It was the TAM 2011 conference [1] in Las Vegas. I had no idea what was it about. I had never attended a 'skeptics' conference before, only tech stuff. That night at the reception, I met all sorts of interesting characters.
Then this old guy with a cane came up, with a long beard like ZZ Top. I asked him 'who are you'? and he said 'I'm James. I'm a magician'. We chatted completely normally for like two minutes and we both moved on to other people. He was completely natural, absolutely not offended that I didn't know who he was, even if he was the force behind the conference. He was genuinely interested in what were my reasons for attending and my personal story.
I did get to meet many of my heroes in person during those days, and I even scored some 1:1s with them, Richard Dawkins, Neil Degrass Tyson, Michael Shermer, Lawrence Krauss and Bill Nye. But after all this time, my fondest memories are those minutes with Mr. Randi. If I had to make an analogy, he's the most Yoda-like person I've ever met.
His life will continue to be an inspiration many. Me included.