re: Comdex 88 yatr

[Phil Salin -- "Ducks-R-Us" <phil>]

I just realized my email response to Roger's Comdex message had more to
do with a lunch conversation we had than to his mail message.

I think the idea of showing how Xanadu can be used to rapidly collect
and interlink and collaborate and comment-in-the-margins-on lots of
Comdex information is a good one, and worth considering as one
possible goal for our initial rollout.  We could start with 1988's
Comdex exhibits guide, and maybe a copy of a Comdex daily (if they
haven't all been thrown away). Experience with current OCR technology
(including estimating how many pages can be practicably read in and
usefully linked per hour) would be helpful for several reasons.

In my lunch conversation with Roger I had the impression he meant to
have the input done from WIDELY-SEPARATED exhibit locations; and that
in order to obtain electronic or OCR copies of things like the Comdex
daily newspaper we would have to get support from Comdex management;
both of these strike me as problematic, although not impossible
provided the details are carefully worked out long in advance and
committed to in writing by those OTHER ORGANIZATIONS who have to do
things to make it work.  Not impossible; just probably completely
beyond our control and ability to make work right.

Take my concerns to be two:

1) Before we spend much time making detailed plans on how we will be
   the hit of Comdex 89, lets get the back-end redesign done and coding
   underway.  This was Johan's main point, as I took it.

2) Whatever we plan at Comdex, we should minimize requirements that any
   organization other than Xanadu or Autodesk needs to be motivated or
   competent at giving us something we need. Otherwise it could get very
   hard to stay flexible and make useful last minute improvements.

Sorry about the confusion.