{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Eventapalooza Podcast","title":"Food Trucks, Blackouts, and the Best Conference We Ever Ran","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1013,"description":"A lightning strike, a dead livestream, and a food truck fix borrowed from London: the story of the SauceCon that became company legend.\nBill McGee spent nine to ten years at Sauce Labs, joining as an events manager when the company had fewer than 50 employees and going on to build out both the Selenium Conference and SauceCon. He joins host Tim Arthur to talk through Sauce Labs' relationship to the open source Selenium project, the year a lightning strike knocked out power mid-keynote in Austin, and why he still believes in-person events matter more than ever in an AI-driven industry.\nWhat You'll Learn:\nOpen source ownership: Selenium co-founder Jason Huggins donated the project's trademark and copyright to the Software Freedom Conservancy before Sauce Labs took its first venture capital, to keep it independent and free to use.\nMobile expansion: Appium became the mobile testing counterpart to Selenium, extending Sauce Labs' infrastructure beyond browser testing.\nCrisis in real time: a lightning strike hit the Austin Hilton mid-keynote and knocked out the livestream until backup generators caught up.\nImprovised production: the same storm's wind and rain pushed the team to move an outdoor reception under a portico and bring in food trucks.\nBorrowed ideas travel: the food truck fix came from watching Ministry of Test co-chair Richard Bradshaw run a similar setup at a San Francisco event.\nEducation over lead-gen: SauceCon was built around teaching customers to actually adopt automated testing rather than pushing new sales, which Bill credits with driving retention.\nProduction speed as differentiator: same-day video turnaround set Sauce Labs' events apart from the grassroots, months-later posting typical of open source conferences.\nResilience after COVID: despite a two-year pandemic pause, Sauce Labs revived the Chicago-based Selenium Conference once its venue contract came due.\nTime-Stamped Highlights\n(00:00) Welcome and introduction\n(00:40) From banner ads on...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/LV8XNOcV7CCYB6z6KUcoCMznPn1-EfoPoaAfm_UD1kI/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9jNGNm/M2IzMDM0NDQwZGY3/ZjZhMjQxNWVkZTEx/NzAwOC5qcGVn.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}