Have you seen Dave's Video?

11/24/2008 11:54 AM EST

Have you seen what I've come to think of as Dave's Video from Altium? It starts off with a designer called Dave who thinks everything is as it should be until untoward things start happening, like a co-designer reporting that the FPGA and PCB pinouts no longer match...

Then product marketing say that they want the prototype to be augmented with Internet connectivity "by tomorrow" (they aren't sure what this product will actually do with Internet connectivity, but "not to worry because we have a team working on that")...

Dave's woes occupy the first half of this 4-minute video. Then the main Altium presenter appears to tell us what the solution is. This second half is better than the first, because the guy is engagingly honest...

After briefly explaining what is required, he says: "First we did what any traditional EDA vendor would do – we denied and avoided the problem..." He goes on to explain why the first Altium solution did not fully address the problem, and then continues: So then we decided to grow some bolloks..."

Laugh? I almost bought a round of drinks! In addition to being extremely funny, this video is very informative and really gets the point across. If all of the other companies were (a) creating cool products and (b) backing them up with marketing campaigns of this caliber... well, I don't know what the result would be, but the world would certainly be a funnier place...

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