Wow. Just wow. I do not BELIEVE that number, and it's not over. We had to do calculations last night on the question "can we even fit all those boxes into the warehouse before we start shipping?" The answer is no, but if we use the office as well, it probably becomes yes. Just barely.

Please see my comments on the excellent playmat suggestions in the last update. That was a bad sentence. "My comments are in the suggestions which backers have posted to the last update." That's a little better.

I'm thinking about Lessons Learned from this campaign. Some of them are things we already knew and apparently needed to be reminded of. Others are new. Where I'm going with this is: please look at the list and suggest additions . . .

1. Plan more stretch goals in advance than you can POSSIBLY imagine hitting.

2. Communicate constantly, even if the news is only "We are confounded and thinking hard about what to do." Backers get frustrated, and some of them get excited in a bad way, if the updates are not regular enough.

3. You like images and graphics, even preliminary graphics.

4. The backer base (i.e., YOU) represents a huge source of ideas. Some of them, I won't lie, are absolutely terrible, and some of the neatest ones are financially unfeasible, at least within the timeline. But a lot of them are great. "All of us together are smarter than any one of us."

5. Promotion pays off, and the BackerKit staff's assistance with promotion planning was very valuable. We appreciate them.

6. If we announce a stretch goal that a lot of people dislike, it may be better to stay the course, and make the next one better, than to change in the middle. Because the people who LIKED that goal, and didn't say anything, get annoyed if we change it.

What else should we have learned this time? (Or, what did YOU learn?)

– Steve Jackson