Hi All, I visit Cluas on a daily basis and think as a forum its pretty laid back and generally people here are really well informed and have, for the most part a lot of constructive things to say. Its with this in mind that I thought I would invite you guys to consider making some contributions to a magazine GigSmart is planning on publishing on a regular basis. Our intention is to try and publish a magazine every two months if possible and distribute it Nationwide. We are trying not to bite off more than we can chew as a lot of other ventures of similar aspirations have gone down the pan, difference here is we have a little more in the background to try and sustain the venture (ehh hopefully haha). Before I go on I would just like to say that this publication will be part of the bigger GigSmart picture of trying to bring some additional focus on upcoming bands and its intent is to support the bands that gig, tour and release with GigSmart and who contribute to GigSmart and other bands affiliated with us. All other content will be secondary to that but it is our intention to cover other mainstream and cultural areas which is where we are looking for contributions. Having said all of that we make,big efforts to be as inclusive as possible and are always looking to include people with enthusiasm and who are prepared to do a little more than promote themselves, so please don’t think this is about exclusive GigSmart clique – ism, you want to be involved at any level let us know its pretty simple. (Bands usually complain about coming to us and getting nothing - If your in band and you want to get involved meet us at a gig) I don’t want to come across as some kind of pompous s**te here but we have our own agenda and believe people will get out what they put in. GigSmart was founded initially as a band co-op and through various reasons we have had to register as a company, however the core philosophy is the same. People contribute, turn up to gigs, make an effort to support bands and all boats rise together kind of thing. Needless to say this is a lofty ideal and in practice is hard to achieve,aware of that after thrre year however this kind of approach of focussing on what people do rather than what they don’t has worked well. This year our plan is to possibly release more singles and an album here and there if the right bands come along and are interested in working with us. We are also doing another compilation and a few more nationwide tours, our new website will be going up soon with a full team in the background and we have our regular gig schedule already started, also plans for more outdoor gigs at the central bank as they did well last year….We are hoping to tie all these things together to create a little vibe of sustainability about the whole thing so people become a little more interested in supporting some of the talented unsigned bands gigging around at the moment as they will see, read and hear about these bands regularly through the different formats of night time gigs , day gigs , the tours, the site, the compilation, the mag etc. We are also hoping to attract a little advertising too so we can put the cash into the whole effort and do some promo in the mainstream media aswell to try and encourage people to get back into gigs, it should be an eventful year and we’ll see how it goes. Much like last year we anticipate monumental f**k ups here and there but we are all still learning. So if you have managed to get through all of that and you feel you have something of a slight interest in getting involved in our publication on a regular basis or an ad hoc kinda thing please give me a shout. This is a voluntary effort so we cant pay you, we will just be looking to cover costs so its not gonna make anyone rich with a little luck though it might help a few people along their way. All the best and thanks for reading trev@gigsmartireland.com niall@gigsmartireland.com