Welcome to SourceCon:
I was lucky enough to finish a SourceCon preliminary challenge that some said was one of the toughest in recent years. With that qualifying challenge, I was able to take time, make mistakes, try new things, and go at my pace without a lot of pressure. The preliminary challenge overview and the steps involved are available for you to read about, if you would like to know more.
On the Thursday night of SourceCon, located in a conference room at Yahoo’s URL building, I sat at a table as the third and final qualifier for the SourceCon GrandMaster Challenge. I was sipping on a beer to keep the nerves at bay waiting for the unknown challenge. Opening every sourcing tool and website that I had available, I practiced for a few minutes with each. I also wanted to be sure all passwords and ID’s were correct, plus to see if there were any changes or updates. I sat down at the table and had ALL tools ready to go so I could flip to whatever was necessary if needed finding people. I had heard that we would be getting zip drives for the challenge which hinted that we would be sitting at the computers and not going on a physical running scavenger hunt type challenge. Why I had thoughts of the scene from “Social Network” with shots of liquor and the crowd around us in a hack-fest, I will never know, but it was sort of quiet in the room. The music from the SourceCon After Dark reception was in the next room and we were all ready to have a source-off.
Amybeth Hale came around and handed out zip drives. We all inserted them into our computers at the same time. Amybeth said, “Start the challenge. You each have 45 minutes.”
Suddenly everything started to go into a sort of surreal slow-motion… There were two items on the zip drive – a file with instructions and an Excel spreadsheet.
These are the words of 
With the conference just a few short days away, I am reminded of my first experience at 
