Yesterday Scott González and I went to see the FogBugz demo with Joel Spolsky.

We mostly went to see Joel speak about software and how running a software team works. We figured we would get some insights as to how things should run while Joel was demoing FogBugz, and we were right.

The demo itself was pretty short, but we did get to gleam some more ideas of how software companies should be run. FogBugz itself seems pretty neat; it's very well-written and streamlined. FogCreek has obviously put a lot of thought into how the users (developers) should use the system. A lot of the attendees seemed very impressed and seemed to at least respect Joel's reasons for why this or that thing was the way it was.

I also ran into Nick and Matt Auger - Nick recognized me once I said "Hi" and we chatted for a couple minutes. It was neat to run into someone I knew a couple hours from home.

So was the demo worth the 4 hrs round trip of driving, $20 of parking, and $10 of tolls? Probably not. You'd probably get just as much insight about software design from reading Joel's site or his books. But it was a nice excuse to see Phily for a bit.