Meeting Rory

Yesterday at an MSDN event in Louisville I met the famous new Microsoft employee Rory Blyth. I have read his blog for quite some time but was absolutely blown away by the level of fame he has attained. I took number and stood in line for like 35 minutes in a large crowd to talk to him, had to endure security checks to even get in the door and then wait even longer without any assuredness that I would even get to shake his hand. He had a large entourage of men who followed him around talking into their shirt cufflinks, reporters taking pictures all the time, a personal butler and he had even flown his personal hair stylist in from Washington to give him a touch up…Wait a minute, scratch that; that was when I met John Kerry! 

Rory was a little more down to earth, I did not get to see him present or anything, he was relegated to back room watcher who the presenter would turn to when he got in trouble or couldn’t answer a question, which happened more than once. I talked to him for about 25 minutes between two sessions and I found him to be just as funny in person as on his blog. The coolest part, we did not even talk about software. We talked about the most random of thing and he really was a genuinely nice guy, makes me seriously reconsider my opinion of French descendants… After talking for some time he showed me his watch, said some weird things and started snapping his fingers. Next thing I knew I was at the grocery buying powdered drink mixes. Weird.