John Osborne, Retro Pinball Designer, in Lodi
Back in May, I got to hang out in California for a couple weeks to attend a couple conferences: Google I/O and IoT World. I did a couple panels at IoT World, and one of them is already summarized on this previous blog post ; the other one is coming later. However, as a bonus during my time in California, I also got to attend the Golden State Pinball Festival in Lodi. Here, they had John Osborne, a pinball designer who worked at Gottlieb from 1972-1984. The following are expansions of notes I took during his Ask Me Anything presentation. A Bit of Background John Osborne started his professional journey by studying electromechanical (EM) engineering at Fresno State. This, of course, elicited cheers from the local crowd. After college, he started working at Gottlieb in 1972 at the age of 21. Besides Gottlieb, he was also interested in working at Chicago Coin, which he said was sketchy, because the hiring manager's last name was always changing...