We’re off to see the Wizard of Woz!

Along with a number of my Sourcetoad coworkers, I’m taking a couple of hours off to see Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak speak at USF this afternoon. It’s the inaugural event in USF Muma College of Business’ Thought Leader series. It will be moderated by the school’s dean, and promises to feature topics ranging from entrepreneurship to issues with the age of supercomputers in our pockets. Woz and the dean will accept questions submitted via Twitter using the hashtag #USFMumaTLS.

Seats for this event “sold out” (it’s in quotes because tickets were free) so quickly that they had to move it from its original venue at the Muma College of Business to the Sun Dome (USF’s sports arena), and once again, the newly-added seats were snapped up quickly.

I cut my programming teeth on an Apple ][ with AppleSoft BASIC and 6502 assembly language. The first computer I bought as a newly-graduated I’m-a-real-grownup-with-a-job person was an Mac Quadra 660AV, and the first computer I was assigned at my first job was a PowerMac 6100/66 “FrankenMac” (it had a Wintel card in it, so I could switch between Mac and Windows development with a keystroke). Decades later, my work and home machines are both MacBook Pros, and I’m not just cranking out software for Apple platforms, I’m even teaching people how to do the same at meetups and conferences. I come by my Apple sentimentality honestly.

I’m pretty sure that the odds of my being able to get an autograph from Woz are slim, but I’m bringing my original Apple ][ Reference Manual just in case:

Click the photo to see it at full size.