Opportunity knocks at Dreamforce

This past week the company I work for sent me up to San Francisco to attend Salesforce.com's user conference called Dreamforce. Between all the Keynote speeches and breakout sessions I made some time to stop by the vendor expo to check out the various add-ons and services companies were offering.

As with any expo, vendors will have some sort of tchotchkes, contest or prize drawing at their booth in exchange for your contact info and a moment of your time while they pitch why you need their product.

As I was walking around the smaller of the two expo halls I saw something very familiar.

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InsideView was giving away a Smart Car at their main booth.  The challenge offered here was called "Drive to Win" and was pretty straightforward.  You have two laps to set your fastest time (clean or dirty) in a Smart Car around Laguna Seca.  The player with the fastest lap each day would win a prize.

Contest specifics.  Yes, this was Forza 4 in hot lap mode with the difficulty set to medium which meant braking assist, normal steering, SC on, TCS on, full race line, rewind on, external view and you used the new-fangled MS wireless wheel.  It was just past 4 o’clock, the expo was closing in an hour and the current fastest lap was a 2:21 and change.  I watched two players before set times in the high 2:20's but they were making plenty of errors and over corrections.  This was an opportunity I could not pass up.

Since my first lap from the standing start would essentially be a throw away I decided to spend most of it trying to figure out how sensitive the wireless wheel was with all the "assists". I didn't need to move the wheel all that much to get the car to turn.  What made things a bit difficult was the general crowd noise from the expo made it near impossible to hear the game and obviously the controller was not going to give me any direct feedback.  By the time I reached the end of my first lap I felt confident that I had the car sorted out and as long as I kept my steering smooth, my finger in the gas and only flick the wheel to make corrections I could set a fast time on my second lap.

Time to beat: 2:21 and change.

My Time: 2:17.006

At that point there was still 45 minutes left and even though I felt really good about the time I set I know that there's always somebody faster.  Hopefully that somebody was not at Dreamforce.

Instead of sticking around and sweating out the 45 minutes like a driver sitting "On the Bubble" at Indy I left the expo.  I had a company dinner at six o'clock that evening and if someone did beat my time I'd have another opportunity on Thursday.

I stopped by the booth the next day and asked the girl working there what yesterday's fastest time was. She flipped a couple pages in her notebook and after a couple of seconds looked up and asked, "Are you Steve Lake?"

"Yes," I replied.

With a huge smile on her face she then said, "You Won!"

So, what did I win?  $500.  Ka-Ching!  They will be contacting next week to make arrangements on delivery which will be in the form of a gift card.

The first thought that came to my mind was "New Xbox One" but in keeping tabs on the XBox One launch and the reception for Forza 5 I think I'm going to stick to my original plans and wait a bit before committing to a next-gen system.  Also ever since I attended the Fast Lane Racing School for my 40th B-Day the idea of getting SCCA certified has been in the back of my mind.  Who knows, maybe I'll put my winnings towards that goal.

Once I got home I fired up Forza and ran the Smart car at Laguna my way.  Without all the nanny assists and with my wheel/pedal setup my second lap was a 2:07.191.

Moral of the story?  Never feel ashamed about your Forza or racing game addiction.  You never know, those skills may pay off in the real world.

Bonus pics.  The CEO of Aptus graciously parked his Ferrari 458 Spyder in the Expo for us commoners to admire. Sorry I couldn't get better pics of it.  There was also a very nice Maserati parked across the street from the hotel.

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