[Leica] why leica should have hired me years ago ....

[kcassidy at asc.upenn.edu (Kyle Cassidy)]

A few years back the kind folks in the NY lug invited me to give a talk at 
the Institute for Contemporary Photography. After the lecture, a guy from 
Leica came up to me and handed me his card saying "Call me, we could use 
someone like you" -- I called, he didn't call back, and it fell off my 
radar. I realize now that if Leica goes down the tubes it is entirely 
because I was not more persistant about that phone call.

Had they offered me a job, I would have immediately suggested that they 
partner with Casio or some other low-rent company making a 2 megapixel point 
and shoot. We would have pulled one of those craptastic cameras apart and 
glued it onto the back of an M6. It would have jutted out about an inch and 
a quarter from the back of your camera and produced mediocre images and if 
you peeled off the LEICA sticker you could probably see "made in china" on 
it, but we would have sold millions of them. All the Leica owners would have 
said "look at this! a digital back for my M3! The world is a marvelous 
place!" they'd take a few photos at birthday parties and the back would run 
out of batteries that they'd neglect to replace, but on the shelf, it would 
look pretty good and people would go about their business. Meanwhile, using 
the massive influx of cash, Leica would have instituted my MasterVorkenzee: 
The Leica Young Photographers Program where we would sell re-badged Nikon 
D70's with a Leica R sticker on the front at prices about 30% higher than 
the actual D70 but about 1/4 the retail price of the Leica R10d (which is 
how the rest of us would be buying them), all these kids would grow up 
thinking that Leica was the Shiznitt and right now we'd be putting out our 
third Digital Rangefinder which would actually be 12 megapixels, thin as a 
IIIA, no flair or magenting, and it would work like a dream.

sorry i let you down people.

kc