2006 XCitation Report Posted on Nov 28th, 2006
First and foremost, this will be my last season as editor. I encourage the Board to spread the word and seek out someone to replace me. I am working on building a business and unfortunately, to hold licenses in some provinces means giving up any other source of income. I would like to advertise in XCitation for a replacement and would like the Board’s approval on compensation details and expectations the Board has of the Editor.
Second, I believe that some communication issues need to be addressed in order to make the Editor’s job a simpler one. Aside from the website, XCitation is the only way that CANSI reaches out to its members nationally.
There needs to be a stronger commitment from the Board to assign responsibility to specific people for producing articles for XCitation. Directors need to buy into the fact that XCitation is a valuable resource. Because so much time and energy is already devoted to XCitation I don’t think that it should be expected that the Editor attend meetings but it means that someone in attendance needs to be responsible for relaying and summarizing any pertinent information. Someone also needs to communicate all the contacts to the Editor. Everyone who is assigned a role within CANSI should have a CANSI email address. It doesn’t necessarily need to be published anywhere for the general members to access.
However, now that I’m not involved at the board level either regionally or nationally, I realize how valuable it is to have a consistent email address to reach people. It also means that when CANSI changes these addresses, everyone should be contacted regarding the change. The onus is then left to the person who has that CANSI email address forwarding to them to pass it along to their successor. It’s far too difficult to know who is doing what and who participates in what when the editor doesn’t sit on a board him/herself.
In the past, I have noted that it takes me approximately 40-60 hours per issue. This latest issue was closer to 80 hours. This doesn’t include the time that is spent soliciting articles.
Deadlines for submissions are as follows:
Fall issue – October 24
Christmas – December 15
Winter – January 24
Spring – March 15
Every effort is made to have the completed publication ready for distribution 3 weeks after the submission deadline. I can already say that the Winter issue will likely be late because I will be in Korea at Interski.
Me email address has changed to communications@cansi.ca. XCitation@cansi.ca is no longer effective.
I look forward to all your writings and photographs!
Cheers,
Karla Wikjord
XCitation Editor
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