A new Web community, a fond farewell

February 15, 2007

3 Min Read
New Project, New Life

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been rushing to deal with some unfinished business before taking my leave of Light Reading (I’m about to retire – more about that in a minute).

The unfinished business has to do with getting readers to play a bigger role on the editorial side of Light Reading, by submitting case studies for an online album of projects that everybody can learn from.

Some of you might recall that the idea for this cropped up in relation to IMS. People wanted feedback from service providers that were already starting to use it. Unfortunately, I discovered I was jumping the gun. Nobody stepped forward with an IMS case study, in spite of my bullying. (See Calling All IMS Vendors and IMS: Dead?)

Anyhow, I didn’t give up on the case study idea, and I’ve now applied it successfully to another one of my projects – the Muni Forum, an online community of interest for developers of alternative wireline and wireless public broadband infrastructure, supported by both Light Reading and Unstrung.

The idea of the online album is that anyone can submit a case study (called a “Project Profile”) by simply downloading a template from the Muni Forum Website, filling in the blanks, and returning it to us for editing and posting. Each Project Profile is a separate Web page, and we can keep on adding pages almost ad infinitum, making the album a “living” document.

Each Profile is listed in an index table on the introductory page, so people can find projects in a certain country, using a particular technology or business model and so on, and then click on the project name to get the details. We already have five Project Profiles to pick from.

The whole thing is designed so that submitting a Project Profile requires the minimum of effort and expertise – and, for the time being, it’s totally free of charge. So, the ball is now in your court. Send in your municipal network Project Profiles and help us achieve our goal of creating a community of interest that really is driven by the community itself! Click on this link to get started.

* * *Now, what about my retirement?

For some time now, I’ve been following in my great grandfather’s footsteps. Thomas Heywood founded one of the first trade magazine publishing companies. He sold it to Reed, retired, built a lovely house with a huge garden, and took up hobbies such as wood carving. During World War I, he ran a charity in London that housed and fed soldiers on leave.

Some of the things I’ve done echo this. I was one of the founders of Light Reading, which was acquired by UBM/CMP in August 2005. (See Light Reading Enters Chapter 2.)

Now I’m close to retiring myself. I’ve bought my parent’s old house in Cornwall, and I’m extending it. I’m planning to restore and extend its large garden, resume painting and sculpture, and take a more active role in a charity evaluation Website – Intelligent Giving (www.intelligentgiving.com) – that I’ve been funding for the past 15 months.

If I weren’t an atheist I’d like to believe that Thomas Heywood is up there somewhere with a smile on his face.

— Peter Heywood, Founding Editor, Light Reading

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