Originally, my intention was to be able to put out a monthly newsletter for our community. The winter months grew quite busy for me, and it seems for many others too, so I found myself lacking the free time and “bandwidth” to pull the needed pieces together to get the newsletter out. Now, as spring emerges there’s a refocus to open up the newsletter again, and I’d like to put out a call and invitation for anyone who might feel inclined to assist me in publishing the newsletter.

The idea of a monthly newsletter may well have been too ambitious. And as Sally Ann of the Irish circle has suggested to me, it might be a little bit more feasible to cultivate a quarterly newsletter rather than a monthly one. It’s a conversation to be had.

We’ve had a great deal of support and enthusiasm from folks being willing to contribute their efforts in writing articles, submitting photos, and helping me do basic things like proofread articles for typos. Now I’d like to find 2-3 people in our international community that would be interested in helping me a little more closely with the publication process.

Here are some specific skill-sets that I’m looking to collaborate with:

A Graphics Person: 

At this point, I have all of the templates and processes created to get pictures ready for each article. But this works out to be a bit of work each month. I’d love to find a person or a couple of people who would be willing to learn how to do these, help me find images for the various articles and prep them to go on to the website and into the newsletter. This is about a 2-4 hr commitment per newsletter – and a basic familiarity with photoshop would be very helpful.

Content Wrangler(s):

This individual or individuals will work with me to help put out timely calls for submission for each newsletter and work with the various contributing authors to get their articles in, proofed, and ready to be included in the newsletter. I also think this is about a 2-4hr commitment per newsletter – however, this time is spread out over a couple weeks.

Layout Builders:

The newsletter template is pretty well set, and each edition we need to place the articles within that template both in the email and on the website. This is a process of placing the graphics, text, and associated links in the right place and making sure everything is humming together nicely. This is also a 2-4hr commitment per newsletter. All these time estimates are a bit inflated, and as the editions go by, things will get smoother and easier to do. This person or persons should be pretty savvy around a computer and in wordpress. I can do some basic training to get you familiar with the specifics.

Once we have this clan assembled, I would love to get a monthly conference call going though skype or google hangout, where we can coordinate responsibilities, brainstorm on themes and ideas for folks to reach out to for submissions, etc.

I am open to the newsletter re-emerging as a monthly or as a quarterly publication. I do feel that it serves the community and I get a lot of satisfaction from helping to get it to everyone and from getting to witness the contributing voices flowing together. I would love to discover a fun and collaborative working process with others in our circle who would like to contribute some time and energy to keep it going. If you would prefer to commit to assisting for a specific season, rather than indefinitely, I can completely understand that and would still love to talk with you about potentials.

Please email me at newsletter@big-heart-circle.org and we’ll get a conversation going.

Until then,

Stefan

Medicine Wheel Time Lapse from Stefan Day on Vimeo.