Thursday, 10:26 AM, San Jose, CA.
I have determined it is very hard to make the AMI corporate logo out of Lego blocks.
It’s the last day of the Intel Developer Form (IDF) at the San Jose Convention Center. I packed up the booth about an hour ago, leaving three boxes and four pages of paperwork on the shipping dock. The remaining technical sessions aren’t very compelling, so I’m using my short break to go over my notes and play with Legos.
Most technical conferences offer some sort of diversion in between sessions. IDF uses pool tables, ping-pong, and one of those mini-basketball games. There’s also a Compaq 802.11 wireless garden with free Starbucks, and a table full of Lego blocks.
Legos and engineers … a beautiful mix.
I’m currently trying to create the American Megatrends corporate logo out of Lego blocks. This is my second attempt. I abandoned the small logo in favor of 4×2 blocks and one of those “Lego Astroturf” mats. The tables contain past works of conference attendees, everything from playgrounds to urban landscapes.
I was tempted to make an illustration of the Intel Pentium 4 internal pipeline, complete with branch prediction. I opted for free advertising instead.
I’m halfway up the first set of triangles when I decide the proportions are wrong. Take two … control-alt-delete. Wait, there is no delete key on this thing. Now I remember why I never became a hardware engineer.
Tear down. Scatter the bricks. Start over.
A few minutes later, I rediscover the need for those little 1×1 bricks. Everybody else at the table has too, since I can’t seem to find any that aren’t tied to a design. I remove a white 1x1from the middle of a neighboring skyscraper and march on.
I needed a break after days of technical tracks, booth duty, free beer, bad conference food and jet lag. I drink my last complementary cup of Starbucks while putting my tired mind to the task of marketing via Legos. Conferences like IDF are useful for marketing and networking, two things I never expected to do with an engineering degree.
The show has been lightly attended, mostly due to the economy. The technical track attendance is about the same as in February, but fewer people came to the demo showcase. We got some good leads, but I mostly go for the networking. Not the 802.11 or Ethernet type of networking, but the type of networking where you trade business cards. I now have better contacts with several video companies, two motherboard vendors, and a slew of Intel engineers.
Great, it’s done. I’m now the proud parent of one AMI corporate logo, built from red and white bricks. It can’t be that bad, since an engineer from Phoenix recognized it as my company’s logo. Too bad I don’t have a camera. Now my work will be lost forever, at the mercy of the next passing engineer who needs a few red 2×2 bricks. My creation sits in the atrium of the San Jose Convention Center, waiting for the inevitable control-alt-delete.
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