Yesterday the Ubuntu News team released the 295th issue of Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter!
Over on Google+ this caused Michael Hall and Alan Pope to muse about just how long Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter had been around for.
So, when was the first issue? Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter – Issue #1 for the week of May 28 2006 – June 3 2006. Quite a long time ago! And reading that very first newsletter, along with a sampling of others throughout the years is what continues to drive me to work on the team, the ability to have these snapshots in time of where our project was, the articles that were out at the time and how the relationship between Ubuntu and the world has changed over the past 6 years. We’ve watched the Ubuntu Developer Summits like those covered in the first issue grow to events that host hundreds of attendees, seen whole fan sites spring up that are dedicated to covering even the slightest changes that come down the release pipeline and the number of pop culture and mentions in press from the BBC to the New York Times steadily rise.
My own involvement reached the most rewarding when I was able to leave for much of the month of October this year to travel to Ghana and then UDS and leave the Newsletter in the very capable hands of other volunteers. During this time Jasna BenÄić did most of the article collection throughout the week and I could count on Amber Graner and José Antonio Rey to make sure the weekend volunteers were contacted and could complete all the finishing touches of the newsletter by the end of each weekend. Upon my return I’ve found that Jasna continues to do much of the article collection, allowing me to tune my own process for scouring articles without fear of missing any great ones. In addition to our ever-reliable editor Matt Rudge, we’ve also had the added benefit of Jim Connett’s editorial expertise almost every week since he began volunteering in July.
I’m very excited about the team we’ve built here, but we could always use more! Summary writers are where we could use the most help.
Summary writers. Summary writers receive an email every Saturday with a link to the collaborative news links document (currently a Google Doc) for the past week which lists everything that needs summarizing. These people are vitally important to the newsletter. The time commitment is limited and it is easy to get started with from the first weekend you volunteer. No need to be shy about your writing skills, we have style guidelines to help you on your way and all summaries are reviewed before publishing so it’s easy to improve as you go on.
Interested? Email editor.ubuntu.news@ubuntu.com and we’ll get you added to the list of folks who are emailed each week and you can help as you have time.