[AUUG-Talk]: The future of AUUGN

[Greg Black]

On 2004-09-08, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> On Wednesday,  8 September 2004 at 16:56:14 +1000, Greg Black wrote:
>> Well, I've read Greg Lehey's editorial "The new face of AUUGN"
>> in the current issue and it seems worthy of comment.  I must say
>> I'm disappointed the decision has been made "to stop production
>> of the paper version of AUUGN by the end of the year."
>> 
>> However, if the cost of printing is so high and if we really
>> could see a significant reduction in membership fees in return
>> for this move, I'm happy to accept the decision.
> 
> This caused a surprising amount of discussion at the AGM.  In general,
> the sentiment expressed was like yours: "pity, but understandable".  I
> assume that this sentiment is not the only one: a significant number
> of members didn't read it, so they had no cause to complain about the
> decision.

I've always read it, from cover to cover, and usually within a
couple of days of receiving it.  It's not always what I want,
but I don't complain because I'm not prepared to provide the
extra stuff myself and I know just how hard it is to produce a
regular magazine.

> But I'd like to remind you about the option of having it
> printed.  If people are interested (but only then), we can do some
> enquiries about the cost of such printing.  It's possible that it
> would be comparable to the costs of producing AUUGN.

I would not be interested in a printed version if we turned it
around into a web-based publication -- so long as that version
really was produced and accessible.  (I note that there's a
section of the AUUG web site entitled "AUUGN On the Web" that
claims to include the text of AUUGN starting from December 2000,
with issues added six months after publication -- the last one
listed is July 2002, so this is not promising.)

>> I do hope that AUUGN will continue -- preferably on the web rather
>> than in the form of CDs, which also cost money to produce and
>> distribute.
> 
> We're currently thinking of both.

Are there plans to engage the membership in the decision making
process, or would that be too difficult to manage?

>> I do like the inclusion of conference papers in the current issue
>> and would hope that might continue.
> 
> Thanks.  That's an easy source of material for us, so if it meets with
> approval, then we can easily keep it up.  That doesn't stop people
> from contributing, though.

Indeed, but having the conference papers on hand does provide
for some meat in the magazine and it does get the papers out to
a wider audience.

Cheers, Greg