When you're little, ten years feels like an eternity. You're in 5th grade (in the US), which for me was one whole year before middle school. Ten feels like a big kid, and every day feels like it takes forever to get through. Summer is an eternity to spend having fun. By the time I was ten, I had moved five times and gone to six schools (impressive considering you start school at the age of 5-6). A very eventful childhood and I admit a fairly disrupted one. It's hard to feel stable through so much change!
If there's anything (other than Kyle) that has been a stable beacon during the last ten years, it's been Skrift, and by extension my deep friendship with Erica and Kyle, and of course Umbraco.
Now, at the ripe age of fourty-two I look back at the last ten years of my life and I wonder "Where have they gone?!". At this age, it feels like the time just flies by. However, like my childhood, there has been a lot of change for me in the last ten years. I've changed jobs four times - from Mindfly to Offroadcode to freelancing during the pandemic to ProWorks. I moved because I got a house. I got married to Kyle (finally? 🤣). And at the same time, starting Skrift with Erica and Kyle feels like it was just yesterday.
If there's anything (other than Kyle) that has been a stable beacon during the last ten years, it's been Skrift, and by extension my deep friendship with Erica and Kyle, and of course Umbraco. Running a magazine is hard - no one told me that ten years ago! - but the friendship and the connections I've maintained in the community throughout the trying time that was COVID and the loss of two jobs I loved, kept me going. None of that would have happened without Skrift.
If I have anything to say about the past ten years, it's thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for supporting this endeavor. Thank you for contributing your articles. Thank you for connecting with us at meetups and festivals. Thank you for being such an umbazing community!
The Challenges of Running a Magazine
I would be lying through my teeth if I said that managing a magazine - even one that only releases two articles a month - was a walk in the park. Even when you set your expectations at a reasonable level, you have to adapt and there are many examples of this.
When we started Skrift, we had art banners for all our articles, but then when Mindfly closed our artist colleague was no longer available and we didn't have the funds to pay her (we don't get paid for this after all). So we had to allow ourselves to drop that expectation and re-consider it for the future.
We've also always attempted to pay our authors but that hasn't always been achievable either, unless it came out of our own pockets - and I hate to say, but times get tight! Even when we do offer payment, so many of you are gracious and choose to give back to the community and refuse. This allows us to put those funds forward to those who need it as well as cover the costs of maintenance around the site.
But, of course if you asked me specifically, "Janae, what is the most challenging part of running the magazine?", I would want to answer it from the perspective of my role as someone who writes the newsletter every two weeks. So my answer to you is: sourcing content. Whether it's the content that I'm writing in the newsletter itself about upcoming festivals, or finding our currated around the web section, it's so time consuming to source content. And just like we have had a month where we haven't published anything, there are times where it feels like the community is on break (and good for you!), but it means pulling teeth for getting the newsletter out the door!
You can help with this, by the way 😉 Ping me on Discord or send an email off to hello@skrift.io if you have something awesome you want to highlight in around the web, or if you think it would be good to broadcast something upcoming to the community as a whole! Your help means the world to me.
My Top Three Favorite Articles
I'm not going to lie - this was so difficult to choose. We have had so many incredible authors over the years and so many amazing articles - both technical and lifestyle. Even articles that don't have value in the current versions of Umbraco have saved my life through years of working in v7 and I want to really shout-out all our authors that put so much love into the incredibly long-running version 7 and 8.
But, as of this moment today, let me do my best to tell you my top 3:
Package Script Writer
by Paul Seal, Issue 86 - August 2022
It's been three years since Paul released Package Script Writer and it is still an absolutely incredible tool. If I remember correctly - and I think I do - this tool came about during one of the rounds of package testing for the Umbraco awards at Codegarden. That year, I was on the judges panel, and we had to test something like 40 packages. Installing Umbraco fresh, testing a package... you can already quickly see how time-consuming this was. Paul wrote this incredible tool to make installing Umbraco a breeze and I still use it today! Pick your version, select all your packages, run the script - and BAM, go! Thank you, Paul, for your hard work!
Why Are You Being Such A Git About It?
by Joe Glombek, Issue 77 - November 2021
I'm not going to lie, I had used git for years before Joe wrote his (yes, opinionated) article on using it and even to this day I find it incredibly helpful. Merging, rebasing, rewriting history and why you may want to do that - all of these things are useful to understand and sometimes I go back to refer to it to organize my thoughts. These days I work with a lot of clients who maintain their own repositories and I do work on their sites alongside an internal development team. This article is one i highly recommend they read for their own processes and is still super helpful to this day.
Technology and Our Daughters
by Sydney Cole, Issue 10 - January 2016
I don't have children, and I never will. But I often think of my own experiences as a woman working in technology and I have a strong opinionated view as to how our future should look. While the statistics may have changed some in the past 9 years since Syd's article, I don't think they've changed as much as we wish. Syd inspired me to teach kids how to code during summer camps at our local university, and has inspired how I talk to my sister's children about STEM and encourage my niece to participate in science. STEM is cool. It's for girls, and boys, and everyone inbetween or around, and I still go back to read Syd's article and be inspired for what I can do to help change the future.
Let's Make the Next 10 Years Umbazing
Again, I want to thank you all so much for your support over the last decade. I cannot put into words how meaningful it is to have you participate in this community with us. Being part of Umbraco has been one of the greatest pieces of my life and I expect it to stay that way for the next decade ahead!
If you want to help, we would love to have you write for us, share your packages with us, and encourage other members of the community you know - especially those who may be too shy to speak up for themselves - to get into contact with us. We're super friendly, I promise!
And for those of you who I know are like me and dove in head first to engage with this awesome group of folks we all love, my best tip for you is this: take breaks. Be kind to yourself. Don't be on all the time. It's so easy to push too hard too fast and burn out. Give yourself grace and distance and remember that we don't disappear just because you need to touch some grass. It's good for you!
#h5yr - you'll hear from me again in the next newsletter!