Sometimes things evolve faster than you think. Something that started as a simple WordPress blog back in September 2006, has evolved into a little Smashing universe — with books, eBooks, conferences, workshops, consultancy, job board and, most recently, 56 fancy cats (upcoming, also known as Smashing Membership). We have a wonderful team making it all happen, but every project requires attention and focus and every project desperately needs time to evolve and flourish and improve.
After more than 11 years of being editor-in-chief at Smashing Magazine, I’ve been struggling a lot to find that perfect balance between all of our projects, often focusing on exciting ideas and neglecting good old ones. I would jump to writing, or teaching, or coding, or designing, or working with conference speakers, instead of reviewing and editing articles, often leaving Smashing Magazine running on the side.
It’s time for a change. It’s not an easy decision for me to make, but I sincerely believe that it’s an important one. Smashing Magazine has been the heart of everything we’ve been working on throughout all this time, and with many new Smashing adventures scheduled for 2018, it deserves a stronger focus and support: a guidance stronger than the one I was providing throughout the last years. Most importantly, it needs much more care and attention.
With this in mind, I can’t be more happy and honored to welcome the one-and-only Rachel Andrew (yep, you got it right) as the new editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine. Rachel will be helping us bring the focus back to the core of this little Smashing universe — this very magazine that you are reading right now. Rachel doesn’t really need an introduction, and her work for the community speaks for herself. There is one thing worth mentioning though: with Rachel, I’m happy to have a reliable and extremely knowledgeable editor on our side, the one I could only dream of. I’m not going anywhere, of course, but I’ll be spending more time writing and teaching and working on other Smashing projects instead. This is Rachel’s spot to take now.
About Rachel Andrew
For those of you who may have not heard about Rachel, here are a few things to know about her.
Rachel Andrew lives in Bristol, England. She is one half of web development company edgeofmyseat.com, the company behind Perch CMS. Her day to day work can include anything from product development to devops to CSS, and she writes about all of these subjects on her blog at rachelandrew.co.uk.
Rachel has been working on the web since 1996 and writing about the web for almost as long. She is the author or co-author of 22 books including The New CSS Layout, and a regular contributor to a number of publications both on and offline. She is a Google Developer Expert for Web Technologies and a W3C Invited Expert to the CSS Working Group. Rachel is a frequent speaker at web development and design events including An Event Apart, Smashing Conference, and Web Directions Code.
Rachel is a keen distance runner and likes to encourage people to come for a run when attending conferences, with varying degrees of success. She is also a student pilot and aviation geek. You can find her on Twitter as @rachelandrew and find out what she is up to now.
Exciting times indeed! Let’s shape the future together — I can’t wait to see what’s coming up next. So please make Rachel feel welcome — and here’s one for the next adventures!
(vf)