Bug Bash started life as an internal MS comic strip by cartoonist and program manager, Hans Bjordahl. It has a ton of great commentary on the software development process and has also been available outside MS for a while now. My favorite series of strips is a set of “Meeting Busters – Surefire ways to sink your meeting”. Within that series, there is this beautiful cell:
Some more back story: when we lived in Colorado my wife (well… girlfriend at the time) and I loved Hans Bjordahl’s comics in the University of Colorado school paper (I wasn’t going to college there, Paula was). When I started work for Microsoft I noticed the “Bug Bash” comic in our internal newspaper had the same character style (which led me to dig up the old clippings I had… and lo!). When Hans left Microsoft this year I worried we’d loose the regular dose of laughing at the software development industry but Hans has continued to write and publish Bug Bash (this was the only sentence without a parenthetical).
I was reminded of it this morning when I came across a CNet article (from February) on how the Internet is changing the business of cartoonists. Tag line:
“See you in the funny pages” takes on a new meaning for cartoon artists who are making a home on the Web.
Here are direct links to the Meeting Busters strips: