Walking out of the AUGI meeting a few minutes early, I was slightly delayed by a woman wearing an HP shirt, passing out flyers.

The flyer I got had the number 12 (or some other nearby number), and the gal from HP was saying “Would you like a free SpaceBall? Take this to the HP booth” to me and the next person behind me. If there had been any mention of this, I had totally missed it. Apparently, I was one of 20 or so other lucky individuals who just happened to pass through there at about the same time.

Surely all the others had the same goal I did—of beating the crowd into the line for the AUGI Beer Bash on the show floor, but alas, the line was already longer than any I had seen at AU.

Upon reaching the HP booth, I learned that the giveaway appeared to be a clever geurilla marketing effort by HP to encourage people to explore the benefits of the device, and quite likely to evangelize it back at their office. To receive the SpaceBall 5000 USB, each of us had to turn in our numbered flyer (no double-dipping!) and sit through an automated training session with the device.

Being quite familiar with the device already, I didn’t really need the training session at all, but agreed to try it anyway. I was impressed with the exercises the tool used to tutor new users, and offered the fellow from HP that gave me the demo (and the SpaceBall) a few tips on how it might be improved.

Not to be overly fateful, but I did see this as a sign that my desire to return to covering the CAD market after a year’s hiatus was clearly in the cards.