{"id":4793,"date":"2013-04-01T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2013\/04\/01\/some-trivia-about-the-build-2011-conference\/"},"modified":"2013-04-01T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T14:00:00","slug":"some-trivia-about-the-build-2011-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20130401-00\/?p=4793","title":{"rendered":"Some trivia about the \/\/build\/ 2011 conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\nRegistration for \/\/build\/ 2013 opens tomorrow<\/A>.\nI have no idea what’s in store this year,\nbut I figure I’d whet your appetite by sharing\nsome\n\nadditional useless information<\/A>\nabout \/\/build\/ 2011.\n<\/P>\n

\nThe internal code name for the prototype tablets handed out\nat \/\/build\/ 2011 was Nike<\/I>.\nI think we did a good job of keeping the code name from public view,\nbut one person messed up and\n\naccidentally let it slip to Mary-Jo Foley<\/A>\nwhen they said that\nthe contact email for people having tax problems related to the device is\nnike<\/U>distⓐmicrosoft.com.\n<\/P>\n

\nThe advance crew spent an entire week\npreparing those devices.\nOne of the first steps was\nunloading the devices from the pallettes.\nThis was done in a disassembly line:\nThe boxes were opened, the devices were fished out,\nthen removed from the protective sleeve.\nAt the end of this phase, you had\none neat stack of boxes and one neat stack of devices.\n<\/P>\n

\nThe advance crew also configured the hall so they would be ready\nto start once Redmond sent down the final\nbits of the Developer Preview build.\nThe hall was divided into sections, and each section consisted\nof eight long tables.\nFour of the tables were arranged in a square,\nand the other four tables were placed outside the square, one parallel to each side,\nforming four lanes.\n<\/P>\n\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n
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\nAlong the inner tables, there were docking stations,\neach\nwith power, wired access to a private network, and a USB thumb drive.\nAlong the outer tables, there were desk organizers\n\nlike this one<\/A>,\nready to hold several devices in a vertical position,\nand next to the organizer was a power strip with power cables\nat the ready.\n<\/P>\n

\nIn this phase of the preparation, the person working the station\nwould take a device, pop it into a docking station,\nand power it on with the\n\nmagic sequence to boot from USB<\/A>.\nThe USB stick copied itself to a RAM drive,\nthen ran scripts to reformat the hard drive\nand copy all the setup files from the private network\nonto the hard drive,\nthen it installed the build onto the machine,\ninstalled Visual Studio,\ninstalled the sample applications,\nflashed the firmware,\nand otherwise prepared the machine for unboxing.\n(Not necessarily in that order; I didn’t write the scripts,\nso I don’t know what they did exactly.\nBut I figure these were the basic steps.)\nOnce the setup files were copied from the private\nnetwork, the rest of the installation could proceed\nautonomously.\nIt didn’t need any further access to the USB stick or the network.\nEverything it needed was on the RAM drive or the hard drive.\n<\/P>\n

\nThe scripts changed the screen color based on what step of the\nprocess it was in, so that the person working the station could\nglance over all the devices to see which ones needed attention.\nOnce all the files were copied from the network,\nthe devices were unplugged from the docking station and\nmoved to the vertical desk organizer.\nThere, it got hooked up with a power cable and left to\nfinish the installation.\nMoving the device to the second table freed up the docking station\nto accept another device.\n<\/P>\n

\nAssuming everything went well,\nthe screen turned green to indicate that installation was complete,\nand the device was unplugged, powered down, and placed in\nthe stack of devices that were ready for quality control.\n<\/P>\n

\nThe devices that passed quality control then needed to be boxed up\nso they could be handed out to the conference attendees.\nAnother assembly line formed:\nThe devices were placed back in the protective sleeves,\nnestled snugly in their boxes,\nand the boxes closed back up.\n<\/P>\n

\nNow, I’m describing this all as if everything ran perfectly smoothly.\nOf course there were problems which arose,\nsome minor and some serious,\nand the process got tweaked as the days progressed in order to make\nthings more efficient or to address a problem that was discovered.\n<\/P>\n

