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Greetings from what's left of the World Headquarters
of JGA
I'm extremely happy to be writing to you, my friends and
colleagues once again. JGA and I have reached this season
in good health. The company is a little thinner, and I'm a
little fatter. As for some of the other folks at the headquarters,
Dave looks about the same - a few less hairs on his head,
and a few more on his chin. Every day Kerry sits patiently
by the phone waiting for someone with a Scottish accent to
call. Sol keeps busy manning the help desk for his wife's
PC. And Mo has started praying for snow.
Because so many of you know him, I want to mention Phil,
our "evil genius." Phil left the company last summer (of his
own volition) ending an eight-year love hate relationship.
He's taken a job writing web software within the entertainment
industry. For those of you who would like to reach him, his
e-mail address is phil@adultbooks.com.
Seriously though, I wish Phil well. He was our oldest living
employee. He has now joined the ranks of the "Associates."
If you have ever wondered if Jon Goldman Associates really
has any associates, the answer is, yes. Anu, Sandeep and Vijay
at Software Creations in India are associates. Some of our
former employees are also associates: Hansoo, Paula and Guillermo
to name a few. Anu is also a former employee. He worked at
the Headquarters when it was still in my garage while he was
a grad-uate student at Cal State (1990). In a way, becoming
an associate is kind of a promotion. Associates, in contrast
to employees, don't have to put up with me every day.
On the business front, to call a spade a spade, this was
our worst year in quite a while. (A data capture company,
like George Washington, cannot tell a lie.) I think my assessment
of the local situation is not unusual at a lot of companies
this year. At least we're still around! We did do a significant
amount OEM business in 1998. For some time it has been one
of our goals to add more OEM to the OEM/End User mix, and
we are having some success.
We also proliferated a few of our new End-User Apps: NT based
data capture systems for Chem-Mechanical Planarization tools,
P-5000s and Novellus CVD systems; and of course we did a lot
of furnaces - can't get away from them if I try.
I visited the UK for the first time in a few years. So many
factories seem to be closing there. I guess "survival of the
fittest" applies to wafer fabs, too. Well, Charles Darwin
was English. Poetic justice, I guess. I also visited Ireland
for the first time. It reminded me of southern California.
I did not visit Korea this past year. I may take my bowling
ball to Semicon Korea next month, just to see for myself if
you can really roll a bowling ball down the aisles at KOEX
Center without hitting anyone. Also, I haven't eaten any Kal
Guk Soo in a long time, and I miss it.
1998 was successful in one respect: I got a little writing
done for the first time in a long time. Stephen Munley of
National Semiconductor and I published an article in the February
issue of Solid State Technology. I had an editorial in the
April European Semiconductor. And just this past week, I had
an editorial published on Semiconductor On-Line's web page:
http://news.semiconductoronline.com/info-tech/19981202-5625.shtmll.
As for what's on the agenda for 1999, for starters it's our
tenth year in business. To celebrate we're planning on giving
away 10 free copies each of OS/2 Warp, DOS 5 and WordPerfect
at Semicon West '99. Don't forget to stop by to get your copy!
Well, next time I write to you it will be within days of
the apocalyptic software event: Y2K. Please don't wait until
then to contact us about Year 2000 compliant upgrades.
Have a good holiday season, and a good year next year. And
congratulations on having kept your job.
Best regards,
Jon Goldman
December 6, 1998
Jon Goldman Associates, 2237 N. Batavia St., Orange CA 92865-3105
USA. Tel: 714-283-5889; Fax: 714-283-2884; e-mail:Jon@JGA-Inc.com.
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