so i’ve started at o’reilly
monday was my first day as a senior web producer for the online publishing group at o’reilly. a producer is responsible for preparing an article for publication, which in the case of an online publication means preparing the content to go live on the site. the senior part really just means that i have relevant web and development experience. it also means that my responsibilities may involve some development related tasks once i’m comfortable with the basic production tasks.
at which point it might be wise to mention that o’reilly does a ton of online publishing. of course there are the book blurbs that you see at oreilly.com. that site is divided up into categories (called resource centers) which i’ve often used to filter for the books i was interested in, especially web.oreilly.com.
but you’ll notice on the right is a column with articles relevant to those resource centers. these articles are actually housed at a separate url/site/entity called the o’reilly network, located at oreillynet.com. the o’reilly network is an evolving collection of subject specific sites (or development centers) where articles are published daily on subjects relevant to linux, macs, windows, java, lamp, perl, etc. the o’reilly network is really the “baby” of the online publishing group.
it’s interesting to realize that a number of these “written for and produced by o’reilly” articles have burned up the web (you might have seen them linked to from boingboing or slashdot, for instance), such as Rolling with Ruby on Rails and Top Ten Digital Photography Tips. apparently what is rss? and what is xml? are some of the most popular articles ever.
what’s amazing is that all of these articles have editors who manage authors, graphic designers who develop graphics, producers who manage content, and copy editors who read everything over. at least that’s my cursory understanding after three days. coming from the near zen simplicity of blogging, it’s really quite an amazing production, with many people working together under deadline on each individual article.
too bad folks from work read your blog, so we’ll never get a glimpse of how you actually *feel* about it.
Justin Starts at O’Reilly
O’Reilly is an interesting organization, and Justin an interesting blogger. So it’s worth noting that said blogger has just started work at said organization. I look forward to his perspective on the organization, in much the same way as I enjoyed h…
what do you think about the o’reilly culture so far…you got any first impressions….
(this is where blogging gets fun)
ha, well o’reilly or not i tend to limit the feelings i divulge because words stick around longer and have more of an effect than the feelings that triggered them. for close friends who i would freely and frankly share how i’m feeling via email or in conversation, this can be frustrating, but i think it’s better policy for my blogging in general. of course as i become more comfortable with my new coworkers at o’reilly and vice versa, i’m sure how i “feel” may come out more in time.
of course i don’t want this to become a “what i did today at work” blog, but i figure friends and family, would be interested in what i’m doing and the general public might find it interesting to hear what o’reilly’s like.
as far as culture, it seems pretty chill to me. pretty comparable to your average, laid back university culture, where i came from. i think some people bring their dogs to work, though i haven’t actually seen any. there’s no obvious dress code, at least among the online publishing group. people crack jokes, everyone is congenial. i’ve felt immediately at ease from day one.
i can’t believe i didn’t think to add an oreilly animal to the post last night
Justin, is there a link describing why O’Reilly uses/has animals on their covers of all there books?
there is actually a little pocket-sized book that details most or all of the animals–one that i’ve seen includes info about the book that the animal appears on, the other just describes the animal itself. all i know of (and can find online) is this article, Animal Magnetism: Making O’Reilly Animals.