\nFor example, the devices were labeled preview devices<\/I>,\nbut shortly before the conference was set to begin,\nthe manufacturer registered their objection to the term,\nsince preview<\/I> implies that the device will actually\nturn into a retail product.\nThey insisted that the devices be called prototype devices<\/I>.\nThis meant that mere days before the conference opened,\na rush print job of 5000 stickers had to be shipped down\nto the convention center in order to cover the word preview<\/I>\nwith the word prototype<\/I>.\nA new step was added to the assembly line:\nplace sticker over offending word<\/I>.\n<\/P>\n

\nAnother example of problem-solving on the fly:\nThe SIM chip\nfor the wireless data plan was preinstalled in the device.\nThe chip came on a punch-out card, and the manufacturer decided to\nleave the card shell in the box.\nOkay, I guess,\nexcept that the card shell had the SIM card’s account number printed on it.\nSince the reassembly process didn’t match up the devices with the original\nboxes, you had all these devices with unmatched card shells.\nIn theory,\nsomebody might call the service provider and give the account number\non the shell rather than the number on the SIM card.\nTo fix this, a new step was added to the assembly line: Remove the card\nshells.\nAll the previously-assembled boxes had to be unpacked\nso the shells could be removed.\n(At some point, somebody discovered that you could extract the shells\nwithout removing the foam padding if you\nheld the box at just the right angle and shook it,\nso that saved a few seconds.)\n<\/P>\n

\nNow about the devices themselves:\nThey were a very limited run of custom hardware,\nand they were not cheap<\/I>.\nI think the manufacturing cost was in the high $2000s per unit,\nand that doesn’t count all the sunk costs.\nI found it amusing when people wrote,\n“What do you mean a free tablet?\nObviously they baked that into the cost of the conference registration,\nso you paid for it anyway.”\nConference registeration was $2,095 (or $1,595 if you registered early),\nwhich nowhere near covered the cost of the device.\n<\/P>\n

\nSome people whined that\nMicrosoft should have made these devices available to the\ngeneral public for purchase.\nFirst of all, these are developer prototypes,\nnot consumer-quality devices.\nThey are suitable for developing\nWindows 8 software\nbut aren’t ready for prime time.\n(For one thing, they run hot. More on that later.)\nSecond of all, there aren’t any to sell<\/I>.\nWe gave them all away!\nIt’s not like there’s a factory\nsitting there waiting for orders.\nIt was a one-shot production run.\nWhen they ran out, they ran out.¹\n<\/P>\n

\nThird, these devices,\nby virtue of being prototypes,\nhad a high infant morality rate.\nI don’t know exactly, but I’m guessing that maybe a quarter\nof them ended up not being viable.\nOne of the things that the advance crew had to do was\nburn in<\/A>\nthe devices to try to catch the dead devices.\nI remember the team being very worried that the hardware helpdesk\nat the conference would be overwhelmed by machines that slipped\nthrough the on-site testing.\nLuckily, that didn’t happen.\n(Perhaps they were too<\/I> successful,\nbecause everybody ended up assuming\nthat pumping out these puppies was a piece of cake!)\n<\/P>\n

\nDoing a little back-of-the-envelope calculations,\nlet’s say that the machines cost around $2,750 to produce,\nand that a quarter of them failed burn-in.\nAdd on top of that a 25% buffer for administrative overhead,\nand you’re looking at a cost-per-device of over $4,500.\nI doubt there would be many people interested in buying one\nat that price.\n<\/P>\n

\nEspecially since you could\n\nbuy something very similar for around $1100 to $1400<\/A>.\nIt won’t have the hardware customizations, but it’ll be close.\n<\/P>\n

\nThe hardware glitches that occurred during the keynote\nnever appeared during rehearsals in Redmond.\nBut when rehearing in Anaheim, the hardware started\nflaking out like crazy and eventually self-destructing.\n(And like I said, those devices weren’t cheap!)\nOne of my colleagues got a call from Los Angeles:\n“When you come down here, bring as many extra Nikes as you can.\nWe’re burning through them like mad!”\nMy colleague ended up pissing off everybody in the airport\nsecurity line behind her when she got to the X-ray machine\nand unloaded nine devices onto the conveyer belt.\n“Great, I just put tens of thousands of dollars worth of\ntop-secret hardware on an airport X-ray machine.\nI hope nothing happens to them.”\n<\/P>\n

