Denouement

I can't tell you how glad I am that the Borland crew ditched the Sting music from last year in favor of techno. This session signalled an escalation in the long standing war of the t-shirt cannons. While David I. drew Borland Bucks out of the box for the giveaways, Dale crept to the back of the theater and started the t-shirt barrage. A little while later, while Dale was giving out leather jackets, the lights dimmed, the fog started rolling out, strobe lights flashing, and out came David riding a giant tower and brandishing dual t-shirt cannons.

No prize bags this year (again), but I did get a t-shirt and hat. One guy had a t-shirt land in his prize bag, and another had a thrown baseball cap land right on his head. A good time had by all.

Was it worth it? Yes.

There was a great deal to learn about StarTeam 2005 as it's a major shift and it's new architecture goes against all SCM work in the last 20 years. The idea guys didn't think it would work, the architects didn't think it would work, they didn't believe it when the prototype worked, they didn't believe it when the real implementation worked. They didn't feel fully confident until they actually grabbed a few customer systems and saw that it worked. Randy said they've never done more design reviews, code reviews, or testing on any other project like they did with this.

Tom and I both made a lot of good contacts, both in Borland and in the industry. It looks like there's momentum for a StarTeam User Group to form, which can only be a good thing.

Would I come back? It depends on the content for next year, whether there are new topics or products to discuss.

Now I'm looking forward to a tasty meal tonight and a quiet flight home. I just hope I have room in my bag for all this stuff!