormy, she quickly added about a dozen ideas later in the week!

Then, out of the blue yesterday, Sumana jumped in and helped to update and re-organize our wiki pages and sent an email to the list mentioning the updates and some ideas for future issues.

After sending out my normal request for updates on the upcoming issue, two new volunteers sent emails within minutes of my email offering to help as well.

This is what I love about the GNOME community!

Now is a great time to get involved with GNOME Journal and here are a few different ideas on how to participate:

  • Have an idea for an article you’d like to see? Add it here.
  • Want to write an article? Need an idea? See the same list. And if you’re not comfortable writing an article by yourself, collaboration is always encouraged! Send an email to the list and I know a number of writers, including myself, would be more than happy to co-write an article.
  • Help edit an article for a writer. Review the article structure, review spelling and grammar and if possible add the needed markup for our CMS.

I’m still hopeful we’ll move from our current CMS (Textpattern) to WordPress-MU on blogs.gnome.org later this year. (Jeff Waugh – still need your help if you’re available!) Once that migration starts to occur we’ll also be looking for help and ideas around what WordPress plugins could enhance the GNOME Journal experience.

Happy Birthday GNOME Journal!

GNOME Journal celebrates it’s 5 year anniversary this month, with the first ever edition released in September 2004.

After taking 2008 off, I’m happy to say that 2009 is turning into a banner year for GNOME Journal, and 2009 has seen more issues published than any year other 2005, and we’re on pace to break 2005’s record of five issues.

Looking back at the first Letter from the Editor from Jim Hodapp, it’s good to see that our mission hasn’t changed:

  • There is a current lack of original written content centered around GNOME – GNOME Journal fulfills this void by creating original content that focuses on the technology, community, philosophy, and general happenings within the GNOME umbrella.
  • A void that is largely unfilled currently is how to effectively market the GNOME desktop to people who either currently use a free operating system and don’t use GNOME, or to attract those people who use another operating system altogether GNOME will not run. GNOME Journal will provide a very tangible and centralized place that people can read to gain original insite into what GNOME is and what they can do with it.
  • Lastly, GNOME Journal is entering into existence simply because it is a cool idea. It is my hope that it will also spur on increased appreciation for GNOME and allow more people to feel like they can get involved in the community.

I whole heartedly agree with the above statements, and they are just as true in 2009 as they were in 2004. There continues to be a lack of original content around GNOME; as a member of the GNOME Marketing team there is no question that it is hard to market GNOME to our existing user base; and there is no question that GNOME Journal is, and continues to be, a cool idea.

One of the things I’m most proud of since becoming the release coordinator for GNOME Journal earlier this year, is the new writers who have (and will have) contributed to GNOME Journal.

In no particular order: Stormy Peters, Les Harris, Jayson Rowe, Og Maciel, Natan Yellin, and Emily Chen.

I’m also thankful to everyone in the GNOME Community who has made time for interviews on interesting projects such as J5 and Laszlo Peter, and those featured in Behind the Scenes, including Stormy, Owen Taylor and Lucas Rocha.

We aren’t done with 2009 either! We have two special editions coming up, the first focused on Multimedia and the second is an edition of GNOME Journal written by the GNOME Women team. We’re hoping to introduce new features in GNOME Journal, including a new article every feature, as well as migrating from our current CMS to blogs.gnome.org, which will also us to do multimedia, publish to PDF, and rate articles. And a big thank you to Dave Neary letting us know our database crashed last week and we weren’t displaying any content. (Jeff Waugh – if you’re reading this, please reply to my emails so we can finish this migration. Thank you!)

We’re always looking for new article ideas, writers and editors – we’re also big on collaboration, so don’t feel that you have to write an entire article by yourself. Interested? Email me, leave a comment on my blog, or best of all, join the GNOME Journal mailing list.

And lastly, thank you to our readers. Our hits have been going up every issue, and I am grateful for all the comments left on my blog after announcing a new issue. I’m hopeful that we can turn these comments into reality, and we’re already working on a suggestion for an interview that was just recently left on my blog.

