Shuffle Newsletter One Year Anniversary of Printed Edition

**Magnus** · 9th April 2008 22:31

With the April issue of Shuffle it's been one year now it's been printed. We started in April 2007 with 1000 copies and have worked up to the current 9000 copies.

I'd like to thank everyone who has contributed over the year to making Shuffle a publication that we can all be proud of. Without all your help this wouldn't have been possible so a big, collective thank you to all. Here follows an article that is published in April's edition of Shuffle, but I thought it would be appropriate to publish it here as well.

Shuffle started as a dream in 2006 and it’s developed amazingly well over just a year and a half. It just shows you what a bit of love and dedication can accomplish. Here is a brief timeline of Shuffle’s brief life so far:

November 2006
The first Shuffle was published. For the first few months it was only published as a PDF, and for all we knew that was all Shuffle was ever going to be.

April 2007
After a few months, we faced the first major event that the EmiratesMac Apple User Group had arranged - the Apple TV Event of March 2007. For this event we thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a printed copy of Shuffle that we could hand out to attendees of this event.” In April 2007 our first issue of Shuffle was printed. It was actually published on March 29, 2007 (during the Apple TV Event), but that’s a small technicality. The first print run was 1000 copies.

May 2007
In May 2007, we increased printing to 2000 copies. Doubling the circulation so quickly after just starting to print was amazing. Summer was approaching though, and we had to make sure content was ready for the summer months; since we know many people leave the UAE to escape the heat during the summer months. We did manage to publish all summer of 2007, which was a testament to how dedicated the people working on Shuffle really are.

September 2007
The next major milestone was in September 2007 when we published the special GITEX issue. We took a big risk and increased the printing to 5000 copies and started an Arabic section in Shuffle. Counting on Arabic readers sending us articles in Arabic was a gamble (and we still need more Arabic articles for each issue), but immediately after launching the Arabic section we started hearing from users how much they appreciated it.

December 2007
As if the increase to 5000 copies and inclusion of Arabic wasn’t enough, we took another major step forward in December when, in cooperation with Arab Computers in Saudi Arabia, we almost doubled the circulation to 9000 copies of which 5000 were to go to the Kingdom. This was obviously a major development, and one that we’re still fully assessing the impact of - but clearly we’re excited about bringing Shuffle to more readers.

April 2008 and the future
Now we’re at the one-year anniversary of Shuffle being printed, and as I wrote back in November 2007, for the one-year anniversary of Shuffle’s inception, it’s been a rough ride with a few bumps along the way. However, Shuffle is doing very well. We’re seeing new writers attach themselves to Shuffle and write great content. We’re seeing more and more people around the region actually starting to look for and ask about Shuffle each month. And we’re seeing growing interest from countries to which Shuffle has not yet been distributed on a regular basis, including Kuwait and Jordan. We will do our very best to keep bringing you Shuffle each month. But you can also try to help us by forwarding to us any potential advertising leads, by writing articles, and most of all by regularly reading Shuffle and giving us your feedback. This is a true community effort, and I think Apple-fans across the Middle East should be proud of what they’ve accomplished.

As usual you can download any issue of Shuffle as a PDF file. Keep supporting Shuffle, it's one of the best things you can do for all Apple fans in the Middle East.