By this time I was ready for a break. As an embedded engineer I'm in the business of writing black boxes where numbers go in and numbers go out. There's no "user experience" and no customer I'm trying to pull in. I got to be honest, the first two lectures left me physically shaking after hearing how bad people are trying to suck me in to their product.
Needless to say, I needed a break. The Big Design conference catered boxed lunches. I grabbed one and set off to find a conversation to be a part of while I ate. The topic among my classmates was either how we finished up the last class or how Frailey's death-march of a project was wrapping up - neither one of which I had the stomach to sit and listen to. Feeling particularly brave I walked up to a table with two guys my age and asked if I could join them. They eagerly agreed and I sat down. Turns out these two guys were Garrett Dimon and Thor Muller - two speakers at Big D. If I was hoping for a light conversation that helped bring all this into perspective and let me digest the last three hours of lecture, it wasn't going to happen. At one point it occurred to me that these two (particularly Thor) talked really fast and non-stop. The conversation was all over the place. At one point I gathered Thor was a carear business starter - building a small company and selling it... starting another. He must be terribly important and very rich, but not much of a listener.
At one point he asked me what I thought of 'all this', (I assume he meant the last hour of hyper-babble) and I got the impression he was only using this as a launch pad to change the subject. I said I was an imbedded engineer who was on assignment at the convention. The look on his face made it look like something foul had briefly crossed his nose. Then realizing his face was showing his thoughts, he made a pleasant comment about me being the smartest person at the table and then resumed hyper-babble.
With the next track starting, I excused myself...
No comments:
Post a Comment