On Friday we got a sudden call from the Starbright Foundation saying that they might want us to do a demo in Pittsburgh on Monday at a news conference. Apparently, Theresa Heinz was donating a large sum of money to Starbright, and they wanted to have some technology there to show the media what the money would be put towards.
I suppose that at this instant it would be prudent to explain that Starbright is a charity for terminally ill children. Research has shown that when children get involved in something (as they often do with video games), it distracts them from their pain and thus lowers the amount of pain medication which must be injected. One of Starbright's projects then is to locate compelling technologies which might be used for this purpose. Networked 3D chat systems seem like one application which would not only engross the kids, but also allow them to interact with children from other hospitals with similar conditions. Naturally, providing a community of this sort would be one fundamental cornerstone in any therapy the children might receive.
Sadly, from this Worlds somehow derived the motto "Doing well by doing good," which seems to carry just a little too much charm with the press. If it didn't sound so hollow, I might like it better. Capitalism runs deep, however, and deeper in some more than others.
Anyway, to get to the point, Steven Spielberg was supposed to be accepting the check on behalf of Starbright. I got to go and setup all the equipment and make it work, which actually sucked. I spent 8 hours preparing for the news conference, with various things going wrong all day long.
The good part is that I got to meet Mr. Spielberg (who wasn't stuck-up at all, though I expected him to be), as well as Mrs. Heinz (who had simply the most beautiful hair). That was exciting because this time I was actually introduced to Mr. Spielberg and got to shake his hand and everything. (I previously had seen him while he was on a visit to Knowledge Adventure.) Dave Marvit actually got to ride in the limo with Mr. Spielberg from the airport, which Dave truly enjoyed and had several stories about.
The big suck part came during the actual conference. We have pretty flakey software (for now) which has a tendency to crash after five or ten minutes, and which would always crash if you stood in particular positions within the virtual space. After testing all day, I came up with a list of 10 things to avoid doing in the space since they all pretty much guaranteed a crash of the system.
I communicated this list to Dave and asked him to pass it on to Mr. Spielberg who would be doing the actual demonstration. Dave didn't, but during the conference I could've sworn he had because Mr. Spielberg began doing each of the ten things I cautioned against, one by one. Needless to say, my heart rate went up to over 100bpm and I nearly fainted on the sidelines as a crash in the system surely would've meant bad news for the company. To top everything off, Mr. Spielberg ran the system for 15 minutes straight, which was longer than it had managed to run for the entire day.
We celebrated afterwards and walked around so full of ourselves. I was merely amazed and relieved, thankful for the luck I witnessed that day. A glass of wine with Terry (the AV girl from Children's Hospital), and a word with Mrs. Heinz, were the highlights of my celebration.
Addendum: One of the most memorable moments of that day years later was the moment right before the conference would begin. I stood before the machine, debating whether to reboot it one more time or to let it stand the way it was. Testing throughout the day didn't give much preference to either one with regard to postponing a crash. It seemed like such a crucial decision, with the fate of an entire (small) company at its mercy.