Impackt 08 — Interview with Douglas Paterson

Douglas Paterson is a full-time acquisition editor and part-time author for Packt Publishing. He is a doctor of Mathematics and has over five years experience of working on programming books across a number of different subjects.

He lives in Birmingham, England, with his wife, and his unusually hairy dog, Zak.

Packt: Joomla!’s popularity following the fork from Mambo has been impressive and has subsequently become one of the most popular open source CMS’s in a short period of time. Looking at Google Trends, Mambo’s popularity appears to have fallen following the fork. Therefore, do you see a future for Mambo and do you think that the improvements in Joomla!’s latest releases have been significant enough to differentiate it from Mambo?

Douglas Paterson: Joomla! has no problem in differentiating itself from Mambo, I am not sure it is living in the shadow of Mambo. From the moment of its creation, the Joomla! community worked hard to define their own particular identity, with the recent release of version 1.5 the successful conclusion of an ambitious plan to restructure the application for the future.

For a project like Mambo, or indeed any project, there will always be a future when there are people for whom the product is valuable, and they are prepared to invest time in it, and continue to develop the software to address the needs they see today.

Packt: Technology has never been more dynamic. With recurrent updates and constantly changing versions, how can publishing keep up with these updates?

DP: On the one hand, publishers love new versions - it is a chance to revise and republish, and ride the wave of publicity and interest that surround a new release. One the other hand, it does mean they have to revise and republish or else their content will be out of date, sometimes terribly so.

I don't think we should overlook the experience the book offers. If the reader is still able to do, broadly, the things described in the book, and they have enjoyed the book, the book has done its job. Given a good start in a topic, people will often pick up the details of newer developments themselves.

Of course, when the reader is no longer able to do the things described in the book, you do have a problem.

Packt: What areas or technologies are you looking at writing or publishing on in 2008? Do you think there will be a significant change in the subject areas or technologies you will be publishing on in 2008?

DP: I think that there will definitely be some surprises in our 2008 title output. That's all I'd like to say right now...

Packt: Thanks Douglas.

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