In many cases, creativity is as much an issue of collaboration as it is of individual talent. For example, in a magazine’s case such as Australasian Camcorder (now it seems universally monickered as “AusCam” it seems), as well as the editor (moi) there are a number of individuals who create artwork, layout copy, sell adverts, organise subscriptions and of course create copy and sub edit it.

In this example, unlike many publications that are centralised, the bods concerned are scattered all over Australia; I am in Mandurah (WA), my graphic designer is on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, the layout person near Coffs Harbour, the sub editor in Sydney’s far west and so on. Writers range from Cookernup (WA) to Melbourne, Echuca, Sydney, Sussex Inlet, Brisbane, Adelaide and even the US! My business adviser is also in Bri-Vegas.

Printing and distribution are done from Sydney to newsagents and subscribers Australia wide; it is a massive operation even for a little magazine like mine.

The collaboration is mainly done via internet and email, with such tools as Excel (layout plans), Word (in RTF format to minimise viruses), Photoshop (in 300dpi JPG/TIFF) and SnagIT are used for copy, images and screen snaps respectively. Layout is done in Adobe InDesign and transferred between the various people for checking by Adobe PDF (and hi-res PDFs are sent to the printer. Initial text/image transfer is performed by a WinZip utility called www.yousendit.com which is a combo WinZip/ftp transfer system that is free (for our purposes) and useful for large file transfer. A mixture of Windows, Mac’s and open source machines is used, and as we are talking primarily video based stories, the hardware used is in the “power user” league in many cases.

Australasian Camcorder is an Australia wide creativity collaboration between a number of people and organisations (www.australasiancamcorder.info)

Recently however, whilst negotiating for our little group to be involved with the production of another magazine, we brought a new tool into play that has also proven to be invaluable – Skype. This has allowed us to have at minimal cost, conference calls for production/collaboration purposes and does away with, a number of cases, in mis-communications as all decisions are then followed up in writing. For those who don’t have access to Skype (or don’t want to) we are also having a play with VoIP from both LinkSYS and Netcomm.

Using these tools lets us do what each of us does best – use our creative side to be the best we possibly can in our own little sphere, and put out what we believe is a world class publication.