What makes Woz unique

A story about the day I met Woz

As geek, web developer and all the other things my bio says about me you can imagine that meeting Steve Wozniak is kind of a “trule EPIC moment”, a “lifetime achievement”, a “challenge completed”, an “achievement unlocked”, a “level up” for me. That happened yesterday.

After listening to one of the greatest men of my time in the final session of the Brilliants Minds congress in Madrid, My friend and I decided to bend all the rules and sneak in backstage to see if we could meet Woz in person.

We were glad we did, we found where he was and waited a while with some other 20-30 people for him to finish an interview.

When the crowd got around he started signing iDevices and taking pictures with everybody (he even signed my iPad!).

So it’s my friend’s turn to take the picture. He gives me his iPhone and I did what I always do: put the Phone in horizontal and snap the picture by clicking the “volume up” button on the iPhone.

I noticed very few little people take the picture this way, but I always felt it’s the most logical, comfortable way to do it.

And here comes the awesome moment: Woz noticed the way I took the picture and while I was switching places with my friend to take the picture with Woz, he told me: “You did it in the right way, you pressed the button, that’s awesome”.

This defines Woz completely. I mean, the man is surrounded by people, doing lots of stuff at the same time and yet he has the attention to detail to notice how I took the picture, the geekness to be aware of how a picture with an iPhone should be taken and the kindness to congratulate me on that.

Attention to detail, geekness and kindness. If that doesn’t define Woz I don’t know what does.

Woz defined himself in a single moment, and with that he made the thrill of meeting him even more awesome for me.

Thanks Woz!