There's a Reason for the "Deadness"
I'll be blunt.
I'm resigning from my post as publisher of the EDM family of magazines.
My reasons are varied, but they essentially come down to the following:
this site needs someone who can dedicate more time than I have been able to in
order to take it to a new level of quality. My schedule, which is inflexible,
will not allow me to do this.
the free time I have had in the past has been given entirely to the magazines,
to the point that I have neglected my wife, not to mention that my mental
health has deteriorated somewhat from the lack of time to "recharge my
batteries."
Does this mean EDM will go away?
...
Did you really think that I'd let four years of my efforts as publisher (plus the half year previous as a columnist) get thrown out like last week's leftovers? Not no, but hell no.
Thus, it is my pleasure to announce the following structural changes at EDM, which will be effective starting September 1, 1996:
Drew Denardo will be the new publisher of the EDM family of magazines.
Additionally, he will continue has role as the editor-in-chief of EDM/NT.
Drew has demonstrated to me a keen sense of "business attitude," which
translates to me as "he won't do anything stupid to cause the magazine to die
in a week." Additionally, he has the motivation necessary to keep the energy
level high meaning that things will get better, not worse.
Carsten Whimster will be the new editor-in-chief of EDM/2. I have
always admired his creativity and the many ideas that he dreamt of for EDM/2,
of which many I did not implement due to a lack of time. I am sure that,
under his direction, EDM/2 will not diminish, regardless of what those folks
in the trade press would have you believe about OS/2's popularity in general.
IQPac Incorporated will be dissolved as a corporation, but - since the
web site has been paid in full until the first week of December - EDM will
continue to remain at www.iqpac.com for convenience's sake. This will
allow Drew to find a new home, if he desires, for the EDM family and will give
the crew enough time to render a smooth transition to the new location, if one
is chosen.
For myself, I have been been trying to catch Drew and Carsten up-to-speed regarding the state of affairs with the magazines and running a business in general (most notably, the mistakes that I made, so that they may avoid them), and have been transferring "technology" and the like (mostly the production process and the tools I used in running the site and producing the INF editions). Since this hasn't taken all of my time up, I have given myself an advance and have started reacquainting myself with my wife.
What do I intend to do in the future? I think I have finally accepted the fact that I could not run a business well, so I will be contented working for someone else. Heck, it's not like I'm doing badly in life, so why worry? My wife and I have been saving for a house for some time now, and it looks like we will purchase one before the end of this year, which will allow us to start raising a family. My music synthesizers, guitars, and other, related equipment has been collecting dust for the past two years, so I will dust them off and see if I can still write music without striking my intended audience deaf. Programming at home will become a memory instead of a desire, so that I may begin to do other things that I've always wanted to try but never had the time because I was too busy being a "geek."
More power to the "geeks" and the "nerds" out there - you keep the world running. Go knock 'em dead.
My final words are those of thankfulness. I have been blessed to have experienced, with a modest amount of success, something that many people have not and will not: I've run my own business. I was not any good at it, but I always received words of encouragement, praise, and general kudos for the efforts that we put into producing EDM/2. And, aside from all of my dreams of making money, retiring early, etc., it was those words from you out there in cyberspace that made this journey worthwhile.
Thanks for all of the fun.
Larry Salomon Jr.
