Reprinted with permission from
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World's Largest Poster Project Succeeds in setting World Record 
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Bulletin: Poster Project Succeeds!
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- More than 100 HP 3000 customers and channel partners succeeded in assembling the world's largest printed poster here, building a document of about 36,000 square feet on a high school football field. The poster was generated by an HP 3000 driving an HP DesignJet plotter, producing 2,650 3x4-foot sheets joined with tape and roofing nails. In conjunction with this year's HP World '96 Conference and Expo at the Anaheim Convention Center, intensely loyal users of HP 3000 high-performance minicomputers bettered an existing world record by more than 35 percent. The HP 3000 mega-poster covered a 159 by 238 foot layout on the Loara High School football field just a few miles from the site of the HP conference. The completed poster weighed more than 670 pounds, and completely covered the area of the field between the 10-yard lines. It was an accomplishment crafted from extraordinary cooperation. Born of Internet discussion and pushed along by a broad supporting cast of customers, the World's Largest Poster Project succeeded in attracting attention to the loyalty and satisfaction of HP 3000 customers, with only the support of a few channel partners to fund its material needs. And in the last hours of the record breaking effort, the poster was held together by the combined energies of a few dozen avid volunteers and thousands of two-inch roofing nails. Fewer than three dozen volunteers were at work within a few hours of the start, rolling out strips of three-foot wide printer paper along the grass of the Loara High School football field. Fastening the paper to the field took more nails than the team had brought to the site, and soon several volunteers were dispatched to supply more of the most critical element in the project. 
Meanwhile, the winds continued to climb, testing the resolve of a growing
number of volunteers. Panels would spring up in the breeze, which seemed to
appear from every possible direction. Project organizer Wirt Atmar, whose
company had printed the thousands of panels over a six week period and who
had driven the poster in a U-Haul truck from New Mexico, stood alongside
the poster's edge and gave instruction on holding it in place.
By 11AM, no nails were on hand, and the question was on everyone's lips --
where are they? The winds climbed with the sun in the sky, and volunteers
were forced to use shoes and poster tubes to hold the panels in place. As a
section would rise up, dedicated customers would call out "It's coming up!"
and race to tack it in place, an organic version of a fault tolerant
system.
In succeeding to break the existing poster record, the HP 3000 customers
started with virtual relationships. Unlike the previous record, which was
done as a product promotion for HP and Disney, this poster was put together
by a collection of individual HP 3000 users. There is no single corporate
entity behind the poster -- the idea to put it together was born on the
Internet. The group of 100-plus volunteers assembling the poster each
thought doing this was an ideal and enjoyable way to make a gentle (if not
somewhat irreverent) statement about their belief in their chosen operating
system.
The underlying message of the poster was to prove the HP 3000 was capable
of things no other computer could accomplish, a concept not completely
understood within all parts of HP. Users thought of their actions as a way
to demonstrate an alternative to HP's more popular but less productive
system choices. The good feeling on the field, however, kept the effort
from feeling like a bitter protest.
"I've never seen anything like this," said volunteer Tony Shepherd.
"It's a friendly rebellion."
The poster underscores the ability of the HP 3000 to directly support
popular communication standards, and the applicability of its MPE operating
system to situations where world-class companies bet their business on the
computer
system they use. HP 3000 users feel MPE has distinct advantages for
mission-critical business applications, where efficiency, reliability, and
tight integration with the hardware and database management system are
paramount.
Volunteers starting laying out and securing the individual components of
the poster just at dawn on August 5. The youngest volunteer was Andrea
Wang, aged just 6 and helping to tie down loose panels along with her
father Paul, a developer of HP 3000 products and former CSY engineer.
The last panel was scheduled laid in place around 11:45, and within minutes
helicopters and Southern California news media were recording the event. HP
3000 users are not willing to risk any of the data in their computers, but
they were willing to lay a large amount of paper and ink on the gridiron
line to get their message across. The roofing nails were all collected by
volunteers after the project and donated to Habitat for Humanity, while the
poster paper was sent to a local area recycler.
Today's 3000 News/Wire news page
At HP World: reports from the most recent conference held in August, 1996 in Anaheim, Calif. HP 3000 volunteer poster effort sets World Record |
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Large-format photographs suitable for framing can be purchased |
A surprisingly large number of news organizations sent teams of
reporters and photographers
to capture the assembly and completion of the World's Largest Poster.
These news organizations
included the Los Angeles Times, The Long Beach Press-Telegram, The
Orange County Register, HP-TV,
Cox Communications, Century Communications, Interex,
and The 3000 News/Wire.
Each of these
organizations was given the opportunity to ride in the Bell JetRanger that
was chartered for the occasion to take photographs from
500 feet up.
One of the news agencies, the Orange County Register, operates a
Photo Library so that you
can purchase large-format, high-quality copies of the photographs
that ran in the newspaper. Two photographs of the poster taken
from the helicopter are available -- and they're quite nice.
The prints come in two sizes:
Photograph 1
(119K)
From this first photograph you can get a sense of the size of the poster. Four of the standard size house lots that appear above the poster could comfortably fit on the poster (including driveways and swimming pools).
Photograph 2
(130K)
The second photograph is a telephoto shot from the helicopter. Nonetheless, a fair number of the people who participated in the poster can be recognized (primarily by their clothing). Alfredo Rego is walking across the top of the middle football player's helmet. Ken Paul, Ken Sletten and Jon Diercks are all at the base of the group of people in line with the "u" in the word, "Butt." Rene Woc is seen walking directly above the shoe of the rightmost football player. And Jeanette Nutsford appears just below the knuckles of the middle player. The address of The Orange County Register is: Photo Library |