“What the HELL was on your t-shirt [last year]?”

*I* thought it was obvious, and so did my closest advisers (read: girlfriend and chief of staff). They’ll get it, we thought—after all, I was talking to a room full of geeks..

Yet very few got it. Ok, maybe it was the distance. But even up close, very few got it till I told them what it was. Of the few that got it without me telling them, they got it immediately (I’m very proud of you).

It was fun to hear the guesses though. Many were convinced it was a bloody axe—the real question to them was which company the head was supposed to represent (the most popular guess here was Red Hat).

(My favorite conversation: a moderately (?) inebriated marketing dude chastised me for the “missed branding opportunity”. Even after I told him what it was, he still didn’t get it.)

It’s an AT-AT Walker with an elizabethan collar around its neck, people. Now go have another look.

I never expected what I was wearing to ever be the subject of so much conversation.

Note: I actually wrote this last year but apparently never published it, found it in my drafts folder a few months ago, and thought it would be fun to post it this week. :-) Now get yourself to this year’s CommunityOne, either physically or virtually! -ian