As the owner of a successful software company, one of the hats I wear is "public face" for Plain Black. That means I end up doing a lot of interviews with various reporters, journalists, columnists, pundits, or whatever they decide to call themselves. A couple weeks back John C. Dvorak, one of the best known technology writers around, did a short piece for PC Magazine that mentioned two of our products (WebGUI and CMS Matrix).

The most interesting part about this is that I'd never met or talked with John previously, nor for the article. It was just a happy thing that out of the blue he decided to write a little piece that included us. I've been a fan of John's writing, TV shows, and podcasts for a dozen years, so when he did a little write up on us I was tickled pink.

Our PR people then decided to call up John to see if he'd be interested in chatting with me, and as the fates turned out, he was the keynote speaker at a convention an hour from my office this morning. He and I set up a time to meet, and we had lunch and then toured around Wisconsin Dells for a little while this afternoon.

John is every bit as interesting in person as he is in his columns, and on my favorite podcast, Cranky Geeks. We chatted about the stuff you might expect, Plain Black, WebGUI, the CMS space, etc; and some projects he's working that I'm not sure I should talk about, so I'll leave them out. But also a lot more you might not expect. Everything from religion to Habanero sauces (John is quite the connoisseur of Caribbean cuisine). All in all, the food was mediocre, but the company was excellent.

John likes to take tours around the places he visits, and take pictures of those places. I took him around town so he could snap some shots since I knew the area fairly well, having grown up there. We commiserated on what an eye sore the Dells has become over the years. He's surprised that there are quite a few roller coasters in the Dells, and I was surprised at how much has changed in the few years since I was last there. I hardly recognized the place.

I don't know how he takes his celebrity status, but most of the "famous" people I've met both in the technology community and and the show-biz community are not like John at all. In person John is charming, but not at all cranky as he is in many of his articles. I feel fortunate to have had the chance to meet him in person after all the years of reading his columns, and hope to have the chance to chat with him again in the near future. I can't say that for any of the others I've met.