I hope you enjoy reading GNOME Journal as much as we enjoy writing it.

GNOME Journal Issue 16 Released!

GNOME Journal Issue 16 is out, featuring 3 new articles:

  • Writing Open Source conference recap
  • Putting the Network back into G(N)OME interview with J5 – based on his recent talk at GUADEC.
  • Behind the Scenes with Lucas Rocha – the man who started the Behind the Scenes feature on GNOME Journal

Special thanks to Jim and Shaun for helping edit the articles, and Lucas and J5 for taking the time for the interviews, both at and after GUADEC.

What are you waiting for? Go read it now!

Issue 17 is already being planned as a special edition focused on Multimedia in Linux and GNOME. Have an idea for an article or interview? Let me know, we’d love to have you!

GNOME Journal Issue 16

One of the highlights for me at GUADEC was the compliments I received on GNOME Journal. After over a year of inactivity, we have successfully revived GNOME Journal, with two releases within 60 days of each, and I have to admit, I enjoyed the recognition it gave me.

With that said, we are working on the next issue of GNOME Journal, which will be a special edition devoted to this past GCDS / GUADEC. We’re looking for writers! Did you see something cool last week you wanted to share with the community? Was there a talk or an application that inspired you, that you would like more people to learn about? Was it your first GUADEC and you’d be interesting in sharing your impressions, what you liked, and what you saw? (I really wanted to do an article like this, but I need to be honest myself and the fact I already have 2 articles planned for this issue and other time commitments).

If you’re interested in helping, either writing or editing, please drop me an email (pcutler at gnome dot org) or join the GNOME Journal mailing list. A big thank you to those who volunteered to help out with GNOME Journal, both writing and editing, at GUADEC and for all the kind comments.

Gran Canaria Part II

I continue to have a great time here at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. I keep putting off blogging as I’m just overwhelmed with everything going through my head, and trying to make a succinct blog post has been a challenge.

One of the best parts, especially as it’s my first GUADEC, is how welcoming everyone is. I think I’ve had lunch or dinner with a different group of people every meal. (The meals here are pretty good, but the conversations are even better).

I had the opportunity Monday to give an update on Documentation in the GNOME 3.0 Status session. It’s a bit intimidating standing in a spotlight (literally) and talking for 3-5 minutes about everything we’re doing. (Yes, Shaun, I made sure to make a point you released Mallard after 4 long years, though I forgot to give Bastien credit for helping fix my laptop so I have Mallard working on it). I was very nervous – I really need to practice my public speaking skills, especially as I want to do more talks for Marketing later in the year on the upcoming GNOME 3.0 release.

I also met Thomas, who does a lot of work on GNOME PR here in Europe and Germany, including working in the Press Room here at Gran Canaria for the Desktop Summit, and he had some great ideas of how we can improve our marketing communications, and some fair challenges about how it’s been done in the past. I look forward to working on bringing some of those ideas to life.

Speaking of Marketing, yesterday I had the chance to talk about the work the Marketing team is doing before the Advisory Board. I thought it went pretty well, and it wouldn’t have happened without Claus’ work on the marketing campaign on the Marketing wiki. I had a great conversation with Andreas last night as well, and I’m glad we have the Art team’s support with some of the ideas we have. I’m happy that a few people have come up to me and volunteered to help out more with Marketing stuff. Definitely need to get that task list and release calendar ready! And please come to the Marketing BoF at 3:00 tomorrow to learn more, though I’m guessing a lot of people will be doing the local tour.

The only downside to going to the Advisory Board meeting was missing a couple of the sessions I really wanted to see late yesterday afternoon. I need to go track Aaron down and learn more about what’s new in Banshee!

I’ve also recruited a few more writers for GNOME Journal – don’t forget, if you have a cool app you want to talk about or demo, please come find me. I’d love to turn those into articles for GNOME Journal later in the year.