My exciting and embarrassing interview with Boz

Today I’m going to tell you about the most incredible thing that happened to me during Meta Connect: I interviewed Boz, the CTO of Meta. It was surprising. It was incredible. And it was overly embarrassing. Let me tell you the full story.

I already warn you that in this article you won’t discover any secret revelation about Meta and its future headsets. But you may have fun.

(If you want to read the whole fun story of how I arrived at interviewing Boz and what I felt in the whole process, keep reading from the first paragraph. If you instead just want to watch the video of the interview and see what he told me, jump to the final paragraph, the one with the title “My interview with Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, CTO at Meta”)

The premise

Let’s rewind the time to a few months ago: the 10th anniversary of my blog is approaching. It’s a super important milestone I’m very proud of, and I want to do something special to celebrate it. One idea I have is to try to interview some very important people, so as to give my community a very special gift to thank them for following me for so much time. So I started contacting a lot of important companies, asking for an interview. The pitch was “Hey, it’s my 10th birthday, do you want to celebrate it with me?” Most of them did not even reply. Some of them actually replied with something that sounded like “Congratulations on your important milestone”, to which they added a variation of “BUT NO”. It turns out corporations don’t care much about birthdays.

I tried to contact some people directly, and I also wrote a message via Facebook to Boz. I thought: “He’s busy, but maybe some magic can happen”. But I’m not Cinderella, so no magic happened, and he never replied (but he also didn’t ban me from Facebook, which is already a win).

Two weeks ago I got a last-minute invite to Meta Connect from my friend Oscar. I spent a lot of money to travel from Italy to the US. The day of the keynote, I was pretty excited to be there, especially because I wanted to try the “Phoenix” headset.

But life had other plans for me. I attended the keynote, made a few pics of Zuck and Boz on stage, then I flew to try the demos of the Meta VR Glasses. I did the Italian thing and cut 90% of the line; I waited 20 minutes to go in… to discover there were no demos of Phoenix. There was just a damn marketing video.

I went out of the place, started telling everyone in line, “Go away, it is just a stupid marketing video that is useless as a fork to eat soup”. But I said it in a way that was so emotional and so funny that I actually made people even more curious to watch it. Do you know the Sharknado effect, where something is so bad that people want to see it? That thing. Probably Meta should hire me in his marketing department. Turns out I’m good at saying that things suck.

Since the plan to review the headset was gone, I decided to drown my sorrow in the free food available at Connect. If you have never been to Connect, I tell you that both days there is so much food that it could end world hunger. And if Elon Musk colonized Mars, the food at Connect could end hunger there, too.

I met with Scott Hayden from Road To VR, and I started eating like there is no tomorrow while I spoke with him about VR and journalism. The plan was to return on my investment of the trip and accommodation in Silicon Valley from Italy by eating hundreds of dollars of food. If I couldn’t get back home with a demo of the VR Glasses, at least I could back home with some chilos more.

Then, while I was eating something, I look at a guy that is like 4 meters in front of me, and he looked kinda familiar. I say to Scott “But isn’t that BOZ?”, and Scott “Oh yes, that’s Boz”.

It’s Boz

I was in the situaton where there was Boz in front of me, with probably his wife (she had the same surname “Bosworth” on the name tag), happily eating a taco. No one was speaking with him, no one cared. It was just a happy man enjoying his taco.

I didn’t know what to do. On one side, I just wanted to leave him alone: why should I disturb a man enjoying some food? Maybe he was like me, trying to get fat to forget something bad happening that day (but not for my same reason, I think he actually tried the Meta VR Glasses). But on the other side… it was like a once in a lifetime opportunity to interact with Boz. I thought a bit, then I realized that as much as I respect the relationship between a man and his taco, this was probably the only possibility I would have in my whole life to speak with him. So I started going towards him to approach him.

The selfie

While I approach him, I started wondering how should I address him. “Boz” would be too informal. “Mr Bosworth” would make me sound someone from a tax collecting entity. “Andrew” would make me sound like his mother asking him to clean up the room. “Hey taco bro” would be out of the question. In the end, in the 8 steps that separate me from him, I didn’t take a decision. But my brain did, and a “Hey Boz” came out of my mouth. To which I immediately though “Have I really called the super-CTO-of-a-super-corporation ‘Boz’???”

