Linux Journal at LinuxWorld

From August 28 through August 30, Linux Journal was at the LinuxWorld show in force. As San Francisco is just a (somewhat long) hop, skip and a jump from our main office in Seattle, and five of us are located in California, we saw it as a great opportunity to get much of the staff together.

With the Linux Lunacy Greek Cruise coming up in October, we decided a Caribbean theme for the booth was in order, and the Linux Journal booth became an island in the sea of other booths. The blue aisle carpeting certainly helped as well.

In the photos you can see ad reps Annie Tiemann, Gretchen Cole, Joe Krack and David Long. Not shown are LJ Editors Richard Vernon, Doc Searls and Joel Megal, marketing folks Carlie Fairchild, James Gray, Jennifer Palmer and Rebecca Cassity, and ad rep Martin Seto. And me--I took the pictures. ELJ Editor Don Marti was also at the show, but in the Embedded Linux Journal booth on the other side of the show floor.

David, Joe and Joel are all relatively new to the LJ family, and it was a great chance for them to see what our readers had to say about the publication. They were all impressed with the level of reader loyalty we have. Comments like "I have every issue of LJ" were not uncommon, but this can be somewhat surprising to the newcomers as we approach issue 100.

Once things got rolling, folks were off to a whole host of appointments with Linux vendors. I headed for our hospitality suite across the street, which was set up so we could meet with vendors in a quieter environment. I was joined there by a rotating staff of editorial folks, marketing folks and ad reps.

In the Suite

Besides the semi-open times in the suite we also had a few planned meetings. The most important was our Editorial Advisory Board meeting Tuesday evening. This was a chance to sit down, go over some survey information and help set the future direction of the magazine. The good news is that it looks like we are pretty much on target for the next year, as far as editorial focus.

The editorial calendar for 2002 is up on the Linux Journal web site, if you want to take a look. We did learn that we need to make sure IT professionals new to Linux are aware of Linux Journal, and we are actively working with some big vendors in the Linux space to help those people find out about us.

One other topic discussed at the EAB meeting was our international presence. Besides subscribers and newsstand distribution over much of the world, Linux Journal is translated into numerous foreign languages. James Grey is in charge of these international translation agreements. The simple report is some changes are in the works, with more translations on the way.

Another meeting was with Bill Pollock and Karol Jurado of No Starch Press, the people who publish the Linux Journal Press book line. Out of that meeting we firmed up one more book title and have ideas for a few more.

On August 28, the winners were announced in the "Hack Embedded Linux for Fun and Prizes" contest. See the complete list of winners and the press release on the ELJ web site.

As always, trade shows are a lot of work. But they are also an important opportunity to meet both readers and vendors, face to face. It was well worth it.

Everyone's next chance to meet face to face with much of our staff is the Linux Lunacy cruise in October. Hope to see you there.

Then it is off to Oakland for the Annual Linux Showcase in early November, where we are putting together another fun event like we had last year in Atlanta.