All About You FRIDAY – Light a Fire (Mornings with Bob)

Match lighting a blue fuse for cannon ignition.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been enamored with Apple. In 1977, my parents bought me an Apple II computer that unleashed my young geeky heart. I saved my pennies and bought Byte magazine every month so I could spend hours typing lines of Basic code to produce something simple like a calendar. I have been fortunate enough to use almost every iteration of Apple computer since. In 1984, the first Macintosh was released and when we turned it on and that computer said “hello” I just knew I had to meet the genius behind the machine.

MacWorld was launched in 1985, the year I graduated from high school. Each year, Steve Jobs would deliver a keynote and sometimes I would get to read about it. If I had a chance to watch it online, I did. I dreamed for years of going to MacWorld, a gathering of 30,000+ Apple enthusiasts held in San Francisco.

When I was young, there was no way I could afford to go. And when I finally could afford it, there was no way I could justify to my husband and family that I was going to leave for a week to go to a conference that had nothing to do with my profession. So, year after year, I watched the Steve Jobs keynote from afar, reveling in the announcements of new and updated Apple technology.

Cut to November 2006. Four months after being widowed, I was struggling financially and trying to piece my life back together. I received the yearly email announcing MacWorld 2007.

“One day, I’m going to MacWorld,” I dreamed out loud to Bob.

“You should go now,” he replied, hinting at the urgency due to Steve Jobs’ pancreatic cancer diagnosis in 2003.

“Maybe I’ll go next year,” I said wearily. I had to figure out how to afford it, still adjusting to a single-parenting, single income household.

Bob’s next move would turn out to be one of the greatest gifts of my life. Without hesitation, he used his airline points, Marriott points and bought me a ticket to MacWorld and in January 2007, I was on a flight to San Francisco.

Oh, the excitement! My heart still skips a beat as I recount the story.

I was up at 4 a.m. on the morning of the keynote, making my way to the Moscone Center thinking I would be the first one in line. I was the 200th person in line and the excitement of the keynote line was an event in and of itself. People from all over the world attended this conference. I met a couple honeymooning, a father/son team from down South who made it a yearly tradition, a businessman from Lebanon. It was a gathering beyond my wildest imagination.

There were cameras from all over the world and one of them was a documentary camera from a couple of guys from Gizmodo who were not Apple geeks, but wondered what all the fuss was around this company and this community. They made a documentary called MacHeads the Movie. Here is the trailer. And if you look closely, you’ll see I made it!

See that guy next to me? His name is Scott. We met in that keynote line in 2007 and became fast friend. We ended up meeting up for seven MacWorlds after that and years later, I would stand up in his wedding as his Best Woman. A lifelong friendship formed by our love for Apple technology. This past year, he showed up at my wedding.

Unbeknownst to all of us, that was the year Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone. His reveal was masterful. “I have one more thing,” he said. And the crowd of thousands cheered. “An ipod (more cheers) a phone (louder cheers) and an internet communicator” (even louder cheers). Nobody even knew what he meant by internet communicator.

“You don’t understand,” he said. And he repeated those three things even faster. He did it over and over again until he triumphantly announced, “They are all in one device!” And the room erupted and Scott and I high-fived each other and everyone around us.

The phone wasn’t released until June, but we went to the expo hall and I have a picture of people taking pictures of the first iPhone slowly spinning in a glass case.

I love that story.

I still have the first iPhone. It sits in my home photography studio on a shelf, a reminder of one of best gifts of my life.

That trip to MacWorld lit a fire in me. For travel. For photography. For delivering really good keynote speeches. For lighting a fire in someone else’s heart. I went to 7 more MacWorld’s after that, including the one where Steve Jobs delivered one of his final keynotes in 2010 and announced the first iPad. Each year, I took classes following the photography track and then Bob lit another fire in me when he gifted me his Nikon DSLR, my first digital camera, a camera he bought after his divorce but never really used. I’ve shot countless portraits and weddings since. And I paid that gift forward by giving Bob’s camera to another budding photographer when I upgraded my kit.

I have a budget for lighting fires. It isn’t a set amount. Sometimes, it gets used and sometimes it sits for a year or two. But if I run into a person who has a dream and a passion for something, it takes me two seconds to decide on that investment. I light a fire by gifting an instrument, or a guitar pedal, or some music lessons. If I’ve had a great year, I’ll gift an adventure.

Light a fire. Stoke a flame. That one act of kindness just might launch the next Steve Jobs or the world’s next rock star. Or maybe it just makes for a great story about how one flame begat another and another.

There are enough things in this world that snuff out flames. Be a fire starter. The world will thank you.

It’s been a long week. Don’t forget to celebrate.

Until next time…