Paul Roub

TechEd/developers 2008 was a lot of fun, and extremely tiring.  The combination of plans gone astray, unplanned events, and things which couldn't be planned for kept life interesting.

Plans Gone Astray

As at SD West, we had announced that we'd be giving away Fortress licenses to those who could beat Jeremy at Guitar Hero.  Gauntlets were thrown. Smack was talked.

And then Jeremy had to fly back home, unexpectedly, before the show started.  Our Artistic Director, John Woolley (the man behind the Evil Mastermind) bravely stepped into the breach and took on all comers.

John's good, but by his own admission not freakishly good like Jeremy.  He still turned in a near 50/50 win/loss ratio.  It probably would have been higher if I hadn't stepped in for a few rounds.

The gallery of winners can be seen at flickr

Also, it certainly seemed like 900 shirts would last at least a few days.  As opposed to barely squeaking through the first day.

Unplanned Events

Things I learned while setting up for the show.  Or, things which should have been completely obvious beforehand:

1. Show setup day, on site, is not the time and place to install OS updates.
2. Especially Windows Service Packs.
3. Always check that you have the very latest drivers for your video card, before replacing it when it stops speaking to a Cinema display.
4. Especially following a Service Pack update.

Fun times.  All worked out eventually. 

How Do You Plan For...

The TechEd Jam Sessions?

We did slightly, of course.  But Jeremy was our bass player, so some additional uncertainty was thrown in.  An Expo day pass for my brother gave us a ringer on drums, at least :-)

So up we go, Eric on acoustic guitar, me on the Evil Mastermind Schecter, Brad on drums, and a cast of several on guitars, keys, bass, percussion.  All watching and listening as we shouted or showed chord changes.  And it went pretty well just the same.

Sadly, the battery died in the camcorder a minute and a half in.  Also not according to plan.  But here's what we do have:

Pinball Wizard at the TechEd 2008 Jam Session

Next up...

PDC and DevConnections in the fall.  Plenty of time to plan.

SD West was exhausting, and a lot of fun. Both of which are to be expected from a good show.

Personally, it was great to talk to so many customers (and potential customers). I have pages of scribbled notes and ideas, pulled straight from those talks. Thanks!

The Jolt Awards, as hosted by (Dread Pirate) Robert X. Cringely, were a model for all awards presentations to come. By which I mean:

1. All awards shows should move that quickly
2. SourceGear products should be nominated whenever possible

We're proud to say that DiffMerge won a Jolt Productivity Award in the "Change/Config Management" category.

But what you really want to know is, how well did Jeremy fare in his first semi-professional Guitar Hero outing?

Not badly at all. 30-plus wins, 5 losses. Or, I should say, losses to 5 opponents. One kept coming back to stomp Jeremy some more (although Jeremy did win one of the rematches).

That would be Mike. First win (the one we counted):

Mike: 198,692 - Jeremy: 177,175

Jeremy was also stomped by:

Brian: 90031, Jeremy: 76778

Mark: 162,814 - Jeremy: 162,329

Will: 85,357 - Jeremy: 76285

Kevin: 81055, Jeremy: 62373

(his wife is, arguably, very proud)

And finally, the Evil Mastermind guitar was raffled off Thursday evening. In a perfect world, we wanted it to end up in the hands of someone who would play it — not flip it on eBay in a few days. In an even more-perfect world, someone with a son learning to play guitar himself. Hey, how about a whole family of guitar players?

And that's how it turned out.

Congratulations to Mark and his family!

The booth's set up, the literature's out, and we're performing rigorous QA on Guitar Hero.

T-Shirts? Yes, we have a few. New ones, in fact.

And of course we're all set for the giveaway...

Our friendly neighborhood print ad salesperson insisted on this one. I think I did a decent job of appearing sort-of-comfortable having my picture taken.

The plan is to update that Flickr set with Guitar Hero winners, etc. throughout the week. And blog said photos, as well. Stay tuned.

I caused some trouble recently... mostly for myself, as it turns out.

We were discussing plans for the trade shows SourceGear is attending this year, and had more-or-less settled on a 'beat Jeremy at Guitar Hero contest' as the main attention-getting activity. But we also wanted a giveaway, a raffle open to all attendees.

In the past, that's taken the form of Wiis, Xboxes, etc. Always fun, but everyone's doing it.

And then I noticed that a certain guitar manufacturer now has a custom shop wherein you can upload your own artwork, which will then end up as custom graphics on your specially-built guitar. The thought of giving away an Evil Mastermind guitar was just too appealing. Given that Eric and I have shared interests in this area, we quickly agreed that we had to do this.

John Woolley, graphic genius and mastermind of the Evil Mastermind, even did a all-new "painted" rendition of T.E.M. for the occasion.

Sadly, Big Guitar Company has something like a 20-week lead time, and it took almost 3 weeks for them to return phone calls asking if that could be improved on — by which time, it was really too late to be ready for SD West.

But we found another company, Art Guitar, who do essentially the same job, but on existing guitars. And in much less than 20 weeks.

So what guitar, now that we weren't bound to a single manufacturer? I chose a Schecter PT Custom because (a) it's a plain, black top, making a nice canvas and (b) well,

That's why. Turns out they're a bit hard to find at the moment. Scored one from eBay, one from a music store, still waiting for more.

After scrambling to find the first couple of PTs we'd need, it was disassembly time (easier for Art Guitar if we just send bodies).

So what arrived as this:

was stripped by Shaw and myself to this (as modeled by Shaw):

Off to Art Guitar for a few weeks, and this morning the finished product arrived:

Actually, two (one's for TechEd):

So once again, I got to spend the morning with soldering iron and screwdrivers in hand, and we end up with this:

It's all set to be picked up by FedEx this afternoon, off to the show, just in time:

Want to win it, case and all? Stop by SourceGear's booth (#308) at SD West next week and we'll tell you when to pick up your raffle ticket.

And don't forget to beat Jeremy and score some free Fortress licenses -- he's good, but he's not that good.

Spending most of next week at the DevConnections / VS & .NET Connections show in Las Vegas. If you're attending the conference, please drop by booth #333 and say "hi".

Get a T-shirt (while they last); claim a special show discount on SourceGear software; and talk my ear off about what you'd like to see in upcoming Vault and Fortress versions.