As more and more of you brilliant people join E2E, more and more questions get asked and answered, meaning the point totals for users are accelerating rapidly (I've only got 455, but that's not the point). Three more TI employees have joined the elite ranks of our "Gurus," the folks who have reached the upper echelons of point totals on E2E (10,000 for non-employees, and 50,000 points for TIers).

What do you say we meet them?

Brad Griffis

Brad doesn't hang around a specific forum all the time, but he can often be found around many of the processor discussions, be it DSP, Da Vinci, or something else. He also bounces around the E2E Site Support foum from time to time.

Brad loves E2E because it's a "win-win for both TI and customers.  It provides a huge searchable knowledgebase for customers and better support scalability for TI."

And although Guru is currently the highest status you can reach on E2E, we asked him what he'd want next if there was another level. His response: "Rockstar!"

Tom Hendrick

Tom is a data converter aficionado, but he doesn't discriminate against either precision DCs or high-speed DCs, as he can be found in both. Tom says he got to Guru status via "nights, weekends, and design notes." He vehemently claims that bribery was not involved, which is bad news for me, because now I don't know how I'll get to that level...

Tom recognizes not only the value of E2E, but also of answering questions quickly and correctly, because "good posts reduce repeat emails of people asking the same questions over and over." I'm sure all of you data converter designers out there are grateful for Tom's answers as well.

As for Tom's preference of a new level higher than Guru? "Jedi Master."

Don Dapkus

Don is actually on vacation right now, but we'll use information from a previous post about him. Don is a Penn State graduate and one of TI's resident audio experts. He was a part of a team developing Class-D amplifiers at TI in the 1990s, and today can be found on the audio converter and audio amplifier forums.

He's long wanted a title other than Guru, anyway: "Evil Mastermind." A little birdie told me he might actually get his wish. Stay tuned to see what happens.