I am a Deep6 customer and fan, so I am going to be very honest here about how my experience with the Deep6 computer fiasco. I don't hold it against Deep6 and company for trying to make an inexpensive DC. Or sharing some information about it with the the Scubaboard community and Deep6 customers. My objection is that the community involvement was done half-assed. Some information was shared. Just enough to get people excited, because Deep6 feels like the SpaceX of the Scuba world and it has a good track record so far. But that was about it. People were holding off buying a new DC because the Deep6 DC was supposed to be fantastic, etc. In a way Chris's decision to kill that project proves it, because he would not put out a product that was not excellent. But this information was not shared, so people did not know what happened. The loop was not closed. That is annoying. It is always annoying whenever it happens. So yes, the sharing about that project was a fiasco because it was not done properly or completely.
Deep6 is better than that, as are the people involved. Community engagement is an important part of most consumer sales, and especially so for a small manufacturer. I think Deep6 would do very nicely just being honest, open, and timely. I think Deep6 is already honest, open when actually talking about things, but is not timely. I would suggest either (A) committing to being timely and completing the loop on community sharing on projects, (B) being very very careful to say that anything you post about is a Work-in-Progress and may or may not become an actual Deep6 product so people don't get so excited about it that they are eagerly awaiting news on it, or (C) don't say anything until you are selling the object in question.
Everyone is busy, everyone has things to do. Do it or don't do it, but don't do half of it.
