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Comment by Peroni | Hacker News Reader

I once approached Woz about potentially speaking at Hacker News London, fully expecting my email to be completely ignored. A few days later, he actually responded enthusiastically and mentioned an upcoming trip to the UK. He loved the grassroots nature of the meetup and was really up for giving a talk (for free!) to the community. I then had multiple delightful interactions with his wife who managed his logistics.

Devastatingly he fell ill just before his trip and had to withdraw. Fortunately we hadn't announced anything however I still mourn over the missed opportunity to be able to introduce this living legend to our audience!

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I sat next to him in business class on a flight back from Poland to the SF a few years ago and he was so gracious, talking with and taking photos with all his seatmates. I just wanted to sleep because I was coming back from a conference and I was actually annoyed with all the "fanfare" around him which was loud and kept everyone up! It must have been hard for him to constantly deal with. He was super nice though and made time for everyone who wanted to chat with him.

My other airline celebrity encounter was Pauly Shore, who I was standing next to at the baggage carosel and thought to myself, "huh this guy sounds just like Pauly Shore" and lo - it was the man (and his entourage) himself. I always thought the voice was an affectation but nope he actually does talk like that. Woz was definitely more exciting to encouter!

I once had sushi (at a group table) with the man at a JavaOne.

They say "don't meet your heroes", but he was exactly as gracious, humble, funny, and knowledgeable as you would expect.

This was just after the first "Embedded Java" specs came out and we all had grand fun recognizing the over-engineering and dead-on-arrival of that architecture.

I didn't know there is a HN meetup in LDN. How do I join up?

Unfortunately we shut it down when COVID hit. I think there's a smaller, less formal HN meetup still happening occasionally but I'm not affiliated with it.

how did you go about organising this in terms of getting the word out? Did you just mention it a lot here, or via some other platforms too/instead?

We'd announce it on here and on twitter but we managed it on meetup.com so if you were a part of the HN London meetup group, you got emailed every time the next event got announced.

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