Paged Out! Institute Blog

It's late 2023. Time to do something about Paged Out!, isn't?

Almost exactly three years have passed since the last update, and nearly four since the last issue being published. So, what happened? And is this blog entry a glimpse of hope for Issue #3 ever appearing? Or is this just a final entry to sum up the project and officially shut it down?

Let's start with what happened, as you are owed an explanation.

After two initial Issues, I (Gynvael) had the idea to make a "Review Center" app, which would make the whole review process easier and more consistent. As expected, it was months of work and the app was turning out pretty good actually. And then the pandemic started and I was affected pretty badly. Long story short, I had to put aside all projects I had (including Paged Out!), step down as the tech lead / manager at work, and focus on my health. This took a while and afterwards I had some catching up to do.

Fast forward to earlier this year. I left my old job at Google to rest a bit and create my own IT security company. This unlocked some extra time, and this allowed to look in the direction of restarting Paged Out! again. And, given that I had 3 years to think about the project and how to go forward with it, do it right this time.

Let me start by addressing the biggest change, i.e. Paged Out! is now being managed and operated by HexArcana Cybersecurity GmbH – a company fully owned by me. Note that the keywords here are "managed" and "operated by", i.e. the actual ownership of Paged Out! doesn't actually change. This also does not affect the original goal of Paged Out! being a non-profit self-sustaining magazine, nor the important role volunteers will play in its life. So, for the time being, HexArcana will handle accounting, paperwork, and provide management and publishing services for Paged Out!, which should have a positive impact on the magazine's longevity and overall success. That being said, this is only a temporary measure – eventually, in the next few years and once it achieves self-sustainability, I'll move Paged Out! to its own non-profit organization.

The second biggest change stems from two simple facts, which took me a bit to realize: I can only do so many things in a day and also I should never be the single point of failure for a project. Thankfully, there's a simple solution for this.

Without further ado, I would like to officially welcome Aga to the Paged Out! Institute. Aga agreed to help Paged Out! as the Editor-in-Chief, meaning that she'll take over a lot of project management, coordination and editorial work that I have been doing in the past. At the same time, I'm not going anywhere and I will stay with Paged Out! as the overall project lead, publisher, and lead technical editor.

Continuing on the Institute side, you'll notice a lot of changes on the team page – after a 3-year downtime, this is obviously expected. As such, we would like to thank kele, j00ru, and Arashi for all their help with Paged Out! in the past, and wish them all the best in their continued endeavors! At the same time, foxtrot_charlie, tusiak_charlie, hebi, KrzaQ, and disconnect3d are staying with us in similar roles as before.

So, what's going to happen next?

In the next few days, Aga will start contacting folks who expressed interest in helping out with reviewing articles, as well as potential authors. And that's because the call for papers for Issue #3 has been officially re-opened and Paged Out! is considered an active project again!

We would like to thank you for your patience – this has been a long wait for Issue #3, but it will soon be over. For now, consider submitting an article, subscribe to us on Twitter/X, subscribe to our newsletter, or join Gynvael's Discord for updates on our progress!

Let's go!

31 August 2023 / Gynvael

No, seriously, where is Issue #3?

There is good news and bad news. Good news is that Issue #3 is under no danger - it will eventually be published, same as Issue #4, #5 and so on. Bad news is that we've run into delays due to stuff related to paged out, and it's had to make predictions on the exact publishing date apart from "this year" - sorry!

We're basically still finishing the Review Center tool/webapp - this will make work distribution way easier for future issues, so we hope that there will be no such huge delays in the future thanks to this.

Meanwhile, here's a new Review Center related wallpaper by ReFiend:

8 August 2020 / Gynvael