I asked him a selfie. In that moment the woman that was with him made a few steps away, probably thinking “here we go again, another one of those VR nerds not letting my man eat his taco alone”. I imagined him taking some pepper spray out of his pocket and sending me away. But he was instead very chill and agreed to take a picture with me. I was very happy: I could have a pic with him. Just a selfie with me, Boz, and his taco.

Of course, since my life sucks, the battery of my phone was dying and the power bank had some cables issues. But I managed to take out my phone, very emotionally open the camera and shoot a selfie. The picture came out well.

The request

I thanked him. Unexpectedly, Boz remained there. Scott joined us, and we chilled a bit together. I was literally surprised. When I approached John Riccitiello at AWE, I remember he and his team looking at me with a very direct face and ask me “What do you want?”. I imagined him round-house-kicking me after the picture, but instead Boz was super friendly. A very nice guy.

After two minutes of chit-chat about the Meta VR Glasses, he said he had to go. He paid for the buffet, so probably wanted to eat other tacos.

I said “Thanks, goodb…” but then I realize one thing. It was my only opportunity to ask Boz for an interview without going through an army of Meta PRs or writing him an email that looks as a viagra-selling spam. As Eminem would put it in his song “Lose Yourself”:

Look, if you had one shot or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?

I had only this shot. I had to try. I took all my courage in my heart and asked him. I was as nervous as Adam Sandler when had to say the famous “pants” sentence to a beautiful woman in the Anger Management movie.

I said something that sounded like “Hey Boz, it is the 10th year anniversary of my blog, can I have a short interview with you one of these days?”. No, actually it didn’t sounded like this: since I was too emotional, whatever came out of my mind did not have any sense in English. Boz was confused. Me too, to be honest. I tried to repeat the sentence in a better way: the grammar was so bad that some English teacher somewhere in the world died because of it, but this time the sense was understandable. I saw Boz elaborating the request.

The surprise interview

I saw his eyes considering the options. Then he asked me to unlock the phone. He probably wanted to give me his email to talk about a potential interview. “Probably he will never reply, but I still appreciate the gesture”, I thought. Sometimes high-level people give you their contact to make you happy, but then they never have the time to reply because they are too busy.

Then the unexpected happened: Boz asked me to open the camera, and started recording a video. I was like… WHAAAAAAAT. He started saying “We are all here for the 10th birthday of…” and so I thought he wanted to leave me a nice “Happy Birthday video”. What a nice gesture. Really a nice guy.

Then he abruptly said that I had 3 questions. He gave me the opportunity of asking 3 questions to him.

OH FUCK.

It happened more or less what the song “Lose Yourself” says after the 3 lines I mentioned above:

His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There’s vomit on his sweater already, mom’s spaghetti
He’s nervous, but on the surface, he looks calm and ready
To drop bombs, but he keeps on forgetting
What he wrote down, the whole crowd goes so loud
He opens his mouth, but the words won’t come out
He’s chokin’, how?

You have to understand my situation. I was jet-lagged. Half of my blood was going to my stomach to digest all the street food I was eating at Connect, so there was not much left for my brain. It was in the evening, after a long day at Connect. I was super emotional because I was speaking with the n.2 of one of the most important companies in the world. Inside my head there was not a brain anymore, but a bunch of jumping and screaming chimpanzees. I literally had no idea what to say.

It reminded me a bit when I was very young, I went dancing with some friends, and a certain point, I tried to casually approach a beautiful girl already taking considering to be rejected. She surprisingly responded positively and started dancing with me, and I looked at my friends in terror like “THIS WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. WHAT SHOULD I DO AT THIS POINT?”. This is exactly what I was thinking in this moment. I thought it was more probable that a sniper shot at me when I started speaking with Boz instead of him giving me an interview. So what I was supposed to ask him? I am not Alex Heath, which knows all the top guys at all the top companies, and probably every morning sends them a “Good morning, princess” message on Whatsapp. I’m Tony from Turin, Italy. Just a random VR dev, I’m not a real journalist and I’m not used to speak with this kind of high-level people.

