Bill Sleeper, you are officially our Geek of the Century.
A national television ad for Best Buy, making its debut today, features one of the most inspiring characters we’ve ever profiled on GeekWire, 97-year-old tech enthusiast Bill Sleeper, proudly proclaiming his status as a GeekWire Geek of the Week. It’s nice exposure for GeekWire, to say the least, but more than that, it’s great to see Sleeper getting some well-deserved recognition.
Check out the ad below.
We first met Sleeper a little more than a year ago, sitting around his table at the Merrill Gardens retirement community in Mill Creek, north of Seattle. He demonstrated his favorite mobile apps, wielded his electrostatic wand, showed off the Laser Stage Lighting device on his kitchen counter, and laughed as he talked about putting QR codes on some of his most important hardware to deliver a warning to would-be thieves: “If you steal my walker, the Mafia will hunt you down.”
Sleeper is known for helping his fellow seniors learn to use and appreciate smartphones and computers to enrich and empower their lives. His daughter, Barbara, credits her dad’s smartphone with helping him through the long illness experienced by her mom, Norma, who passed away last year.
Yes, it was an iPhone at the time, but you can’t blame a guy for changing his loyalties under the circumstances. He’s holding a Samsung Galaxy in the Best Buy spot.
In the ad, Sleeper is featured with his grandson, Dave, who says, “My gift was a smartphone.”
Says Sleeper, showing the GeekWire profile on his phone: “That made me GeekWire’s Geek of the Week. Check me out.”
Here’s the back story: Best Buy found Sleeper via our profile. We knew this was coming a few weeks ago, after someone from the retailer’s ad agency contacted us about it. We immediately signed some paperwork to let them use the GeekWire brand in the ad, but other than that, we weren’t involved.
The exposure is so prominent that some people are asking (half-jokingly, I assume) whether we paid for it. For the record, in case anyone is seriously wondering, we didn’t — but we’ll certainly take it!
Here’s the original Geek of the Week piece, published on Oct. 26, 2011. Also see a video below with a few highlights from my visit last year to Sleeper’s home.
Update: We’re excited to report that Bill will also be joining us for the next GeekWire radio show and podcast. We’ll get the behind-the-scenes story on the ad, talk about his tech advice for seniors and find out about his latest favorite apps. Tune in next weekend on KIRO Radio (97.3 FM in the Seattle region) and GeekWire. You can get every episode using this RSS feed, or subscribe in iTunes.
Postscript: Bill Sleeper, 1915-2014: Our 99-year-old ‘Geek of the Week’ gave seniors the power of technology
