One week to go... and so much work to do (2012-02-10)

[Bosbeetle]

I can imagine that going from a one or two man shop to a console producing firm, including a shop is a big transition. The fact that both you and craig are shop owners too only complicates te matter. It would drive me insane having to wear 3 different hats (shopowner, console producer, film-producer) that you do all the time. So hats of to you (all 3 of them) sir dragon!

 

[Mr_Loon]

....


so we both know communication is important.


However, it was just TOO much work


....


....


In my shop, for example, this is buried within all other orders, and osCommerce (which I'm using) doesn't allow me to send mails just to everyone who ordered a Pandora


....

What Open Pandora Ltd & Open Pandora GmbH need is a proper customer database. This may take a while to set up but it would save countless hours in the long run and would allow :


Easy communication with customers based upon multiple criteria.


A simple way to tell people their position in the Queue.


The ability to track common faults & problems.


Here are a few additional scenarios that a customer database would make incredibly simple :


Send an email to all existing Pandora customers letting them now about additional accessories (e.g. TV Out cables are available, would you like to buy one?)


Produce a sorted list of customers (could be sorted by date, importance etc.) where an action is required (Repair, reply to query, etc.)


Send an email to people 6 months after they received their Pandora requesting feedback on user experience etc.

 

[Binky]

I can imagine that going from a one or two man shop to a console producing firm, including a shop is a big transition. The fact that both you and craig are shop owners too only complicates te matter. It would drive me insane having to wear 3 different hats (shopowner, console producer, film-producer) that you do all the time. So hats of to you (all 3 of them) sir dragon!

Thus we learn that our local dragon has three heads, with a hat on each ^_^

 

[elwing]

....


so we both know communication is important.


However, it was just TOO much work


....


....


In my shop, for example, this is buried within all other orders, and osCommerce (which I'm using) doesn't allow me to send mails just to everyone who ordered a Pandora


....

What Open Pandora Ltd & Open Pandora GmbH need is a proper customer database. This may take a while to set up but it would save countless hours in the long run and would allow :


Easy communication with customers based upon multiple criteria.


A simple way to tell people their position in the Queue.


The ability to track common faults & problems.


Here are a few additional scenarios that a customer database would make incredibly simple :


Send an email to all existing Pandora customers letting them now about additional accessories (e.g. TV Out cables are available, would you like to buy one?)


Produce a sorted list of customers (could be sorted by date, importance etc.) where an action is required (Repair, reply to query, etc.)


Send an email to people 6 months after they received their Pandora requesting feedback on user experience etc.

and other reason that'll justify this kind of investment is that it will probably massively decrease the rest of the E-Mail trafic... you know, the kind of E-Mail you have to write a response one at a time...

 

[ledow]

In my shop, for example, this is buried within all other orders, and osCommerce (which I'm using) doesn't allow me to send mails just to everyone who ordered a Pandora.

Think we've already been here about a million times - osCommerce allows export of all data to CSV. You might have to google it but it's there, and not difficult at all.


Plug that into Libreoffice calc, a little bit of trimming (manual or automated) and you'd have the data you wanted. It's the sort of thing that anyone who deals with databases on a regular basis (not even professionally) could do in an afternoon. Even if the data was horrendously formatted, didn't have consistent descriptions of what was bought, etc. and you had to do them all manually, it's still only a week at best. Putting it into a sensible mailing list or database would take an hour or two once you had the data.


In three years, you couldn't find a week to do it, or someone to do it for you, which would have saved you MONTHS of email-reply work?


The only things I could think that would hinder it would be: 1) your order data doesn't contain the information at all (e.g. no idea what they bought)... bad business management and will bite you come tax or audit time, 2) you have no clue how to do it and won't hand off your database to a non-employee... fair enough, but still hardly a good business, 3) you just can't be arsed.


In the first month? Sure. In the next 6 months? Okay, bit odd. In *three years* and repeated calls for more info, merging of two customer lists that you have to handle, etc. and a MONTH'S backlog of email (most of which will be greatly simplified and not even present if such information was extracted anyway)? It seems just lazy business, to be honest. Why care about telling customers what's happening while you have their money already?


I always thought the OP was a great idea. I've been put off since day one by the business style.

 

[milkshake]

is this aimed at craig?, evildragon? or both?

 

[elwing]

is this aimed at craig?, evildragon? or both?

hard to tell, I'm personally only accusing craig as I didn't order through ED...

 

[DaMummy]

I always thought the OP was a great idea. I've been put off since day one by the business style.

this is the exact reason why im attracted to the pandora. because there wasnt a business state of mind behind it. please dont change this. although i would suggest to any emails that have been received by craig or ED about the pandora, to simply link them to this forum, to either ask for the information theyre looking for, and i think its fair to say that they will get a good answer 100% of the time, or they read through the forums, especially the news posts, themselves instead of bothering a backlog of emails just to ask some silly question

 

[Xaeo]

Well I only have a few things to mention.


I'm new to this project, I first stumbled upon it after looking up the psp Vita on wikipedia and being horribly disapointed in it's specs and through the magic of wikipedia I ended up at Open Pandora. I must say that I've been very impressed with what the community has done! Because while this idea may have started with ED & Craig, they wouldn't have been able to have this product without the support from it's community; from helping develop the OS & apps to giving valuable input to the design of Pandora.


