Editorial

  by Henry Marcinkowski

How’s that for a snazzy column title? Maybe I’ll get a little more creative as we go to future issues of the MetroMac Express. In the meanwhile, however, I’d like to bring you all up to date on the status of the newsletter.

First of all, we have some new volunteer members of the staff. Our copy-editors are Milt Herder and Joan Scherman; their job is to help the authors make sure that the written material submitted to us is in good shape to publish. Any changes they make must have the concurrence of the author. We now have two art directors, Rob Yasharian and Kevin Cashman; their job is to lay out the newsletter material to make it easy to read and understand.

We have also kept some of our contributors, whose material you have read in past issues. Our President, Chris Bastian, continues to write his column, as does Lloyd Prezant, our news editor. Eden Maxwell provides us with major reviews, as he does in this issue. Bill Chachkes, as associate editor, is back with a column and a hardware review.

In a recent staff meeting, we discussed how to make the newsletter better. First, we agreed that the newsletter would be published in html, rather than pdf format. Doing the layout in Quark makes it easy to publish in paper copies, but that is not an option at this time. Otherwise, we agreed that the guidelines posted in the volunteer forum are still valid.

How do we make the newsletter more useful to the MetroMac membership? Several ideas were discussed, but they all amount to greater participation by the membership. Among the ideas that sounded viable were:

• a letters to the editor page, with your ideas on what MetroMac and the Express can do for you;
  
• setting up departments, such as op/ed, news, reviews, etc. to make it easier for you to find what you are interested in;
  
• interviews with Macintosh users whose work is novel or interesting; and,
  
• a direct call for volunteers to write software reviews;

Remember, we have a staff that will help you if you choose to write for us. I personally, will answer any correspondence about your ideas, your reactions to our material and what you would like to help us do; click on my name below, and you can email me directly.

Thanks,
Henry