The Jolt Awards were named after Jolt Cola ("twice the caffeine and twice the sugar") of course...but why? If you must know, it followed the publication in the April 1989 issue of Computer Language Magazine containing the product comparison article I wrote about Caffeinated Soft Drinks. This tongue-in-cheek article was alot of fun to write in the "compiler product review" language of the day and we got as many letters back from readers as any other article we published.
Now, the article pointed out that these sodas (3 types of Coke, Jolt, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew) were in fact, "programmer productivity tools," and as the psuedo Ad Sales Director I realized that Jolt Cola was wasting their money marketing to college kids studying for exams and instead should be targeting programmers and running ad campaigns aimed at nerds.
So I called up the President of Jolt and got a meeting with him at his offices, somewhere outside of Buffalo. I couldn't get him to advertise - I mean they were committed enough to the college market to even have Jolt-logo-ed jock straps - but he did agree to supply cases and cases and cases of Jolt Cola to the SD West Show where these productivity awards were being given. A thick Lucite coating later for the trophies and the famed Jolt awards were born.
Ironically, Jolt hadn't even won the shootout in the article. The reviewer named Mountain Dew as the winner.
I'll find the article.
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My recollection was the idea of naming the award after Jolt actually originated with JD, but on the other hand I've long thought it was one of those "the ideas were flying so fast and furious..." things.
ReplyDeleteNot to diminish your article in any way. IIRC, you even did the classic "Of course, benchmark numbers don't tell the whole story..." analysis, deciding that Jolt was unsustainable over the course of a workday, while Mountain Dew allowed for a sustainable buzz. It was the kind of courageous review that you won't find today.
ReplyDeleteYes, but where did JD come up with the idea? From my article. But remember that during 1988 and 1989 JD and are were partners in crime, joined at the hip on capers like Embedded Systems Programming, the Embedded Systems Conference (which we initially wanted to call "ROMDEX," and whose business plan we wrote out on a Tandy 100 in a hotel room with a 6-pack of Corona), and the escalation of "Goodie Day" in the Software Development Unit to amazingly silly heights.
ReplyDeleteStill have one of those SD Goodie Day mugs we commissioned!
ted