- Tuesday, Aug 8th
1.00h - San Francisco, USA | Yeeeaaaaaaahhhh!!! We won the Apple Design Award for best Mac OS X scientific solution for EnzymeX!! But there was much more that happened today...- Finally, my bag had returned, nothing is missing in the end and even the bottle of Porto wine was there on second inspection. So I could finally had a shower followed by fresh cloths in the morning. After that I quickly rushed over to the Moscone for an inspection of The Marina room where I had to do the BioCocoa presentation. We were supposed to talk in the second session, so we all met after the first session and were seated on the front row, tagged with a microphone and ready to go. The talk went very well I guess, Bud Tribble invited me on stage and I explained the audience the ideas and goals behind the Biococoa framework. Except for one click to much in one of the slides, and the fact that I had to get used to the blinding spotlights, it went pretty ok, and I received some enthusiastic reactions afterwards. It was for sure fun to do. Soon we will publish the slides and the accompanying podcast on the Biococoa webpage.
- After that one it was waiting for the big thing in the evening. We knew we were Apple Design Award (ADA) nominees, but not much more. We were asked to be the first to go up to the second room so that we could sit on the first row, but in the end we still were distributed throughout the room and I could just sit next to Phil, Jorris and Redmar. I did get a chance to meet the german guys from Boinx software and Equinux though. The award ceremony was really cool, they really pitched the event and built up the suspension using cool music, lightning and a cool animation of a rotating cube that started to spin faster and faster until it exploded and resulted in a flythrough of screenshots from the different ADA entries. The hosts Shaan Pruden and John Geleynse really made a nice show and the first category was Best Mac OS X student product. I thought we would make most chance it that category. When told EnzymeX was not the runner up, I was thinking that we might even had ended up first again! But to my surprise we were not. Did we win with the Xgrid@Stanford widget then? No also not. Well it must be in the last category then, that of best Mac OS X scientific solution. When they announced we were not the runner up, there was only one cube left. "That must be for us then" went through my head, "or didn't we win anything then?" was I doubting. Then it was there, EnzymeX by Alexander Griekspoor and Tom Groothuis won the Apple Design Award 2006 for best Mac OS X scientific solution. Awesome! I went up the podium and stood next to Shaan while John gave a demo of EnzymeX to the public. He did pretty well actually for someone who did not get really what the program was for ;-) You find an overview of all winners here: Design Award winners >>
- After the ceremony we celebrated the winning by drinking a beer in a local cafe, we deserved those I think after such a long long day. But not before phoning to Tom and Tânia, both sleeping when I called them. I told Tom to make space on his desk with our prizes underway ;-) In the hotel I phoned and chatted until I finally went to bed at 2am, what a day! We did it again!
Shaan Pruden & John Geleynse
..they do something with it.
Tuesday