RANDOM THOUGHTS #114
Steve Cole muses: Just thinking to
himself about what Jean could do for the company after she gets here
and can work full time:
1. Most important, she can make sure we get product notices to wholesalers. This is an involved process that starts with project planning starts and continues all the way through it. She has to be sure that the cover art is done far ahead so it can be used in wholesaler product catalogs.
2. Jean can make sure we send something to e23 every week. Right now, that's an extra job for Leanna who is busy and doesn't always get that far down her list. It's a ton of extra work to upload stuff to DriveThru RPG and Jean could take over that task.
3. Jean needs to make sure Marketing Monday doesn't get skipped. Jean can make sure we do marketing press releases twice a month. They don't always have to be new product announcements.
4. Jean needs to be an RPG Line Editor in deed as well as title. The company needs to print at least six RPG books a year, not just one, or rarely two. Traveller needs to get done, other systems (such as Savage Worlds or whatever is hot a year from now) added, and the Final Frontier magazine and an online PD newsletter started. There is no end to the available systems and ideas; she could even do Steampunk SFU.
5. Marketing our products on other websites and expanding our outreach to those websites. The managers of those websites need to get frequent communications from us, not random once a year bolts from the blue.
6. Managing Kickstarter projects. This starts from product design as incentive levels have to be designed in from the start.
7. Jean can, twice a week, fix us a healthy lunch of real food for half the price of greasy restaurant stuff.
8. Jean can take over the Ranger program, which is so far down SVC's to-do list that it gets no attention. She needs to link this to stores and conventions that want a demo.
9. Make sure that the Steves don't get distracted into side projects and focus on what's really important, such as Tribbles vs. Klingons.
10. Jean can hunt down game reviewers and keep track of which ones actually did the review.
11. Jean could promote the Ambassador program, which right now gets almost no attention.
12. Jean could contact gaming stores directly (by email) and see what they want from us.
13. Jean wants to fight Petrick for the job of being first in line to pick up a ringing telephone. She feels that Petrick, who in 1999 was sort of "the universal assistant and low man on every totem pole" is now a full-fledged designer, and he needs to keep his focus on the new product he's working on, not constantly get interrupted by the phone.
14. Jean has a fantasy that she's going to make sure that the two Steves remain healthy by taking a walk every day. (The doctors have ordered, prescribed, and pretty much begged us to do that.) Good luck with that.
15. Jean could take charge of getting our products into convention game libraries and making sure such a program is not abused by someone building up his personal collection while pretending to be a convention.
16. She can probably get more proofreading done without the constant interruptions of her current home life. Proofreading corrections will be more efficient if she can just read the stuff on screen and fix it as she goes along instead of having to do it twice and use Steve Time in the second round.
17. Jean wants to run some ads on FB to see if they bump sales. This is too complicated to manage part time by long distance. Also, Leanna (who saw us waste a ton of money on Google ads that produced no sales at all) has set a strict limit on how much Jean can spend until she proves that this works. (Watching two women fight over money is going to be fun.)
18. Jean wants to enforce "every other Wednesday game night" including Leanna to see what other game companies are publishing. (Tribbles came from such a game night.) Jean also wants to sit down with SVC and others once a month when the new Game Trade Magazine arrives to review what other publishers are doing.
1. Most important, she can make sure we get product notices to wholesalers. This is an involved process that starts with project planning starts and continues all the way through it. She has to be sure that the cover art is done far ahead so it can be used in wholesaler product catalogs.
2. Jean can make sure we send something to e23 every week. Right now, that's an extra job for Leanna who is busy and doesn't always get that far down her list. It's a ton of extra work to upload stuff to DriveThru RPG and Jean could take over that task.
3. Jean needs to make sure Marketing Monday doesn't get skipped. Jean can make sure we do marketing press releases twice a month. They don't always have to be new product announcements.
4. Jean needs to be an RPG Line Editor in deed as well as title. The company needs to print at least six RPG books a year, not just one, or rarely two. Traveller needs to get done, other systems (such as Savage Worlds or whatever is hot a year from now) added, and the Final Frontier magazine and an online PD newsletter started. There is no end to the available systems and ideas; she could even do Steampunk SFU.
5. Marketing our products on other websites and expanding our outreach to those websites. The managers of those websites need to get frequent communications from us, not random once a year bolts from the blue.
6. Managing Kickstarter projects. This starts from product design as incentive levels have to be designed in from the start.
7. Jean can, twice a week, fix us a healthy lunch of real food for half the price of greasy restaurant stuff.
8. Jean can take over the Ranger program, which is so far down SVC's to-do list that it gets no attention. She needs to link this to stores and conventions that want a demo.
9. Make sure that the Steves don't get distracted into side projects and focus on what's really important, such as Tribbles vs. Klingons.
10. Jean can hunt down game reviewers and keep track of which ones actually did the review.
11. Jean could promote the Ambassador program, which right now gets almost no attention.
12. Jean could contact gaming stores directly (by email) and see what they want from us.
13. Jean wants to fight Petrick for the job of being first in line to pick up a ringing telephone. She feels that Petrick, who in 1999 was sort of "the universal assistant and low man on every totem pole" is now a full-fledged designer, and he needs to keep his focus on the new product he's working on, not constantly get interrupted by the phone.
14. Jean has a fantasy that she's going to make sure that the two Steves remain healthy by taking a walk every day. (The doctors have ordered, prescribed, and pretty much begged us to do that.) Good luck with that.
15. Jean could take charge of getting our products into convention game libraries and making sure such a program is not abused by someone building up his personal collection while pretending to be a convention.
16. She can probably get more proofreading done without the constant interruptions of her current home life. Proofreading corrections will be more efficient if she can just read the stuff on screen and fix it as she goes along instead of having to do it twice and use Steve Time in the second round.
17. Jean wants to run some ads on FB to see if they bump sales. This is too complicated to manage part time by long distance. Also, Leanna (who saw us waste a ton of money on Google ads that produced no sales at all) has set a strict limit on how much Jean can spend until she proves that this works. (Watching two women fight over money is going to be fun.)
18. Jean wants to enforce "every other Wednesday game night" including Leanna to see what other game companies are publishing. (Tribbles came from such a game night.) Jean also wants to sit down with SVC and others once a month when the new Game Trade Magazine arrives to review what other publishers are doing.
19. Jean wants to update the GURPS PD main rulebook. There are, she thinks, lots of issues with it.
20. And finally, Jean wants to remind us all to try to think young and find out what our current and future customers are playing. She wants "four pages of rules and some toys" to be a reality, not a greeting card slogan.
21. Meanwhile, we want Jean to figure out how SVC can do twice as much work in half as much time, and stop the rising of the world's oceans.
posted by Federation Commander at 1:27 PM
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