NIWeek Attendees Know How to Innovate...and Have a Good Time!

[Mackie]

Talk about a grand finale to the first day of NIWeek 2011! This year's annual Block Diagram Party featured a toast to honor the 25th anniversary of LabVIEW, a double-dare style trivia game, and an action-packed NIWeek Scavenger Hunt. Jeff Kodosky, better known as the Father of LabVIEW, kicked off the night's festivities with a toast to the original developers of LabVIEW 1.0, the entire LabVIEW community, and the current software development team, who put their brilliant heads together to design today's most exciting product release, LabVIEW 2011. As a robot powered by LabVIEW buzzed around the audience, the group raised their glasses to the past, present, and future of graphical system design.

Cheers to LabVIEW!

The LabVIEW 1.0 developers (above) and a copy of LabVIEW signed by the original team (below)

Next up: the much-anticipated Challenge of the Champions! Two four-person teams (the Challengers and the Champions) faced off, each answering trivia questions to avoid a coding challenge tie-breaker. Their LabVIEW knowledge was put to the test with simple questions like, "Who is the Father of LabVIEW?" (Hint: see above) to real toughies such as, "What four block diagram structures were available in LabVIEW 1.0?" In the final moments of the contest, the underdogs pulled through, ultimately defeating the LabVIEW champions and winning $50 gift cards (Don't worry, the former champs didn't go home empty-handed. NI just gave them $25 gift cards instead).

Underdogs...Can't Help But Love 'Em.

In an exciting head-to-head competition, the challengers defeated the LabVIEW champions.

But the fun didn't stop there. NIWeek attendees finished their evening with a scavenger hunt that boasted some pretty awesome prizes, if we may say so ourselves: an Apple Parrot AR.Drone Quadricopter, Apple Beats by Dr. Dre Solo Headphones, and Apple TV. The tasks integrated with social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and the NI Community, and ranged from the simple, such as "Update your current Facebook status and tag NIWeek," to the straight-up silly: "Form a conga line for at least one minute and get at least five people to join you." After twenty minutes of racing around the expo floor, the teams turned in their score sheets and the lucky winner was announced.

To the Winner Goes the Spoils...

First-place winner Michael Reed poses with his new Apple Parrot AR.Drone Quadricopter

Think the Block Diagram Party sounds cool? You betcha...but it's only Day 1. Check in with the NIWeek Community tomorrow to catch more exciting news and events!