Happy New Year, and welcome to another issue of the Diplomatic Pouch!
Since it's the New Year, I may as well begin with a retrospective of 2007!
It was almost a year ago that I received the first message from Heath Gardner, asking me to write an article for the next issue of the Pouch. Eager to see the Zine get back on its feet, I agreed, and even offered to help out with the editing and article soliciting.
With a little help from the Dip Council, we started work. We began by putting together the W2006A issue from articles that had already been collected by Edi, as a sort of practice run to learn the ins and outs of HTML and putting material on the site. It went up in late February, just before our official deadline for S2007M submissions. That left us a month to put together our first independent issue; but we'd already spent some time soliciting contributions from different authors, so we had a decent amount of material. The Spring 2007 Movement issue went up by the March 31st deadline, exactly as planned. I think that was the first time that an issue had gone up according to schedule in a long while!
I'm happy to say that I've managed to keep it up throughout the year. The Spring 2007 Retreat issue went up on May 31st; Fall 2007 Movement went up on August 31st, after I'd had a chance to meet several luminaries of the hobby at WDC in Vancouver (and to pester them for articles!); and Fall 2007 Retreat went up at the end of October. I made the decision to move the Winter 2007 Adjustment issue deadlines back one week, since I expected to be away for the holidays; so this one makes a total of five issues for 2007.
This last issue for 2007 has fewer articles than earlier ones. I suppose it's because things tend to slow down around the end of the year, and many contributors are busy getting ready for the holidays. I know I was; there's still work to be done on the main Index (sorry!). Looks like not everybody builds this Winter…
Still, I hope you'll enjoy what we do have. While I could have put off the W2007A issue until later when I had more articles, I think it's important to stick to the deadlines. I want our contributors to know that their articles *will* go up in a timely fashion, instead of languishing, and for our readers to know that a new issue of the Zine *will* be there at regular intervals. So I intend to keep up this practice, even when I don't have as many articles as I would prefer.
Of course, my hope is that I'll always have a good number of articles for each issue, thus avoiding the problem. Which leads me to the next point.
I am hoping very much that 2008 will be an equally strong year for the Pouch, and I'm working to make sure it is. I'm hoping that I'll get lots of article submissions (hint!) throughout the year. I'd like to revive some of the columns that have fallen by the wayside in the past few issues, and maybe introduce new ones. And I want very much to get the main index back into decent shape: that's one of my resolutions!
As always, I depend on YOU to help make this happen. Any thoughts you have on strategy, tactics, or negotiation can go into an article. It doesn't even have to have anything to do with game play; in the past the Pouch has published humorous articles, or articles with historical background on the pre-WWI era. So if you have any ambition to write for the Pouch, please do! If you're willing and able to convert the work of others to HTML, volunteer to help!
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Charles Roburn The Editor (editor@diplom.org) |
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