I had a great TalkFile experience this afternoon, I listened to Woz on IT Conversations recorded at the Gnomedex Geeks-Gone-Wild gathering last week. Woz told his story from childhood inspiration “technology people being the closest to honesty I know”, to the Apple start-up.
Listening to Woz reminded me of my own youthful endeavors in electronics and this week I had the chance to catch up with Craig Newmark of Craigslist, whom I went to High School with. When I was 14 we had a cable television system connecting all the classrooms and we would deliver the monitors and patch-through movies and live feeds. I like most kids hated school and “TV Control” as it was known gave us many opportunities to ovoid the boring parts of school while giving us a great education. At age 15 we established Radio Station WJSV-FM and this required us to pass a test for an FCC Third Class license. Although we all hated school we loved learning and we studied from big thick books as fat as the .Net books we attempt to read today.
Craig lived near the school so he would get there early and sign-on the station, I would arrive about 8:30 and start Rock’en. We had a UPI Teletype that would deliver the news as it happened and we would rip and read it over the air. I continued to work in Radio for eight years and Craig went on to work for IBM, then just for fun he started a website without VC’s or a viable business plan. WJSV-FM is still on-the-air and Craigslist.org is just about everywhere and it was an honor for me to be at Web 2.0 in San Francisco this past week to see the outpouring of love he received just for being “the closest to honesty we know”.