Thanks for posting this – it was an interesting discussion. I missed this at the SOC, partly because of the screwy schedule changes that put this right after the group picture.

I was glad to hear that BioPower was a good for early ‘09. I realize that E85 availability is very bad in the rest of the country, but I’m in Minneapolis and I’ve got at least 2 E85 pumps within a couple miles of my house. This would be a major selling point for me. In the short term, BioPower may only be worth a small number of additional sales in the Midwest, but long-term I think it will have more impact than diesel.

Unfortunately, I believe SAAB USA was using this Round Table as a gauge of concerns SAAB owners in general have (most likely unbeknownst to those in attendance). I was conversing with an employee of SAAB USA after this event and regarding lack of Bluetooth availability in SAAB cars in the U.S. (in lieu of OnStar) the employee asked me if it really is a big deal out there or just a boisterous few complaining about it. The fact that the issue didn’t come up in this (short 1-hour) Round Table makes the “powers that be” at SAAB USA question whether this is really “an issue”.

A concern I have is the extremely low turnout as you can see in the video. I’m guessing there were 30 people in the room, at most, with three of them being SAAB USA employees, one a former SAAB employee (former SAAB USA President Bob Sinclair in the audience, who chimed-in about how hard it was to sell SAABs in the 80s because they didn’t have a V6 offering), and one a SAAB Sweden employee (Peter Backstrom, curator of the Trollhattan SAAB Museum, who chimed-in a few times). It’s really hard to gauge the concerns of a group of owners with such a small sampling. Further, many of these SAAB owners own classic SAABs, not one manufactured this century, so using these owners to gauge interest in things like Bluetooth is silly, IMHO.

I would hope that SAAB USA employs their own market research and would know for a fact if they are losing potential sales to competitors due to lack of a Bluetooth functionality, not waiting to see if the issue is brought-up by a group of hardcore SAABophiles at the SAAB Owners’ Convention.

I had the issue on my list of 26 or so questions to ask, but I didn’t want to hog the Round Table and only asked one at the end of the discussion. Then it was over. If this session were to last more than an hour perhaps less time would have been spent complaining about local dealers or the phase-out of analog OnStar (not that those aren’t legitimate issues, it’s just that they ate up so much time).

Thanks for the great video. It really is a service to the SAAB community out there to have this great archive site for SAAB material.

Ditto the concerns over the small numbers, but from what Greg’s said there may have been reason for that. Interesting chat. Thanks for posting it.

Yeah, my first post was being composed when Greg posted his comment so I didn’t see it. I’m not trying to point-out that there wasn’t interest in the Round Table (I’m sure there was, but the scheduling conflict meant some people missed-out on it), I’m trying to point out that a small number of people isn’t enough of a sample to gauge what owners are really concerned about.

BTW, I was there so I don’t need to watch the whole video (that’s my head off to the right of the frame at the beginning! My quaff is a star!), but I’m having a problem playing it past a few minutes into the video either here or at Google Video. Is there a technical issue or is it just me?

The video played 100% here and from what others have told me, all 1hr, 33 seconds of it.

This started at 11 am, right after the group picture. As with all group activities, the picture ran a little late, and I didn’t get back to the hotel until 11:15 or so — it seemed like that anyway, I distinctly remember looking at my watch in the parking lot and thinking “I’m already 15 minutes for the round table.” And I still had to stop back in my hotel room for something. So I was already late, and the lunch buffet opened up at 11:30, so I skipped it.

Traditionally this has been held on Sunday morning at about 11 am. I think the powers that be wanted to avoid scheduling it opposite the charity auction on Sunday morning. Personally I would have started it at 11:30 or 12 noon, and combined it with lunch. Nothing guarantees increased attendance like serving food !

Thanks Ryan…. pleased to see some good video/sound results with the old Canon Optura Pi. I am sorry to have missed the round table also (videoing another tech session at the time IIRC) but this was almost as good as being there.