Piecing together the issue.

• Author: Calve, Joe
• Position: About This Issue

One of the great things about serving on the editorial board of Strategies is the opportunity it affords you to develop and present one issue of the magazine each year Sure, the production deadline starts to loom larger and larger as you close in on it. You get busier and busier with your day job (OK, maybe not just days), and suddenly you're wondering what you were thinking to have taken this on. In my case, all the worse, because I tackled the first issue of the year, with deadlines arrayed like landmines across the holiday season You start dreading the always gentle, but nonetheless foreboding, reminder emails from Managing Editor Theresa Wojtalewicz letting you know that publishing a book of blank pages probably won't cut it. So why do it?

For me, I do it for totally selfish reasons. Putting together an issue affords me an opportunity to meet, talk to and learn from a wide array of people in and around our field whom I otherwise might not have the opportunity to get to know. I simply ask myself, "Who would I find it interesting to hear from?" I then cast a wide net, pull in some willing participants and start setting up calls. We go back and forth by email and eventually hammer out what we hope is a gaggle of diverse and interesting perspectives on what we do and how we do it. It's not scientific, and it's certainly not comprehensive. But it is, I think, fascinating. Like a mosaic

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