(No, not the TV series.)
In 1989 I started playing electric guitar, having finally convinced my parents that I was serious about it and having received my first guitar (a Maya strat copy) for Christmas 1988. When asked I always say that I started playing because of Mark Knopfler. I was a huge Dire Straits fan for years, and while I was also into Brian May and Eric Clapton at the same time, it was Mark Knopfler who made me actually want to get up on a stage and play in front of people.
Similarly, when I first got online in 1997, it was the work of Derek Powazek that made me want to build websites. I built my first homepages very much in the mould of whatever he was doing at the time, I read his self-effacing journals (there was no such thing as blogging at the time) and his bleedingly honest stories in his storytelling site Fray. I submitted stories to Fray, and I even started a site called Interpret which was also driven by reader submitted works, and which won cool site awards back in the days when they meant something.
Then yesterday I was at the first day of the Future of Web Apps conference, and Derek was presenting a talk with Heather Champ (of Flickr, among others). I watched these two elegant eloquent San-Francisco-ites (they’re married, by the way - also I suspect that Heather is Canadian in origin, from her accent, but that could be wrong) talk passionately on the subject of web (and other) communities and I knew I had to go and be a fanboy.
After the talk we were hanging out waiting for the next session and the two of them wandered by so I ran over and buttonholed Derek (I must apologise profusely for effectively blanking Heather - I was in dribbling fanboy mode), telling him a shortened version of the first two paragraphs of this rambling post. He looked pleased to have made such an impact and asked me my name, so I told him, and he said “Oh, I know you, Clive - I thought you looked familiar!” He remembered me from my Fray submissions, and a couple of other vague contacts back in the day, and seemed genuinely happy to have made a difference to me.
It might not mean that much to most of you who read this, but believe me when I say that made my fucking month.
Colour me smiley. 
–c.
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Now playing: Whitesnake - Wings Of The Storm
2 Comments
Lovely. Sometimes, moments like that make this whole “living” thing worth the effort.
Nice one! Getting to meet your heroes is great, but even better is meeting them and finding them utterly charming
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