Hey, guys! Michael asked me to highlight some of the coolest activities at NIWeek this year (besides the parties, of course). Email, twitter (/deirdrewalsh), or call (512.517.0433) me if you have questions on any of this stuff or just want to meet-up next week.

NIWeek 2008 Video Blog Contest Stop by LabVIEW Zone, grab a sweet Flip video camera and film your NIWeek experiences. Then, post your videos online and we will be picking the coolest ones to win a free video camera (branded with NI of course) and some other cool prizes like a LabVIEW Visa gift card. If you're not able to make it this year, follow the video contest at home in real-time by visiting this blog on ni.com/community.To find out more, check out this video created by my awesome intern Stacy.

Challenge the Champions Every time I read this name, I think of that Queen song. Anyway, for the second consecutive year, we will have the fun Challenge the Champions game during the Community Block "Diagram" Party on Tuesday night at 5 p.m. So, before you head of to the LAVA BBA, be sure to stop by this event or sign up to participate in the LabVIEW Zone before Tuesday at 2 p.m. Everybody who plays will get some awesome prizes. If you missed last year's event, check out this video Michael created.

LabVIEW Coding Challenge Finals In the LabVIEW Zone area this year, we will have a demo that will time contestants on a series of short LabVIEW coding challenges. The person with the fastest, accurate time will compete against NI R&D engineer Darren Nattinger on Thursday at noon in the Technology Theater. The winner will also receive a cool Flip video camera. Additionally, we will be announcing a three-month LabVIEW coding challenge at this event.

Jeff K. T-shirt Autograph Session Come by the LabVIEW Zone on Tuesday between 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. to get your NIWeek shirt signed by the Father of LabVIEW!


Counting down the hours…Deirdre

I'm glad I visit LAVA regularly...otherwise I wouldn't have known that I was supposed to be in a coding contest on Thursday...

-D

P.S. - If y'all want to know what you're up against, there's a video of me writing a VI in LabVIEW 8.6 on the Quick Drop page.

Exactly what are the rules going to be.
How long will the contestants have to setup their LabVIEW environment and can they bring their own homemade tools?

Also since most of us have only just seen 8.6 I think you shoud do the competition in 8.5 so the NI guys don't have an advantage.

I would certainly hope so!

The Coding Challenge Finals are going to be in LabVIEW 8.6 One of the goals of the finals is to promote the new Quick Drop feature in LabVIEW 8.6; thus, Darren and his super-fast awesomeness with Quick Drop. If you would like to bring some homemade tools so that you're more comfortable with the programming environment, then by all means be my guest. The station will be only be available for about 15 minutes before the competition starts, unless you want to do it RIGHT after the keynote before any of the events in the Technology Theater start.

You're going to get a sweet prize either way, by being the fastest competitor during the week. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Regards,

Darren, that was pretty sweet, but I will stand on my soap box again and ask why hasn't some poor intern at NI done voice command coding assistant yet?

Your coding is so fast except for when you want to add an indicator, constant, or control. Wouldn't it be truly impressive to be able to have a some simple commands like those be able to be commanded by voice?

Every time that i'm just cranking along w/ my coding, having to go 2 levels down on a context menu and the fact that it's not even at the top of the list makes that process Slow.

Maybe something for next NI week or we can take the wheelchair demo w/ mind activated movement we'll do one better.

I made that video about a month ago. Since then, I have gotten into the habit of dropping constants with Quick Drop (I have 'nc' as a shortcut for Numeric Constant) instead of creating them from the right-click menus. So I probably could have shaved off about 5 seconds on that VI time if I had been doing that. I agree that going into the right-click menu to drop a constant is slower than it should be.

-D