SWJ commencing phase 2 or our nefarious plan

We're expanding our team. Can you help?

We're looking to up the ante within this Small Wars Journal

endeavor of ours.  As we continue our struggle toward world domination, we find

ourselves in dire need of talented and capable conspirators.  We are moving

forward on our painfully overdue system upgrade, and trying to build out our

production and operations team so we can live well, work well, and play well

together to do more for the small wars community of interest.

It always makes Dave and me laugh (or cry) when we get

notes that refer to our "staff" or our "facility." Don't get us wrong -- we are

enriched by some fantastic advocates and supporters, a handful of volunteers

moderating the discussion board, all of our volunteer writers, and the active

participants in the online community.  But at the end of the day, in large part

due to our own failings, it is still just two guys doing most of the nug work

out of our virtual offices.  Not for much longer.  We are growing.

We have a couple of positions looming into semblance of a

shape.  You should see these as great opportunities to be involved rather than

as well defined, highly compensated career opportunities with promising growth

paths.  Heck, we can't even really pay ourselves.  But we are looking to expand

our team with sharp and enthusiastic folks, and find a way to make it work for

them, us, and everyone. 

These are roles rather than job descriptions; each has a

bit of an up-front project flavor to it with an enduring execution tail.  We

expect you to bring some insight and vision to the position, and expand it in a

win-win way.  We're trying to frame these in terms where a palatable chunk of 10

or so hours per week is ample for success, though we realize that's a wild guess

and it is recon pull --  we'll  evolve together to further lump, divide, or build

out the cast of characters. 

The big roles we're framing now are:

• Advertising Manager (Banner King/Queen) -- run our advertising

  operations:  rethink our ad inventory as we go through site redesign; enhance

  our advertiser kit and the whole flow; outreach to, discussions with, and inking

  deals with advertisers; monitor campaign execution. You have audacity, tact and hutzpah,

  with the business, people, and operations sense to put it all together.

• Merchandise Manager (Schwag Tsar) -- think up some nice

  small wars stuff that our folks would like to have, and find a way to get it to

  them.  Not at a loss, but we're more interested in building a brand and a

  community than we are at selling cheap stuff to make an extra buck.  Deal with

  vendors, figure out some realistic inventory, and get 'er done. Should have a keen eye for the difference between

  stuff and junk, and think end to end as far as the logistics goes. Amateurs talk

  t-shirts & coins, professionals talk fulfullment.

• Social Networking Manager (Grand Twit) -- so we've got a

  token Twitter and Facebook presence, but we aren't doing much with it.  There

  are some untapped capabilities there and in our user profiles in vBulletin. We

  haven't done much in the way of facilitating local get togethers. 

  There's tons we could do but aren't because we just don't have the

  time. You have the vision and execution ability to do more smart stuff to

  help more people get SWJ their way, and get together in ways that are

  meaningful to them.

We've also got some more focused gaps where folks with some

specific talents can help us:

• Developer -- if you're competent on a LAMP box, we've got a

  few office workflow things we'd like to have our system do more nicely.  These

  are distinct from our in-process migration to Drupal and we hope they are

  discrete, interesting projects that can be feathers in your cap and arrows in

  our quiver.  If you'd like to drop a shoulder on some of it, send us a note for a short list of

  specific things we're interested in.

• Graphic Design (Style Guru) -- so with all this redesign and

  rework we're doing, we need someone with a better eye than us fashion disasters.  We'll soon be doing the CSS work with our site

  development team, and then there are a couple of collateral things that should synch

  up for that clean, consistent, simple, functional, good looks.  More Filson than

  Guggenheim, but we want some restrained flair and perhaps you're just the person

  to dope slap us with it.  We've got to make our 2009 Rolling Stone hotness even

  hotter.  Maybe this design gigs stops at the look & feel, maybe you drive

  through that

  to be more of a brand manager than a designer with excursions into content and

  the whole IO thing -- e.g. who knows what kind of junk that merchandise person is

  going to try to schlep that is just inconsistent with our "look"? 

  Your call.  But it starts with a sense of style.

We've got even more needs, but are a bit further out from being

able to engage when we find the right folks.  So we'll tighten that up ASAP. 

For now, please know that

down the road a bit we'll be looking for some more help in the areas of:

• Editorial and Production Assistants
• Fundraising & Outreach
• Office & Event Operations
• Content Gurus for various topic areas (~ library moderators / topic

  guides)

Next steps?  If you're interested, talk to us.  We have no

shortage of good ideas, what we lack is ability to execute (mostly

time-constrained); we'll want to know that you have those in balance to be able

to come in as a value add. We need you to be able to run with intent and a

shared vision (don't need a roadmap but won't wander off the reservation

either), be a straight-shooter, represent us well, and get your own benefit or

joy out of doing this. Let us know what you can do for us and how we can make it

work for you.