The Board is now meeting informally during the week before each general meeting. At the meeting on February 2 the main topics discussed were marketing plans and manpower allocation.
The Board's idea, discussed and amplified at the general meeting, is that we should offer a standard distributor and OEM price of $425 or $450, and let them tell us what they can offer in return for the still lower price that they'll ask for. When people have new machines that they want us to put AutoCAD on, we'll try to negotiate an engineering fee for the work. If an OEM looks valuable, we may convert to his machine on speculation (as we have done up to now) and make an evaluation copy for him to look at, but without committing ourselves to anything in terms of an eventual release. Any manufacturer who is serious will give us a loan of his equipment for as long as we're supporting it in our software.
As to manpower, the Board noted that there would be no manpower for marketing AutoDesk if it were ready for release immediately; our marketing operation is overloaded trying to get full advantage out of AutoCAD. The implications of this were discussed later.