Ki-Soo Lee has already set the bar for TI employees in terms of getting to Guru status, but let's see what other TIers are next in line to get there.

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Brad Griffis (42,475 points)

Brad's actually on vacation this week, so I couldn't reach him, but I think 42,000 points from questions answered in many of the DSP forums is all you need to know, don't ya think?

Bernie Thompson (40,800 points)

Bernie is a member of the Digital Signal Processing Solutions (DSPS) team, currently focused on DaVinci and OMAP35x.

A message from Bernie: "I am looking forward to getting to Guru status some day, even if it is taking longer than I would have liked since my role has changed quite a bit in the last several months.

I think the E2E community has done a great deal to enhance the TI support experience, especially for those customers who don't always have a direct line to local support staff, or need to find an answer in the middle of the night on a weekend to keep moving on a critical project. I even use E2E a lot myself to look up things I have answered before; it is a very valuable resource."

Don Dapkus (40,150 points)

Don is a Penn State graduate and one of TI's resident audio experts. He was part of a team developing class-D amplifiers at TI in the 1990s, and he's a fixture on the audio converter and audio amplifier forums.

Although, he's got a suggestion for his title other than Mastermind: "Oooooooh, only 10k more posts until I'm a Guru. I thought it was unachievable, but maybe not! In lieu of Guru, I would prefer Evil Mastermind. I tried to get Foe to go for it, but he declined."

John S (33,880 points)

John Stevenson is a Product & Applications Manager in TI's Software Development Organization (SDO). John puts the timeline for reaching Guru status at about one year for himself, but we'll see if he beats that estimation.

From John: "We started using forums a few years ago as an internal support system and as a way to escalate to different teams.  The forums quickly started showing their value.  It wasn't long before we were discussing what it would be like for customers to have access to this type of system.  There was a lot of debate about whether customers would accept forums but we felt that once customers used them and saw that it provides a much better way of getting help that they would be won over.  The ability to interact with other users and directly with the people building and designing the products is pretty hard to beat.  Some problems are not easy to solve, so getting ideas from different sources can be very helpful in finding the solution that works for you.  It has taken a couple years but now the forums have become accepted as the best support resource available.

From a TI standpoint, there is no beating working directly with your customers to help you decide what needs to change in future product versions."

Brandon Azbell (33,100 points)

Brandon is a Field Applications Engineer for TI's Embedded Processors portfolio. Like the other top level users on E2E, he's as humble as can be, and wants nothing more than to help when he can.

"I participate in the E2E community when I believe I have something to contribute, even if it is just a nudge in the right direction.  Generally my participation is when I have some cycles available, therefore achieving Guru status will clearly take a little while.  I don't view it as a specific goal, but rather a side effect of the desire of wanting to help.  This is consistent with the top contributors to E2E, whether a TI employee or not; helping is the goal."

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Now, the big question here is: who will be the next TI employee to get to Guru status? Will we see some good-natured competition amongst our top contributors? Will there be footraces, hot dog eating contests, or other showcases of dominance? Stay tuned to E2E to find out!