The Last Interview by Marcin Wichary

Marcin Wichary writes about an interview he conducted for his upcoming book about keyboards on his corresponding Shift Happens newsletter.

I have a feeling chasing people isn’t the right take, anyway. You have to chase stories. But stories don’t announce themselves as such. Many are hiding inside people’s heads, feeling like nothing very exciting. It haunts me that somewhere within the readership of this very newsletter, there are great stories that will never see the light of day; even if I had time to talk to everyone, and you had the willingness to engage me, well… I’m not a great interviewer.

I’ve had some luck with chasing stories on Twitter, and I’ll write about that some other day. And I was pretty lucky with finding some wonderful people who surrendered great stories too: fans of mechanical keyboards, people who typed on the oldest of computers, ergonomics specialists, inventors. To the extent I could determine it, I thought I was already done with interviews about a year ago.

And yet, despite that, the most unusual interview I‘ve done happened only last month.

Marcin is a master storyteller. If you have never seen him speak at a meetup or conference, I recommend watching his latest talk from Config 2020: I Pressed ⌘B. You Wouldn’t Believe What Happened Next. I absolutely cannot wait for his book.

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