I could have asked him about the Quest 4 and have some news that all the magazines of the world would have reported. I could have asked him about his old memo about making Meta a company strongly focused on privacy and make my friends of the VR Guild happy. I could have asked some very targeted questions about the new hardware. I could have asked some smart question that made him think “Oh, this guy is the smartest VR journalist ever”. But it didn’t happen. I thought about the right questions only when I went back home, and the chimps in my head stopped jumping. In that moment, I had no idea what I was doing.

In the end, I managed to ask three question. But what the chimps came with were not the top 3 questions you would ask to Meta’s CTO when you meet him. I mean, they were not bad questions per se, if they were in a context of a one hour interview: together with other 12 questions, they were nice. But they were absolutely not the top 3 choices.

I asked him when VR will succeed because it’s the standard question you should ask to someone that has visibility on the future.

I asked him whether they are considering smart contact lenses because I wanted to ask him an original question that usually people don’t ask him.

I asked him an advice on how to be a good CTO because I wanted to leave my readers with some life lessons.

I asked him also what he thought about this Meta Connect. I know, he said three questions, but I’m Italian and I don’t respect the rules.

Before the video ended, Boz said that he was happy to do it because he follows me on social media. I was like WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT. Did really Boz said that he knows I exist? Oh wow, that is surely a great gift for the 10 years anniversary of my blog. The super important guy reads some of my social media posts… he also knows that I suck at making questions, but that’s another point for another day. Oh damn, I just realized he then probably also saw some memes I made about Zuck.

The epilogue

The video ended. I thanked Boz a lot, I wanted to hug him to thank him, but then I realized that he alraedy didn’t take the pepper spray out when I called him “Boz” and probably I shouldn’t risk further.

He then went away, probably to speak with some investors, superstars, or important CEOs. Or most probably to eat other tacos.

I went back to Scott. My emotions were a mix of WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED and I AM FUCKING HAPPY and I AM FUCKING EMBARASSED. In general, I was happy. I mean, for an indie blogger like me having an interview with Boz is a sort of mission impossible. But thanks to my courage, I did it. It is probably the worst interview that Boz ever had in his life, but still, I did it. The life lesson that I want to give you is: “Just do the jump and try. If you don’t even try, special things will never happen”. Do you remember Steve Jobs saying that “people don’t pick up the phone?”. That thing. Take the fucking phone. And for God’s sake, start thinking today what will be the top 3 questions you would ask to all the most important people of this world. You never know that you may need them.

I just want to spend a final world about Boz. He genuinely seemed like a nice guy. Agreeing to the selfie, just chilling with us, and then making the surprise interview… I bet 95% of the other important executives would have never done that. He was really nice and I wish him a million happy tacos in his life.

I guess you want to watch the interview now. Enough talking, here you are the video, with Boz being both the interviewee and the cameraman.

The video is very short, so I suggest you to watch it. But if for some reasons, you can’t, let me summarize briefly the answers and the questions.

I asked him when VR is getting mainstream. He said that they expected the Quest 3S to sell much better than Quest 3, but actually the Quest 3 sold well almost like the Quest 3S. This showed them that comfort and quality of experience mattered as much as $200 for people. This gave them the confidence to make the lightweight Meta VR Glasses. Now the plan is to keep this lightweight form factor, and go down with the price.

I asked him about XR contact lenses. He said the problem with smart contact lenses is that they should be bulky scleral lenses to be able to be powered. He hasn’t seen up to now any solution that is not a big scleral lens and that is able to be powered properly. That’s why for now Meta is not going for that route.

I asked him how to be a great CTO, a great tech lead. He said that leadership is not about being popular, it is about having a vision, being consistent, being someone people can trust. When you are not in the room, the employees should know what are the principles that should be followed, and they are bought in the vision you told them. Then it’s about being able to hire talents by selling them your vision. And when you take unpopular decisions, people should not be happy, but they sould trust you took that decision for the right reason.

I asked him about his Meta Connect. He said he and Mark were happy that all demos went smoothly.

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And that’s it! This interview is my gift to you all, my lovely readers! Thanks for having supported me for 10 years!

This article was originally published on skarredghost.com