Now, I've been lurking these forums for the past couple days and have been surprised by how helpful and open this forum really is. Yet, even though there are plenty of helpful community members who help with everything from developing to flying over to Germany who hand-build a product that was designed by this community for this community I can't see why people are so upset over these long delays, it has been fairly transparent as to what the status and development of Pandora is progressing. I could understand if they weren't releasing the reasons for all of their delays, but they seem to be very active within the community and are even posting daily updates! To the people complaining about not getting update e-mails; it seems that ED & Craig reply to e-mails that are sent to them, so instead of complaining about not being "kept in the loop" how about trying to take some initiative and read the forums as to the status of the project or if you have any serious concerns, send them an e-mail yourself.


And instead of criticizing them on how they are handling their business section, why not offer to help them organize or even set up a customer data-base? I mean come on, we are already sharing and contributing our expertise to the apps that Pandora runs would it be that much of a jump to also lend them our expertise on the business side as well? Is it that much more difficult to collaborate on how they could improve their business side, from the sounds of it we already have some members within this community or have experience with this software, perhaps they could post some links to tutorials on how to setup what you'd like to see happen? I'm assuming that from the Open nature of this community that they wouldn't mind, and might in fact have use for some people with these technical skills.


Now, I suppose my rant might be a little bit different if I had originally started way back when this whole project got under way, but I'd rather think that I'd be excited and trying to lend ED & Craig a hand as Link has been doing for the past while now.


That's just my two cents.


-Dave

 

[LineOf7s]

Welcome Xaeo!


A bold first post, to be sure. Admitting you're new before making sweeping generalisations about the last three years and how people shouldn't be so concerned about things because people have been responding to emails, posting daily updates and how 'fairly transparent' things have been? Bold indeed.


Don thy asbestos, just in case.

 

[gruso]

Don thy asbestos, just in case.

Indeed And welcome from me too, Xaeo.


There are some counterpoints (I won't go too deep into them, I'm about to have lunch) but there is always value in what a fresh set of eyes observes. I hope people treat this as a discussion point, not an attack vector. If y'all smell what I'm steppin' in.


One thing I will say; one should not underestimate the pain of being stuck in a pre-order queue while others enjoy their Pandoras. At its core this is where the anger comes from for most people, and unfortunately, in the past anyway, the avenues just weren't there for the community to help improve the situation.

 

[Xaeo]

Thanks for the greeting


And, yes I did make sweeping generalizations, but thats only because I haven't had time to go through all of the Official Pandora News topics, though it seemed to me like they had a fair coverage over this projects lifespan. I was mainly distraught over the amount of criticizim that is being aired, especially when it's so close to reaching full production. I know that my rant came off as a little more hostile than I intended, but I was hoping to offer some alternatives instead of piling ED & Craig down with more work to do.


And I can totally understand why someone would be upset after waiting 3 years for such an awesome product. Just looking at everything that is being developed for it my hands are already itching for it.

 

[Naynay]

I'm not whinging about community contact. (ED does that OK on this forum). I'm just worrying that the email I sent to openpandorasales with my new address may or may not have been seen and my address updated for when the Pandora's finally ship.


I don't want to have paid $300+ and waited 3 years for the device to be shipped to the other side of the world where I can't get it!

 

[Clercq]

I'm not whinging about community contact. (ED does that OK on this forum). I'm just worrying that the email I sent to openpandorasales with my new address may or may not have been seen and my address updated for when the Pandora's finally ship.


I don't want to have paid $300+ and waited 3 years for the device to be shipped to the other side of the world where I can't get it!

I have the exact same problem. The worst is that I am oblige to change regurlarly my address because of my job.


End of the week, I feel like a troll in my throat... But I prefer holding on...


But anyway, I am impatiently waiting for my tiny Pandora... closer it is, farer it seems.

 

[andy9841]

Quick question... Whats the 'upgraded' Pandora?


I'm a late 1st batcher and only check back here every 2 months or so, so it seems I have missed something?

 

[Binky]

Quick question... Whats the 'upgraded' Pandora?


I'm a late 1st batcher and only check back here every 2 months or so, so it seems I have missed something?

German ones have 512MB RAM (double that of the Texan ones)


Also, slight improvements in case design, and a few hardware bug fixes.

 

[WizardStan]

Quick question... Whats the 'upgraded' Pandora?


I'm a late 1st batcher and only check back here every 2 months or so, so it seems I have missed something?

Long story short: CircuitCo, the company that was building the boards in Texas, screwed up big time and left OPT hanging for months. EvilDragon has now moved production to Germany which, unless my timing is wrong, should start populating boards next week.


Further to this, there are two different types of "upgrades". First, there is the RAM upgrade as mentioned: the old 256MB chips are no longer available, so out of necessity ALL Pandoras being built from now on (including yours) will be getting 512MB of RAM at no extra charge.


The second "upgrade" is the queue upgrade. You can pay some upgrade amount (the cost of which was carefully calculated but I don't know what it is off hand) to be promoted to the "fast" queue. They created this "fast" queue because, unfortunately, they are teetering on the edge of no-more-money, even with the investment plan to keep things moving. Without the "fast" queue, there wouldn't be the funds to produce any more Pandoras at all, so it's an unfortunately necessary evil that some people will pay more to skip ahead of you and get their Pandora sooner.

 

[mattman]

since i found out about this project, i have been genuinely extremely excited. and put a 10€ deposit down and started saving.


i know im way down the list and not likely to be in the next batch but **** it (pardon my french) this is something i really want to get hold of never mind the waiting time on actually gettting one.


I suppose the excitment is like when you were younger waiting on santa to come and leave you that toy you wanted and wrote him 3 letters just incase the first 2 didnt make it. the child like expectation of a new thingy brings me back.

 

[andmaz]

I will sort out the csv data for you if it will help.


I will also sign any agreement iro data protection.

 

[andy9841]

Thanks for the replies Binky and WizardStan


sounds like things are starting to move finally