...And meeting Steve Wozniak...
Last weekend I had the pleasure of meeting the founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak. I’ve met with many famous CEOs over the years, but this was different.
Upon meeting him, I was actually flushed with the excitement and the childish reverence normally reserved for entertainment or sports celebrities. Working in the entertainment industry and growing up in Los Angeles, I’ve become rather immune to the feelings of being an outright gob-smacked fan. These famous people were my friends, or my friend’s parents, and ultimately my clients and co-workers. As a professional, I would never indulge myself in such basic gushing.
But there I was, at Doug Engelbart’s 85th birthday, being introduced to The Woz. And I was awash in the happy gooey feeling of being a fan. It’s surprising that I haven’t met him earlier. We have a number of friends in common, including, Gina Smith who co-authored iWoz with him, and the wonderful, Lee Felsenstein, the moderator of the Home Brew Club.
The first product I published (for David Bowie) was originally developed in 1993 for the Apple CD300, (Apple’s first external CD-Rom drive;) so my admiration for the company goes back for nearly 2 decades. At one time Apple was courting my first company to be their Music Lab, and now every copy of iTunes uses the metadata services of the second company I founded.
Though my admiration for Apple has waxed and waned (let’s not for get that the mid-90s were rather difficult years for Apple developers,) my admiration for The Woz has never wavered. His reputation for fairness and doing the right thing in addition to his inventiveness endears me. I’ve been inspired by him as I built both my own inventions and businesses. And let’s not forget that he is a Battlebots Fan. Coolness counts too.
It’s wonderful to be a fan, and to remember what it is like not be jaded. That is what Fanpulse stands for. Providing a place for every person to discover, express and share who and what they are fans of.
Photo Credit: By Michael Förtsch - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74270628
