My feet hurt

I keep writing this entry and deleting it. Not sure what I want to say. I guess what I want to say is, “I’m done.” Our booth is essentially finished.
I just got back to my hotel after finishing this phase of E3 preparation. I’ve been parked in a conference room at the Westin Bonaventure for eight days. Have had pretty much everything on the menus of this hotel’s two main restaurants. Have discovered the limits of my cell phone battery, voicemail, email inbox, and SMS memory. And found the boundaries of my patience and tolerance under various levels of stress and caffeine. It’s been a good time.
Attending the press conference after working so hard with a tight team in our “command center” was a very gratifying experience. It was wonderful to see how people stepped up or didn’t, how they took charge of particular tasks, or complained, or got excited – seeing who we could each count on or who would fall away as a useless resource when times got tough. I really enjoyed seeing what people thought of the new controller, of Gran Turismo HD, of Eye of Judgement, etc. There are more surprises in our booth.
We were essentially responsible for making sure all the PS3 content looked good, worked well, and was operating properly on the devkits and the new controllers. Lots of detail to that. Lots of moving around heavy equipment. We started off with a blurry plan that gradually became clearer, then blurred in some places and grew clearer again, over and over, until we converged on solutions for the press conf and booth. I have new respect for some people I work with at Sony, and some people and companies I work with in the industry. And I have less respect for some people and companies as well. People react to stress in different ways, and play politics in different ways, and huge pressures like E3 bring out all sorts of behavior traits which may be uncomfortable to deal with – in others, and in oneself. It was a good learning experience for me.
I always find the concept of devoting oneself solely to a particular task to be fascinating. This was a very short timeframe, but still, the intensity brought forth an irreplacable self-education and experiences I’d never trade away.
Anyway. I’m sort of pontificating in a vague way. My back is sore, my feet are tired, and I need a glass of wine. This is usually how I feel *after* E3! Time to take care of these things. 🙂
I hope to see a lot of you at the conference! If I recover enough now, maybe I’ll see you at some parties!