He’s not your typical 13-year-old

Learning that tickets to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which cost $1,599 each, were sold out in less than two hours, Woodmere Middle School eighth-grader Lenny Khazan almost gave up hope of going until he found out the company was offering a scholarship to 150 lucky applicants so he decided to enter.

Scholarship applicants had to be students over 13-years-old and had to complete an application, provide links to applications or apps they’ve made for iPhones and give proof of school enrollment in order to be eligible to receive a ticket to the conference. Each student was judged on technical ability, creativity, prior WWDC attendance as well as technical and work experience.

A member of the Woodmere Middle School Robotics Club, Khazan has already created three apps that are currently in the Apple store. The first app, Wordify, is a word unscrambling game, the second, a color matching game, is called Color Confusion and his latest app, Meat Calculator, was created with his friend Matt Panzer, who is also on the Robotics Club. “We’ve had more than 3,500 downloads in 70 countries since the app launched on January 31,” he said.

Khazan began his scholarship application, “I’m not your typical 13-year-old. I don’t log onto Facebook the moment I get home from school. I don’t turn on my Xbox every chance I get. Instead, I log on to my Macbook Pro and open Xcode, my favorite app.”

Scholarship recipients were to be notified on May 11, Khazan, eagerly awaited the end of the school day. “After a long Friday in school, that seemed like forever, I finally got out of school and was ecstatic when I found out I won the scholarship,” he said. “I spent the whole day telling myself that I had lost because there was no way I could win.”

Khazan and his father, Cyril, headed off to the June 11-15 WWDC in San Francisco and attended lectures, heard keynote speaker Apple CEO Tim Cook and saw new Apple products before the rest of the world. “As a computer programmer myself, we figured I would be a good ‘sounding board’ for any ideas during the conference,” Cyril said. “Seeing folks like himself making their ideas a reality as well as mutual respect and curiosity are some of the most important WWDC lessons that will serve him well in school, the Robotics Club, and in life.”

It was also a special experience for Khazan because this was the first year Apple dropped the minimum age to attend the WWDC from 18 to 13 as the company received countless emails from students who wanted to attend the conference. “The conference was great; there were sessions where Apple employees gave lectures and labs where you could bring in your app and talk directly to the employees to get suggestions,” he said. “I have been following Apple for years and have been reading up on the conference for the past few years as well. I always heard how fun it was but when I actually got there I was still blown away by the great experience.”

Khazan credits his father for introducing him to computer programming and his teachers, Janine Torresson and Susan Suriano, for their support and encouragement. He also believes the WWDC conference will for prepare him for the future with the Robotics Club as well as for his dream job; working for Apple as a software engineer. “I would also like to start my own company someday,” he said. “I love making iPhone apps and I would love to do that for a living.”