[NTLK] An Invitation (reformatted)

(Sorry for the wonky line breaks; I hope this is more readable).

Hello all,

As the 10-year anniversary of the disbanding of the Newton project
occurred, I was inspired to try to move forward with a project that
has been on my mind since first reading "Defying Gravity" -- helping
to get the true story of the Newton told.

Ideally, I'd like to get insider stories -- the earliest engineers,
the earliest contractors. From the Dylan days with big prototypes,
through the Scully era, the launch, the revisions, the spin-out, the
spin-in, and the final cancellation. The model I had in mind was Andy
Hertzfeld's Folklore site at folklore.org: I like these stories
because they are sufficiently technical to interest engineers, and
sufficiently about people and events to be good human-interest stories.

So, I contacted Andy, and he said "yes!" Although he does not want to
link the Newton project to the front page until there is a critical
mass of good stories.

The first few stories have gone up on the Newton project, part of
Andy Hertzfeld's Folklore site. They are accessible here:

http://folklore.org/ProjectView.py?name=Newton

These should be considered "seed" stories. I am hoping to get far
more insiders, although I think there is also a role for third-party
developers in telling the story.

There are currently three editors: Walter Smith, Maurice Sharp, and
Paul R. Potts.

There is at least an approximate workflow defined now:

If you would like to submit a story, create an account on
folklore.org and post it. You will be able to see and edit your own
contributions, but not see and edit other contributions. When you are
satisfied with it, you can set the status to "Submitted." The editors
can then ask for revisions, edit it ourselves, and eventualy set it
so that it appears on the project page.

We'll iterate on the set of stories, and maybe stories will beget
more stories, until there is enough material to convince Andy to
promote it.

Here are some "starter questions" to get you thinking about what kind
of story you'd like to tell. If you aren't really good with
generating a story, and not everyone is, but feel like you have a lot
to tell, perhaps you'd like to be interviewed, and then have your
responses edited into a story, which you could approve before
posting? I would be happy to conduct e-mail interviews.

Some starter topics to get you thinking:

- When and how did you first hear about the Newton project?

- Did you work on hardware, or on software? On documentation? On
marketing? On support? Were you a third-party developer?

- Do you remember the first time you held a Newton unit in your hand?
Was it a prototype, or a released hardware unit? What did you think
about it? What do you think about it now, looking back?

- If you worked on the team, how did you get the job? What do you
remember about your interview, your first day on the job, your
office? What did you have on your desk? What software tools were you
using? What were your meetings like? Who was your boss, and your co-
workers? What were they like?

- What do you remember about the push to the Newton launch? Were you
at the launch? What was it like behind the scenes? Were you part of
the last-minute patching of MessagePads?

- What do you remember about prototype hardware and software? Demos?
Developer "kitchens?" How about the development conferences? The
shorter events? Did you give a talk, or appear onstage, or appear as
a vendor?

- Any interesting T-shirts? What stories do the shirts have behind
their creation? Apple's, or third party shirts?

- Any photos? Any interesting notes in your possession? Historic e-
mail messages?

- Were you part of the spin-out? What do you remember about that?

- How about the spin-in?

- How did you find out about the termination of the Newton project?

- What do you remember about the circumstances of your departure?

- Is there a certain technology that you would like to talk about?
What are you proudest of? What are you not proud of?

- What features did you expect to be a hit, but didn't? What features
did you expect to flop, but instead it turned out that they were a hit?

- Did you have confidence in the product, or in a feature? Was it
justified, in retrospect? Or were you lacking confidence that in
retrospect you should have had?

- Why do you think the project was terminated?

Thanks,

Paul R. Potts
paul@thepottshouse.org

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Received on Mon Mar 24 00:36:53 2008