Do you want to help with the all new STC magazine?

We are in the process of creating a Software Testing Club magazine/e-zine which will hopefully bring something new and fresh to the testing community. The magazine is not sponsored by ISEB or ISTQB and has no affiliation other than with the STC. And as such the magazine will follow the same community ethos as the STC.

So what does this mean to you?

Well, it means that the content is to be driven by you, the testing community (Note: Article submission is not limited to STC members). The articles included will be real testing stories from testers both known and unknown in the testing world. That means you could all get the chance to have an article published. In fact, we encourage testers with all experience levels to contribute.

Our aim with the magazine is to have real stories and theories of testing from the people on the 'shop floor' doing the testing. What this means is that the content will be diverse, opinionated maybe, maybe controversial, certainly well balanced on a whole but ultimately, very real.

We are after submissions from anyone, in any testing methodology talking about any testing subject they like.

The first edition will be out at the end of January 2010. A great start to your new year. After that it is anticipated that the magazine will be quarterly depending on the popularity, submissions and uptake.

Here are some basic facts:

* You will not be paid for your articles. At the moment the magazine is not for profit. This may change and in future we may be able to pay people for articles. In keeping with our community spirit we want people who are dedicated and interested in testing to be submitting articles. Not people after money.
* Your article may not get published. We will however, contact you to let you know why. It may sit in the reserve file for use on later editions.
* Your article may be edited to ensure grammatical correctness and tone. We will not however change the content or meaning.
* Your name and details as included in the submission will be included with your article.
* The magazine is initially a web based magazine with limited printed copies. This may change in the future.
* The magazine will be freely available for people to download, share and redistribute.
* The magazine may include articles by well known people in the community running alongside new names in the field.
* Articles will be picked on their relevance, factual information, tone, message and meaning.
* We will not accept articles blatantly promoting a tool, service or certification. The article may allude to these things but should not be a direct promotion.
* We will not apply any bias towards either side of any contentious issue. i.e articles explaining how certifications are valuable will be treated with the same consideration as articles explaining how certifications are invaluable.
* The editing team is well balanced, experienced and consists of professional testers.
* This magazine is about testing. Not about making money.

Finally, we are looking for people to volunteer to help out in the following ways:

1. Desktop publishing skills and wizardry
2. Helping to decide on articles to be included
3. Help in promoting the magazine when released
4. Helping to proof read the magazine before release.

If you are interested in submitting an article please simply include the following information (I will aim to have a template up soon)

1. Your name
2. Other information to be included in article (company, job role, twitter address etc) (max 150 words)
3. Your experience as a tester (years in testing, brief intro to you) (max 200 words)
4. Your article title (max 100 words)
5. Your article sub title (max 200 words)
6. Your article (max 2000 words, minimum 500 words)
7. Any other supporting information

For submissions and for requesting to volunteer please email me on rob@softwaretestingclub.com

I will aim to respond as soon as possible. We will not be deciding on final articles for some time, so please be patient.

This is a new venture for the STC and we hope you, as our valued community, will rally behind this and help to create a magazine that is a real voice of testing.

Regards
The STC.

Tags: magazine

Replies are closed for this discussion.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Thomas Ponnet on October 29, 2009 at 11:47am: 1. Desktop publishing skills and wizardry
- No skills there, sorry
2. Helping to decide on articles to be included
- Be glad to help but nor sure this shouldn't be between Rosie and the STC admins?
3. Help in promoting the magazine when released
- Will do through links, Tweets, etc but don't have any other way
4. Helping to proof read the magazine before release.
- no problem with that, if you need a hand let me know.

Will probably send in an article later.

Permalink Reply by Rob Lambert on October 29, 2009 at 12:19pm: Thomas,

Awesome. Thanks for that.

As for editing, we are happy to open this up to a slightly wider audience to spread the workload. It will be a group decision but we need to not rely on just a few people to make the initial decisions. The editorial team will be small to ensure consistency but not too small that we become a bottleneck.

Thanks for promoting. See my other response to initial post for blurb.

Thanks

Rob..

Permalink Reply by Rob Lambert on October 29, 2009 at 12:20pm: One of the requests we asked for was promotion of the magazine so that we could attract writers. If you are happy to do this then please feel free to use the following text in any emails or blog posts. Or use a little bit of it for twitter etc. Feel free to make up your own promotional text but please try to ping people to this post for the extra details. :)

If you are interested in writing about software testing then why not contribute an article to the Software Testing Club's (STC) new magazine due to be published in January 2010.

The STC are inviting anyone in the software testing community to submit articles for review on any testing subject you want to write about. The STC are accepting articles from anyone working in the testing industry with a testing story to tell. Experienced writers are welcome just as junior testers are. So if you have something to say, post it to the following address: rob@softwaretestingclub.com.

Visit http://www.softwaretestingclub.com/forum/topics/do-you-want-to-help... for more detailed information regarding your submission.

Thanks to everyone getting in touch. Great response so far.

Rob..

Permalink Reply by Peter L on October 29, 2009 at 2:04pm: Hi Rob,
Like Thomas, I'm happy to help out if I can.
Although, I can only do wizadry when I've got a magic wand, except I seem to have lost it somewhere...

Permalink Reply by Rob Lambert on October 29, 2009 at 2:09pm: Hi Peter,

Many thanks for the offer. We've got lots of offers of help which is fab.

Proof reading it will be a big task towards the end of the process. Dec/Jan.

Promotion of the magazine is also crucial, especially to get people writing for it.

Rob..

Permalink Reply by Yvette Francino on October 29, 2009 at 2:15pm: Hi Rob,
I'm interested and will submit a few articles. I'd also be willing to help with promotion. I have a question, though. Does the article need to be exclusive to the STC magazine? I'd been planning to submit a couple of articles to StickyMinds and/or some of the other QA eZines... Can I submit in parallel?

Thanks for your work on this. Sounds like a great project and I'm happy to help!
Yvette

Permalink Reply by Rob Lambert on October 29, 2009 at 2:27pm: Hi Yvette,

Many thanks for offering to contribute. By all means send your articles to the other guys but please do let us know if you get it published. You might find that they don't like you sending to more than one.

It's not very good for a magazine to publish an article that has already been published before so we would reject the article if it got published elsewhere.

We would prefer to have sole submission but I know from experience that this severely limits your chance of getting it published.

You also need to be aware that we are not paying for articles unlike the others so that might be a factor in your decision.

Thanks for the interest. Any more questions drop me an email rob@softwaretestingclub.com

Thanks

Rob..

Permalink Reply by Tony Bruce on October 29, 2009 at 2:55pm: I'll help in anyway I can.
Time, promote, write,read is what I can offer.

Permalink Reply by Rob Lambert on October 29, 2009 at 3:13pm: Awesome. Thanks Tony.

We've had lots of interest so far which is great.

An article would be awesome.

Rob..

Permalink Reply by Rosie Sherry on October 29, 2009 at 5:10pm: I started a question on the STC Exchange to hopefully help come up with ideas, details here: http://exchange.softwaretestingclub.com/questions/38/what-should-we...

Permalink Reply by Matthew Heusser on October 29, 2009 at 5:35pm: Rob -

I sent a informal proposal to Rosie and Phil. Let me know if you need to know more.

Permalink Reply by Rob Lambert on October 30, 2009 at 9:16am: Thanks Matt. Got the proposals. We probably need to discuss further. I'll email you the details.

Thanks
Rob..