There wasn’t much fanfare, really. In fact, there were only a few of us left in the office at 3:00am Wednesday morning, November 30th, when the new MP3tunes site was rolled out. The east coast was just starting to come to life, and the initial articles would soon be hitting news sites. The speculation would come to an end, and the scrutiny was about to begin.
After verifying the deployment of the new site, I logged into my locker, already full of music from months of development and testing, then clicked on a track in the web interface. A brief pause, and the music started playing. Countless man (and woman) hours of development time, many meals in the office, nights and weekends away from home, all leading up to the moment when Project Oboe would become a real product. Quite satisfying, actually.
Bleary eyed, everyone still hanging around dragged themselves out the door and headed home, knowing the work was not ending, but in many ways just beginning. The Michael’s Minute would soon be published, picking up the story of Oboe where the press release left off. I spent a little more time verifying everything was working, taking note of the traffic starting to trickle in. The sun was already up as I pulled out of the parking garage and headed home.