The Cameron and Jo Exchange

The Cameron and Jo Exchange wholeheartedly supports independent media, and this week is no different. We proudly introduce:

The If Project: a magazine on a mission to make a difference. 

How exactly would you describe the IF project to listeners who may not be familiar with the concept?  

The IF Project’s aim is to launch a weekly online magazine called ‘IF’ from scratch in 100 days and to document my progress in a blog-slash-social-media-campaign: http://ifprojectblog.com. The IF Project is a response to the limitations of both our fast-paced lifestyles and an often celebrity-ridden mainstream news cycle.  How often can we go a whole week without picking up a newspaper, or getting through an entire article because we’re too busy or tired or stressed?  

IF will be an interactive online magazine that breaks down the world’s seemingly insurmountable social environmental and humanitarian problems, and with its audience, finds real ways we can make a real difference to them.  The magazine will keep readers up to date but also make them want to slow down and take the time to at the very least think seriously about the world around them.

The magazine won’t preach about, but rather, will engage people in the possibilities of a better world.  Unlike highbrow academic sites, IF will use non-traditional methods of storytelling that inform as well as inspire and entertain our audience, including street art, photography, short films and literary journalism.  

I’m not aiming to rile anyone up.  The world has more than enough hothead political bloggers and talkback radio stations to meet that need.  I’m trying to create a magazine that will inspire people to figure out how to better lead themselves. We still have about 27 days to go before our first issue goes live, but the IF Project has already created an online community of people from five different continents, all interested in figuring out how the world works and how to make it work better.  

We’ve sparked numerous controversial discussions about political and social issues and really gotten people thinking about ideas that don’t necessarily make headline news, but are still important to the decisions we make in everyday life.  The challenge once the 100 days is over will be to maintain this readership for every single issue of the magazine.  

How did it all start? 

I’m a journalist by trade and earlier this year the publishing firm I was working for collapsed and I was made redundant.  I was tired of being rejected for jobs I didn’t really want and of constantly waiting for my ‘dream job’ to arrive on a silver platter.  I was also really frustrated with people around me who had no interest in what to me were issues far more important than all of our petty first world problems.  Yet I was most frustrated with myself because there I was sanctimoniously whingeing about it all and doing nothing about any of it. 

So I decided (in the shower, where all the best ideas are born) to create my own dream job (minus the massive dream salary) of being an editor of a magazine that I would really like to read, one which somehow taught me and others about stories that weren’t so easily accessible via mainstream news, but were still important to our understanding of our personal impact on the world we live in.  

 Once I started telling people about it, I felt more of a responsibility to actually get off my ass and do something about it.  So starting the IF Project blog in order to tell potentially ‘everyone’ about it made this a reality for me, and after a while, my full-time job between the hours of about 9am to midnight.

What have been the best and worst experiences of the process so far?

One of the best experiences has been making friends with my team of volunteers and with people in different cities who really believe in what I’m doing and on more than one occasion have taken the time to encourage me to keep going on the days when I feel like it’s all too much work and a totally hopeless cause. 

The worst experiences have been the ‘burn out’ weeks when I’m so exhausted I could (and sometimes do) cry.  I was offered a full-time job I couldn’t refuse shortly after I started The IF Project, so between that and the Project itself I have little time for anything else.  I stayed awake for almost 24 hours straight the other night, stressed out of my mind.  But it’s nothing a little sleep and a lot of coffee can’t fix.

Where will people be able to access this magazine once it has reached its final publication deadline?

I haven’t yet bought the domain name for the magazine’s website, but keep checking the IF Project blog for more details as we get closer to deadline (August 2).

Have you thought about where you might like to take this in the future? Eg political/international forums?

YES - In September we’re planning to cover the 2010 UN Millennium Development Goals conference in New York, and in five years’ time I’m aiming for IF to go ‘truly’ global with contributing editors in major cities around the world, as well as contributors in a number of developing countries.  

Where can anyone find out more information as to how they could help out/get involved with both the first and subsequent publications?

I’ll be posting all call-outs and updates up till deadline to the IF blog: ifprojectblog.com/ and Facebook page: http://facebook.com/theIFProject.  If this all sounds like a good idea to you please support us by telling your friends about it, joining our page and following us the rest of the way to deadline! :)