First Fix: Tapping a large pool of knowledge

A business-to-business, controlled-circulation magazine such as this one is a three-way partnership between the companies that support it by buying ads; the staff who write, edit and lay out the magazine’s editorial content, write a steady stream of posts for our website and digital newsletters, and sell advertising; and you, the readers, without whom we would not exist.

There are more than 30,000 of you who subscribe to the magazine (more than 17,000 to the print edition and more than 18,000 to the digital edition, with some overlap). Additionally, our website has about 97,000 unique monthly visitors, our e-newsletters have about 92,000 monthly subscribers, and we have about 46,000 social media followers. About 30% of you are in surveying and mapping, 18% in defense and government, 13% in professional and consumer OEM, and others in transportation, wireless/location-based services, distribution and resale, machine control and precision agriculture, and system design and testing.

You’re a large pool of knowledge, experience, and insight. I want to invite you to contribute to GPS World as sources, advisers and writers.

Perhaps you are a retired engineer with decades of experience designing receivers, antennas, or navigation systems and would like to share a few of the lessons you’ve learned. Perhaps you are a surveyor with a wish list of features for the next generation of rovers. Perhaps you are the manager of a port that uses GNSS to automate ship loading and unloading operations, or of a farm that relies on precision agriculture, and you have some observations worth sharing about your return on investment.

If you are a professor of engineering, you might want to bring to my attention a particularly promising student project. If you develop consumer products or positioning and navigation solutions for mass transit, or timing solutions for the financial sector, you might have interesting insights to share.

Alternatively, perhaps you would like to propose a question for our editorial advisory board, or a topic for the next installment of our “Authoritative Reference” series. Of course, occasionally you might also want to point out errors or omissions in one of our published articles or online posts. I welcome that feedback, too.

We already work with the marketing and media relations staff of our marketing partners, as well as public relations firms that represent GNSS/PNT companies. I always welcome their email messages and calls. This is not intended as an additional channel for them. I am also not setting up a discussion forum, because that would require content moderation and backend IT resources. Rather, I want to solicit comments, suggestions and interesting, useful content from people throughout the industry — some of which will guide or inspire my editorial choices and some of which I will publish.

We have limited room in print, but plenty online. Therefore, while I will occasionally work with the author of a particularly interesting or informative piece to generate an article for print publication, I will much more often choose articles, columns, and comments for online publication.

Write to GPSWreaders@northcoastmedia.net.

Matteo Luccio | Editor-in-Chief
mluccio@northcoastmedia.net