On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 7:23 AM Fredrik Thulin <[email protected]> wrote:
> On fredag 9 december 2016 kl. 17:36:11 CET Leif Johansson wrote: > ... > > > People who back crowdfunding projects understand > > > that there is a large risk of things being delayed, or of the entire > > > project failing - what annoys them more than the delays is the lack of > > > updates / feedback... > > > > > You're right of course. We're not really good at the logistics side of > this. > > All of us who try to keep the wheels spinning have to keep $dayjob happy > > too - there is 0 money in the budget to do the customer-facing side of > this > > even close to professionally. > > Warren, I don't dare to expect it to make you feel any better about the > project but I wanted to say that you are 100% right in your criticism. Actually, your email made me feel much better - thank you. > There > are no excuses, but some explanations that I think it might be better if I > share with you (and the rest of the list) rather than keeping quiet about. > > I've given the situation a great deal of thought and I think it can be > summarized to this: > > 1) None of us had done a kickstarter campaign before. There are people > with a > lot of experience in producing software in the project, and some of us have > experience with producing hardware. These are two very different things > where > hardware is much much more complicted to get out the door than software. I > don't believe anyone of us had any experience with running a campaign. > There > has been a lot of valuable lessons in this for me in the future - > communication and having someone in charge of running the campaign is two > of > the most important ones. I'm really sorry we failed here. > ... at least important lessons were learnt - if you happen to run another campaign, I'm happy to help with communications / chasing people for updates. I also have no experience with running a campaign, but I *have* been on the other side a number of times and so I know what bits frustrates people. > > 2) We estimated we would need to make 50 Alpha boards (turned out to be a > rather good estimate so far) and I am largely responsible for the long > delay > in getting these boards to you all since I strongly advised we would > produce > 25 boards before Berlin, and 25 more afterwards. > > I'm sorry it has been a very long wait for you and the others, but I can't > say > I would advise differently if we could rewind the tape. We did not know for > sure if the rev03 boards would actually work, and it would have been hugely > irresponsible of us to waste up to $40k of donated money on producing non- > working hardware. I *fully* agree; I didn't really mind the wait for the device. I have a number of other projects going on at the moment, and so am not likely to have much time to play with the widget -- the bit which was frustrating was the lack of updates / communication. A periodic "An update: The reticulating splines turned out to be overly brittle. We hope to get more malleable ones in 3 or 4 months, and will send out an update then" would have removed much of the annoyance. > The money was donated to facilitate development, not to be > risked on manufacturing gambles. I think preassure to produce the Alpha made > us do a lot of things the wrong way as it is, but we at least made it to > the > other side alive... although with understandably dissapointed backers :(. > Sorry again. > 'tis OK. I wasn't disappointed, more frustrated -- but I'm over that now, thanks. > In other news, I recieved the next batch of 25 boards from the assembly > house > late on Friday afternoon. I will be spending the weekend testing and > programming them so we can ship them to Crowdsupply first thing next week. > ... and I got a shipping notification from Crowdsupply. Thanks again, you have restored my faith, W > > /Fredrik > >
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