GNOME Journal celebrates it’s 5 year anniversary this month, with the first ever edition released in September 2004.

After taking 2008 off, I’m happy to say that 2009 is turning into a banner year for GNOME Journal, and 2009 has seen more issues published than any year other 2005, and we’re on pace to break 2005’s record of five issues.

Looking back at the first Letter from the Editor from Jim Hodapp, it’s good to see that our mission hasn’t changed:

• There is a current lack of original written content centered around GNOME – GNOME Journal fulfills this void by creating original content that focuses on the technology, community, philosophy, and general happenings within the GNOME umbrella.
• A void that is largely unfilled currently is how to effectively market the GNOME desktop to people who either currently use a free operating system and don’t use GNOME, or to attract those people who use another operating system altogether GNOME will not run. GNOME Journal will provide a very tangible and centralized place that people can read to gain original insite into what GNOME is and what they can do with it.
• Lastly, GNOME Journal is entering into existence simply because it is a cool idea. It is my hope that it will also spur on increased appreciation for GNOME and allow more people to feel like they can get involved in the community.

I whole heartedly agree with the above statements, and they are just as true in 2009 as they were in 2004. There continues to be a lack of original content around GNOME; as a member of the GNOME Marketing team there is no question that it is hard to market GNOME to our existing user base; and there is no question that GNOME Journal is, and continues to be, a cool idea.

One of the things I’m most proud of since becoming the release coordinator for GNOME Journal earlier this year, is the new writers who have (and will have) contributed to GNOME Journal.

In no particular order: Stormy Peters, Les Harris, Jayson Rowe, Og Maciel, Natan Yellin, and Emily Chen.

I’m also thankful to everyone in the GNOME Community who has made time for interviews on interesting projects such as J5 and Laszlo Peter, and those featured in Behind the Scenes, including Stormy, Owen Taylor and Lucas Rocha.

We aren’t done with 2009 either! We have two special editions coming up, the first focused on Multimedia and the second is an edition of GNOME Journal written by the GNOME Women team. We’re hoping to introduce new features in GNOME Journal, including a new article every feature, as well as migrating from our current CMS to blogs.gnome.org, which will also us to do multimedia, publish to PDF, and rate articles. And a big thank you to Dave Neary letting us know our database crashed last week and we weren’t displaying any content. (Jeff Waugh – if you’re reading this, please reply to my emails so we can finish this migration. Thank you!)

We’re always looking for new article ideas, writers and editors – we’re also big on collaboration, so don’t feel that you have to write an entire article by yourself. Interested? Email me, leave a comment on my blog, or best of all, join the GNOME Journal mailing list.

And lastly, thank you to our readers. Our hits have been going up every issue, and I am grateful for all the comments left on my blog after announcing a new issue. I’m hopeful that we can turn these comments into reality, and we’re already working on a suggestion for an interview that was just recently left on my blog.

I hope you enjoy reading GNOME Journal as much as we enjoy writing it.