Worldwide PenPoint Developers Organization – Available Videotapes (July 8, 1993)

The Available Videotapes list dated July 8, 1993 is a four-page printed catalog issued by the Worldwide PenPoint Developers Organization (WPDO) offering eighteen recorded sessions for sale to PenPoint developers.¹ The catalog was signed by David Schachter from a return address at 801 Middlefield Road, #8, Palo Alto, California 94301-2916, with voice contact at +1 415 328 7425, voice mail at +1 415 858 5152, a CompuServe account at 70714,3017, and an Internet address of [email protected].¹ A trademark notice at the foot of the catalog declared that the WPDO was independent of GO Corporation and used the "PenPoint" registered trademark by permission, and that "WPDO" was itself a trademark of the Worldwide PenPoint Developers Organization.¹

The recorded sessions spanned eleven months, from WPDO Meeting #1 on July 25, 1992 through WPDO Meeting #10 on May 13, 1993, with several supplemental tapes interleaved between the meeting recordings.¹ WPDO Meeting #1 opened with an introduction by Paul Williams, head of the WPDO, a short address by GO Corporation chief executive Jerry Kaplan, an update on GO's developer relations and marketing by Arlene Beyersdorf, a presentation by Mike Sandberg on PenPoint developer relations and marketing, and detailed technical material from GO's Craig Taylor on the GO Object Model.¹ WPDO Meeting #2 in September 1992 split into a main track headlined by Tony Hoeber of GO on "User Interface Essentials for PenPoint Apps" and a novice track featuring an "Ask S" question-and-answer session with GO's S Page and an hour-long walk through the GO programming model.¹

The remaining meeting recordings documented a steady run of third-party demonstrations and GO Corporation technical updates. WPDO Meeting #4 on November 12, 1992 carried a GO product launch video together with AT&T's Steve Cox on the CRiSP/Hobbit plans and roughly an hour with Clark Beumont and Ted Barnett of EO on the new EO Personal Communicators.¹ Meeting #5 on December 10, 1992 included a message from Jerry Kaplan, the first installment of Thom Hogan's quarterly Marketing Update focused on COMDEX, and NovoTech's Andy Novobilski on "Requirements for PenPoint Programming and Programmers" and "Objective-C and PenPoint," tied to NovoTech's port of Objective-C to PenPoint.¹ Meeting #6 on January 14, 1993 featured Dr. Ronjon Nag of Lexicus on "Cursive Recognition and PenPoint" with a demonstration of Lexicus Longhand; Meeting #7 on February 11, 1993 brought Joe Vierra (GO Architect) on the GO Message Center, Joe Hayashi of Notable, Inc. and Lang Zerner of GO on a demonstration of the WPDO BBS, and Thom Hogan announcing a new SDK distribution plan with free SDKs.¹ Meeting #8 on March 11, 1993 presented James Rossborough of GO on PenPoint 2.0 alongside Hogan's next quarterly Marketing Update; Meeting #9 on April 8, 1993 featured Dave Chavez and Tom Ball, senior members of the EO Inc. technical staff, on "How We Did It - Challenges in Porting PenPoint and in Writing PenPoint Applications," with shorter contributions from Socket Communications, Trimble Navigation, and the Center for Software Development; and Meeting #10 on May 13, 1993 carried a panel on the pen computing market with John Wagoner, Marty Manning and Bill Lempesis, together with a demonstration by Yutaka Endo of Fujitsu of a PenPoint software development tool.¹

The supplemental tapes covered Pen-based Computing in Asia/Pacific by GO Business Development Manager Clement Lam on October 21, 1992 (available courtesy of the Chinese Software Professional Association via Vincent Lue at [email protected]), Jerry Kaplan's January 27, 1993 talk on "Mobile Computing: The New Entrepreneurial Frontier" hosted by the Software Entrepreneurs' Forum Pen Computing SIG run by Bill McAlpine, a February 10, 1993 General Magic press footage video news release, Jerry Kaplan's March 23, 1993 informal roundtable at the Stanford Business School on the business issues of building GO Corporation, and a marketing presentation by Stewart Cogan of Slate Corporation on PenApps that the catalog explicitly warned readers not to order.¹ Tapes were sold in NTSC/VHS format at prices ranging from US$30 to US$50 per tape, with a flat US$5 per-tape shipping charge that dropped by US$5 for orders of three tapes and US$10 for orders of four or more; WPDO members received a US$5 per-tape discount and could rent any tape for US$10 per week, payment was required before shipment, purchase orders were not accepted, copying the tapes was explicitly permitted, and the catalog noted that the recordings were amateur productions whose audio and video would not match professionally mastered tapes.¹

AI generated using primary sources referenced in the footnotes