Blessed Are the Curious...

I recently attended the Microsoft Build conference in Seattle. It was my first such conference and although I've been watching live streams and recorded videos from Build, IO, and WWDC over the years, but being there is an altogether different experience.

I met some interesting people while I was there. There is a guy, Phillip Labar, who has been first in line for the keynote for the last 8 years. How did I meet him? I was 3rd in line. Phillip got there at 4:00am. I showed up at 5:45am and was only 2 spots behind him, so I think that worked out well for me. Why did I show up so early? Well, the information for the conference warned me that the line for the Keynote started early. I asked the guys at the Information Desk what that meant, and they entertained me with stories of lines snaking out the building by 5:30 in the morning (the Keynote was scheduled to start at 8:30am). Turns out, I woke up at around 5:00am since I was still on Central time (only 7:00am on my bio-clock), and was curious to see how big the enormous line was.

Well, when I got there, the place was empty. I made my way up to the 4th floor where the entrance to the Keynote was and saw a few guards and a couple guys on a bench. Phillip welcomed me to the line. We chatted, turned out he actually used to live a mile or two from where I do now. There was another guy between us, a young Czech developer, Martin Zizmund who was also there at 4:00am but not early enough to dethrone Phillip. The 4th guy in line, Syed Masroor Ahmed arrived shortly after I did and we all had a nice talk, met some friendly Microsoft employees and generally had an enjoyable time. We didn't get front row seats. Instead, we wound around to an area close to the stage, but VIP's and the press/analysts got the prime locations. Still, a much better experience than my plan B, which was to watch the live stream on my laptop.

But back to the title of my post, which comes from a quote I found displayed on a table in the lounge area of the exposition hall. "Blessed are the curious, for they shall have adventures." This was certainly true for me. If I hadn't decided to go check out the "enormous line snaking out of the building" the Information Booth guys warned me about, I would have never met Phillip, Martin and Syed or had this story to tell.

Of course, the story doesn't stop there. I became curious about the person to whom the quote was attributed. I Googled the name, Lovelle Drachman, and found precious little. One cynical poster on Yahoo Answers asserted that she was merely someone who had posted a banal sentence to Instagram that was copied and pasted onto one quotations website after another and then subsequently propagated by speakers and bloggers (guilty!) until she managed to achieve a level of fame shared by snarky memes.

Well, what a letdown. Who is she? Is she a poet? Is she alive? Does she even exist? Is she a she? No amount of searching has answered these questions. But if you're out there, Lovelle, drop me a line. I'm curious to know more! Who knows, maybe finding out the story behind Lovelle Drachman will be my next adventure.