Libre Graphics Magazine is Cool.
I’m really proud of the Libre Graphics community and especially right now, the great work that Ginger Coons, Ana Carvalho, Ricardo Lafuente and friends have done on the Libre Graphics Magazine. Its one thing to keep making virtual software, iterating it forever, adding bells and whistles. It is totally another concern to make a high quality physical product that embodies the same principles. Hats off to everyone who is working on the project! Congrats on the accomplishment!
Issue 1 Now On Sale
The LGMag crew has cut the cost on getting the first edition of the magazine to make it that much easier to pick-up a copy:
If you’re in North America and want a copy of 1.1, today’s your lucky day. Using the handy button below, if you’re in Canada, you can get a copy for $4. If you’re in the U.S., it’s a very convenient $8, with all shipping charges built in.
Box Set for Schools
In order to promote the magazine and get more people involved, Ginger and crew are running some nice offers for schools and other organizations. For $100 you can get a box of the first edition of the magazines sent out to your school for spreading the news. Consider it for your school or for sponsorship of the project. From the blog:
For a very nominal fee (the majority of the price actually covers shipping, with the magazines coming at a cost of about $1 each), we’ll send a box of 50 copies of the current issue to the school/department of your choice. Of course, there’s slightly more to it than that (things like making contact with the school and making sure the magazines find a good home with their students, but we’ll do that), but it mainly comes down to selecting your region (only North America and Europe are eligible right now) and mentioning where you’d like them to go.
I had the chance to see and pick-up a few copies at FOSDEM in Brussels a couple of weeks ago while meeting with my colleagues about our upcoming Libre Graphics Meeting in Montreal, May 10-13 (this year 2.0.11). It blew me away! They are very high-quality, printed on excellent paper in Montreal, and truly embody the principles of the Libre Graphics community.
Let’s call what they did a form of green design, or fair trade printing. Whatever they did to get it out, its worth it and shows that the people behind this mag have stepped up to a great challenge and put their money and time where their mind and mouths are. That’s important. While we hope they will use Aiki Framework in the future to automate some processes and so we can get a piece of the action from these cool guys 
, they did the right thing any entrepreneur (yes I used the E word) should do, reroute around all issues and execute the minimum viable product as soon as possible. The next important step in my opinion is to keep regular on a release cycle, and iterate, improve and iterate. With what we do, building community and getting people in to participate is so crucial at an early stage, and the longer it takes to get a project out that is used by people (essentially all projects , the more expensive the process becomes and the higher cost of releasing the product.
Get your copy of Libre Graphics Magazine today and lets watch as they grow this publication over the next few years.
