One of the many blogs I read is written by Eric Sink, principal in the developer tool company SourceGear. He’s a very entertaining writer and his experience as software developer, entrepreneur, Illinoisan, and small-town non-coastal developer, make for a variety of entertaining topics. One of the things that makes SourceGear stand out is the innovative advertising they have done. They did an ad campaign in 2003 for their source control product, Vault, that looked like it was promoting a movie, complete with posters and a video trailer. So I was definitely excited when Eric announced a new, comic-book themed ad campaign, complete with Evil Mastermind t-shirts!Unfortunately, he was giving them out at the SDWest trade show, which I wasn’t going to. Bummer! But Eric and his desire for product promotion wouldn’t die that easily, and he said he’d give away free t-shirts in exchange for publicity and SEO optimization. The deal is: you get a shirt, you post a picture of you wearing it on your blog or flickr, and link back to him. Your attire is a little finer, his product is a little better known, and everyone’s happy. Capiche?

As an adolescent comic book veteran, current developer, and (possible) future customer, I’m happy to say that I cashed in on Eric’s offer. I got my shirt, got out my camera and tripod, and tried to recreate the effect of the t-shirt. To do it perfectly would have taken at least three lights (pink spotlight behind right hand, red backlight behind torso, and a white light in the top front right to create the reflections (not to mention a robot costume (and another photographer instead of a timer (wow, this is a lot of nested parenthesis – looks like Lisp!))) Is this enough? Oh wait, need one more – should have written this in eMacs), but I think mine is acceptable. At least it’s worth the price I paid for it. So without further ado, behold, the Evil Mastermind!!!