When I was a kid and felt like time moved as slow as molasses, adults used to tell me to savor it, as time flies when you're older. They weren't kidding. In some ways it's weird to think it's been 10 years already, but in other ways, it feels like we've been doing this forever. What is time anyway?
Challenges of running a magazine
While I'd love to say that the last 10 years have been absolutely amazing and running this magazine has been ever so rewarding, we've definitely had our ups and downs. When we first started, we had the energy that only comes from something new and novel. We (or maybe it was just me) had grand ideas on how we were going to grow and expand and become a source for all things Community worldwide. And then the realities of life stepped in.
Time
Running a magazine is time-consuming! We (as in Team Skrift) have day jobs we have to prioritize because they pay the bills; we have our other life commitments and hobbies and much needed downtime that have already been established and we're layering on a new commitment that could be seen as a part-time job in itself. And as someone who struggles with perfectionism, it's hard for me not to give 200%. But as I've realized over the last 10 years, I cannot give 200%. Not only is it not sustainable, it's not remotely realistic. I have been fortunate in Janae and Kyle as my team members, however, who have a better handle on that than I do and ask me the hard questions like, "do you actually have time for that?" or "is that reasonable to do?" to keep me in check. Do I listen to them? Usually no 😳 [insert failed attempt to build a vibrant following on Instagram]. Not at first anyway, but I do hear their voices in my head whenever I come up with a new scheme I absolutely don't have time for.
Finding authors
In the first few years of our existence, I did the bi-monthly newsletters — and I Hated it (yes, with a capital 'H'). I usually had to cajole myself with a glass of wine or a margarita to get it done (no lack of typos there!) Janae was in charge of finding authors/articles and turns out she was not a fan of that. So we switched. And I think we're both very much happier now with that decision. Finding authors, however, is no easy feat, and I get why she didn't want to do it. I think we all thought people would be as excited to write as we were to publish and we'd get submissions on a regular basis. I can tell you that that is hardly ever the case.
While we do have a core group of people interested and willing to write, we're always trying to expand to new voices and increase the visibility of underrepresented groups, especially as Umbraco continues to grow in new markets across the world. So more often than not, it's me randomly emailing people, messaging on LinkedIn, joining meetup groups around the world asking if they'd like to write. But my reach, and Skrift's reputation, only extends so far.
I know there are more people out there who might be interested, I just don't know how to reach them. And if I'm lucky enough to even get an answer from someone I've randomly messaged, it's often 'no', though they might not say it as directly as that. It might come across as, 'I don't know what to write about' or 'I don't have anything to say' or 'I'm not that interesting'. I beg to differ — I think everyone is interesting and has something to share, but I don't see my 'job' as manipulating someone who doesn't want to write into writing. If I reach out and you tell me no, I'm respecting that no.
Everyone is interesting and has something to share.
Article follow through
The second challenging part about around authors is we're asking other people in the community to sacrifice some of their free time to write us these wonderful articles. Even if they agree, sometimes life gets in the way and they need to postpone or even back out completely. We totally understand! We are not expecting to be your first priority, but it has often left us scrambling. Sometimes we fill in ourselves, writing something last minute to fill the gap, but last year we came to the healthy decision of just rolling with it. If we have one article, great! If we have none, also great (so far that's only happened once in 10 years, but it's been very close many months)!
I always thought we'd get to a point in planning where we could have themes for our issues, but it's hard enough as is. That will probably always remain a pipe dream, or a happy accident if it does happen. I had a hard time with this decision at first. It feels like failure. But it's been a healthy decision. We're all volunteers, after all, and I don't have time to drop everything and write a last minute article either.
Favorite article? Who 'dis?
I could no sooner pick a favorite article than I could a favorite meal, or color, or book. It all depends on my mood and what I need in the moment. I do tend to gravitate more toward the lifestyle articles as I love to hear about people's lives, experiences, and/or struggles (like this one on introversion, or this one and this one on burnout, or this one on remote work, or this one and this one on neurodiversity). They're just so relatable. And I'm always curious about other people and how they do life.
Tangentially related, I've always wanted to have a regular series on people's desk setups. Whether that's their physical workspace, or their digital desktop / file organization setup and processes. I'm a bit of an organizational nerd and I always love to see other peoples' workflows, setups, and organizational styles. Along with that could be more examples and thought processes behind their Umbraco backoffice setups and architecture. So many ways to do all those things, and I want to see them all!
For the tech / how-to articles we publish, I love those for the resource bank they create — more of an on-demand / as-needed reference. I love having a general idea of what knowledge is available and being able to reference them when I need that information. One I will call out though, is Jason Elkin's article on Vite and Umbraco for Faster Frontend Builds. That one did revolutionize how I setup the frontend on projects. And though I haven't made the jump to versions higher than v13 yet, I am glad I have some knowledge around Vite for when I do make the jump to v17.
Looking forward
It's easy to get hung up on all the things that have gone wrong or been hard in the last 10 years, but I honestly wouldn't change any (or perhaps much 😉) of it. The people I've met because of the magazine; the friendships I've solidified; the insight the articles have brought not only to me personally, but to my business; and the way it's made me feel more connected to the Umbraco community at large have been so valuable and rewarding to me.
Belong to a community increases happiness and sense of well-being and if I can help facilitate, even in small part, bringing together unique voices and perspectives from around the world, and helping others to feel included in this community, then I deem that worth my time. I'm proud of what we've grown and am excited for the next chapter, where yes, perhaps I do still harbor hopes of growth and expansion and themed issues.
*Points in the form of 👏👏 if you guess the movie the title references. Drop it in the comments below 👇