Calendar Withdrawl... me too Message #4 Posted by Jake Schwartz on 23 Jan 2010, 9:39 a.m., in response to message #3 by Bruce Bergman
Hi,
Thanks so much for the kind words. The fatal flaw with the last calendar was mostly its poor *timing*. The originally-intended theme was "HP Calculator People" where Richard Nelson and I were going to devote each image page to a well-known HP calculator developer (such as Bill Wickes, etc.) and the projects to which each one contributed. Richard wanted to give each one a chance to tell us (so we could include in the calendar) info on what he/she is doing now. Unfortunately, hardly any of those who were asked by email responded in a timely manner. In fact, I believe he *still* has yet to receive responses from enough of them to fill twelve months, so that particular idea is still impractical. The only page I did as a sample to show Richard was the one for Eric Vogel (32S, 32SII, HP75 Visicalc, HP200LX, etc.) :
In any case, it was late Summer when it was realized that the theme had to be changed and time was running out. Richard decided to ask the HHC2008 conference attendees whether to do a slight enhancement on the previous years' theme or skip altogether. The vote was to enhance the theme, so we did the second one when we got home. They didn't get out of the printer until January 4th or so, so the timing was around 4 months too late for casual HP fans to want one by that point. The number printed was hundreds, and copies went to all the HHC2008 attendees and additional sales were only in the dozens. Needless to say, the sales fell short of the costs by many hundreds of dollars. Had it all been sorted out by, say, August, I think that the project might at least have broken even and Richard wouldn't be so sour on doing any more for fear of further losing his shirt. For what it is worth, copies of that 2009 calender are still available at half price at http://www.pahhc.org/2009/Calendar.htm.
Thanks,
Jake Schwartz
|