Expect change

You know you’re part-owner of this magazine, right?

Your association hired the staff of GCM to produce it for you, and we make sure you get the best magazine about golf course management your dues can buy. And, just as you attend the GCSAA Education Conference and Golf Industry Show to learn more about your profession, network with your colleagues and discover the latest and best products for your facility, we send our editors and designers (OK, your editors and designers) to the magazine industry’s biggest conference and show as often as we can. Last month, it was my privilege to attend the Folio: Show in Chicago along with GCM’s prepress/production specialist, Kelly Neis.

It’s always a bit of a thrill to rub elbows with the likes of Time, National Geographic and — my personal favorite because I’m a crafts nerd — Interweave Crochet. But aside from all the hobnobbing, we learned a lot, too. Past shows I’ve attended seemed to be focused on developing and fine-tuning writing, editing and design skills, but the 2008 edition was all about change in the magazine industry and how we should be thinking outside the printed page.

Back here at GCM/GCSAA headquarters in Lawrence, Kan., we’re talking practically nonstop about change for your magazine. If you’ve been following the GCM blog at http://gcm.typepad.com (and if you haven’t, why not?) you know that the magazine’s brand already extends to the Web with the more informal, up-to-the-minute kind of writing that typically doesn’t work in a meticulously planned, fully designed monthly printed magazine. We’re already trying our hands at telling your stories with audio, video, instant polls and Twitter (see the pioneering work of GCM editor Scott Hollister and others on the blog site).

Blogging, Twittering, social networking, audio and video, and e-publications were the most frequently heard buzzwords at the Folio: Show this year. If you’re not covering all these touch points with your readers, the speakers warned, be prepared to lose them forever.

I’ve been hearing for the past nine years now just how much GCSAA members love their magazine, how many keep back issues of GCM for decades, how the magazine’s research section is “the bible” as far as they’re concerned, and I’m honored to be part of a tradition of loyalty like that. But I’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to realize that as the other magazines you regularly read and enjoy begin offering more, you’re going to want and expect more from us, too.

So look for us to engage you in our content in even more ways — and we’re talking about new content here, not just rehashing what’s in the magazine.

Using technology, GCM will find new, interactive ways to reach out to readers. In fact, getting a digital version of GCM to your desktop, laptop or handheld computer has gone from crystal ball-gazing to the 2009 drawing board.

GCM will leverage its strengths (our experience as a staff) and assets (that would be all of you) to make sure it is following its mission: to advance the golf course superintendent profession and help GCSAA members achieve career success.

Expect more change, because you’re going to get it.