[NTLK] An Invitation to Post Stories on the History of the Newton

From: Paul R. Potts <paul_at_thepottshouse.org>
Date: Sun Mar 23 2008 - 23:44:54 EDT

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 00:16:22 2008

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