Archive:Exec report - Journal Editor 2010 - 2011
Journal Editor: Kathrin Lang
I joined the VOC as journal editor in August 2010. By then, nothing really had happened yet. So here what happened throughout the year until publication:
Advertisement
I contacted tons of outdoor companies by the end of September, however, many of them never replied to my e-mails. Therefore I have following suggestions:
- Contact companies as early as possible as many of them do there budget in the spring. MEC seems to say 'no' but if you contact them in January again they will most likely do an ad.
- If you don't get a reply after a couple of weeks, call! If a general phone number is not available, call the customer service and ask for the marketing director.
- You may have to harass some companies before you will get a reply.
- A list of contacts and this years advertisers is available through the archives.
- Send the every company the Media Kit!
Wiki Page
I set up a Wiki Page VOCJ53 with instructions, call for help, deadlines, .... in September and tried to update it frequently. If people submitted articles I added them into the table of contents. Deadlines were pretty much met, at least the very last one and the one on February 15th though some people were submitting articles late.
Articles
In late October I contacted people who wrote TR's to write an article and to submit it before Christmas. Contacting I think was good, not to many articles made it before Christmas though. One could harass people throughout the year to immediately transform the TR into an article.
Also, people tent to forget to send captions for there pics. I recommend to immediately when you get the pics to ask for captions otherwise you have to search later through your massive amount of emails that you have already gotten.
Editing
I put all articles on google docs and gave everyone who wanted to help (~20 people) access to it. There was a main folder 'VOCJ53' and 2 subfolders, 'Edit1' and 'Edit2'. Articles should be edited by 2 people. First person writes name on article, edits it, moves it into 'Edit1', second person does the same and moves article from Edit1 to 'Edit2'.
I had a first editing session at my place on January 31th and February 16th. Everything else was done through google docs.
Design
Like the journal editors in the previous years I used InDesign. It took me ~ 40hrs to put everything together. Here a few tips:
- I used font calibri and font size 12. 12 is to large! Use 10 or 11
- I had 1/2 inch as margin. Too small, use at least 1 inch
- pictures, inserted pdfs,... need to be linked for good printing quality! If they are not, they will be pixalated! Therefore make sure you don't move pictures into other folders on your hard drive after you inserted them!
- At the end the margin and font size problem was solved by shrinking everything to 95%
Printing
We printed with Hemlock again this year. They are really awesome and helpful! Don't hesitate to call and ask everything you wanna know. You have to submit the journal at least 3 weeks before the banquet to get it printed in time. Four weeks are even better, especially in case there are problems with the proof.
Photo Contest
I set up the Photo_Contest_2010-11 in January. Unfortunately not to many pics were submitted. So people need to be reminded!