\nWhy did the devices start failing during rehearsals\nin Anaheim,\nwhen the ran just fine in Redmond?\nBecause in Anaheim,\nthe devices were being run at full brightness all the time\n(so they show up better on camera),\nand they were driving giant video displays,\nand they were sitting under hot stage lights for hours on end.\nOn top of that,\nI’m told that the HDMI protocol is bi-directional,\nso it’s possible that\nthe giant video displays at the convention center\nwere feeding data back into the devices in a way that they\ncouldn’t handle.\nPut all that together, and you can see why the devices\nwould start overheating.\n<\/P>\n

\nWhat made it worse was that in order to cram all the extra\ndoodads and sensors into the device,\nthe intestines had to be rearranged,\nand the touch processor chip ended up being placed\ndirectly over the HDMI processor chip.\nThat meant that when the HDMI chip overheated,\nit caused the touch processor to overheat, too.\nIf you watched the keynote carefully,\nyou’d see that shortly before the machine\non stage blew up,\nyou saw the touch sensor flip out and generate phantom\ntouches all over the screen.\nThat was the clue that the machine was about to die from overheating\nand it would be in the presenter’s best interest to switch\nto another machine quickly.\n(The problem, of course, is that the presenter is looking out into\nthe audience giving the talk,\nnot staring at the device’s screen the whole time.\nAs a result, this helpful early warning signal typically goes\nunnoticed by the very person who can do the most about it.)\n<\/P>\n

\n\nThe day before the conference officially began<\/A>,\nJensen Harris did a preview presentation to the media.\nOne of the glitches that hit during his presentation was that\nthe system started hallucinating an invisible hand that kept\nswiping the Word Hunt sample game back onto the screen.\nJensen quipped,\n“This is our new auto-Word Hunt feature.\nWe want to make sure you always have Word Hunt when you need it.\nWe’ve moved beyond touch.\nNow you don’t even need to touch your PC\nto get access to Word Hunt.”\n<\/P>\n

\nJensen’s phenomenal calm in the face of adversity\nalso manifested itself during his keynote presentation.\nYou in the audience never noticed it,\nbut at one point,\none of the demo applications hit a bug and hung.\nJensen spotted the problem before it became obvious and smoothly\ntransitioned to another device and continued.\nWhat’s more,\nwhile he was talking,\nhe went back to the first device\nand surreptitiously called up Task Manager,\nkilled the the hung application,\nand prepared the device for the next demo.\nAll this without skipping a beat.\n<\/P>\n

\nWe are all in awe of Jensen.\n<\/P>\n

\nWhen he stopped by the booth,\nJensen said to me,\n“I don’t know how you can stand it, Raymond.\nNow I can’t walk down the hallway without a dozen people\ncoming up to me and wanting to say something or shake my hand\nor get my autograph!”\n(One of the rare times we are\n\nboth in the same room<\/A>.)\n<\/P>\n

\nWelcome to nerd celebrity, Jensen.\nYou just have to smile and be polite.\n<\/P>\nBonus chatter<\/B>:\nWhat happened to the devices that failed quality control?\nA good number of them were rejected for cosmetic reasons\n(scuff marks, mostly).\nAs a thank-you gift to the advance crew for all their hard work,\neverybody was given their choice of a scuffed-up device to take home.\nThe remaining devices that were rejected for purely cosmetic reasons\nwere taken back to Redmond and distributed to the product team to\nbe used for internal testing purposes.\n<\/P>\n

\n¹ My group had one of these scuffed-up devices that we used for\ninternal testing.\nSomebody dropped it, and a huge spiderweb crack covered the\nleft third of the screen,\nso you had to squint to see what was on the screen through\nthe cracks.\nWe couldn’t order a replacement because\nthere was nowhere to order replacements from<\/I>.\nWe just had to continue testing with a device that had\na badly cracked screen.\n<\/P>\n

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