Amendment One (Loudoun Magazine) Case Study

Amendment One is a leading publishing firm headquartered in Loudoun County, Va., about 35 miles outside Washington, DC. Founded in 1988, the corporation has grown from publishing the weekly newspaper, Leesburg Today, to a family of publications that cover every aspect of life in one of the nation’s fastest growing counties. Loudoun Magazine is a full-color, quarterly lifestyle magazine with a total circulation of about 25,000. Loudoun Business is published monthly and delivered to business and civic leaders throughout the metropolitan Washington, DC area.

In spring of 2004, Amendment One decided to participate in a telework pilot sponsored by the Telework Consortium. Allowing its lease on the 2,000 square feet of office space occupied by Loudoun Magazine to lapse, it set up three of its key personnel to work exclusively from their home offices. Using collaborative software tools over the public Internet, the editor-in-chief, managing editor, and art director worked with one another and other staff members to create the magazine remotely.

During the first production cycle, Loudoun Magazine’s staff produced the Spring 2004 issue on time and on budget, in the process saving approximately 1,000 drive miles and thousands of dollars in real estate and other costs.

Since spring 2004, Amendment One has incorporated such telework/distributed work into its normal workflow and expanded such processes enterprise wide.

Telework Consortium-recommended tools for this pilot included:

Software:
Marratech
Adobe Acrobat
Office 2003 for Mac

Hardware:
Apple Laptops
iSight and iREZ cameras (www.globalmedia.com)
iREZ echo-canceling mics or headsets (www.globalmedia.com)

Connectivity for teleworkers:
Wireless through Roadstar Internet
Cable DSL through Adelphia Cable
Verizon data cards

Read the Fall 2004 Interim report on select Telework Consortium pilots (.pdf file)

View the video clip of the Loudoun Magazine pilot (.wmv file)

To request a DVD copy of Loudoun Magazine Pilot Overview or Amendment One CEO Brett Phillips’ presentation at the 2005 Loudoun Economic Summit, please contact:

Donna Garfield
Dir Progrm Development and Client Services