Journal tags: geek

As the year draws to a close, I find myself casting an eye back on the past twelve months. There are two events that stand out for me:

• Mobilewood—the get-together in the woods of Tennessee that led to the Future Friendly movement and
• Hackfarm—the Clearleft outing to Herefordshire that resulted in Map Tales.

I learned a lot at both events. I think there’s enormous benefit in getting together with your peers for days of intense geekery—it’s quite the learning experience.

Looking ahead to next year, there’s one more such event on the horizon.

Aaron started up Retreats 4 Geeks last year and kicked it off with an outstanding week in the woods with Eric. From March 25th to 30th Aaron and I will be leading Retreat 4 Geeks on Progressive Enhancement. Here’s the best bit: it’ll be taking place on a horse ranch in Clark, Colorado.

I’m expecting an intense three days of hands-on coding bookended with some fun outdoor activities. Based on my experiences this year with these kinds of in-depth, focused gatherings, I think it’s going to be pretty special.

If that sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, you can register your place now. Everything—except your airfare—is included: excellent food, luxurious lodging and multiple days of learning and practicing progressive enhancement and mobile-first responsive design. And if you need any assistance in convincing your boss to fork out for the event, there’s a handy factsheet you can download, print out and leave in convenient spots around the office.

So …maybe I’ll see you in the Rockies?

I’m somewhat fascinated by the divisive spin on fandom taken by Twilight fans—you know; the whole Team Edward or Team Jacob debate. I wonder what it would be like to take the same approach to more important issues…

• “I’m with Team Leibniz” vs. “I’m with Team Newton,”
• “I’m with Team Thorne-Hawking” vs. “I’m with Team Preskill,”
• “I’m with Team Big Bang” vs. “I’m with Team Steady State.”

Get those T-shirts printed!

The secret, however, is knowing when to stop. I do not want to see “I’m with Team HTML5” vs. “I’m with Team Flash.”

Cast your gaze upon this video footage of a talk entitled Science Fiction as a Literary Genre by Neal Stephenson. Alas, there is no transcript of the talk but there are chapter markers. If you’re pushed for time, skip ahead to the part marked vegging out and geeking out. There, Stephenson makes an important distinction between the two; a distinction that was missed in Clay Shirky’s otherwise excellent speech Gin, Television, and Social Surplus.

Shirky distils his observations of passive and interactive activities into a general principle:

It’s better to do something than to do nothing.

But Stephenson makes the case that both activities have their place. Sometimes switching off your brain and wallowing in low-brow entertainment can be refreshing, even cathartic.

That said, while I agree that vegging out is not something to be dismissed, geeking out is clearly the more important of the two ends of the activity spectrum. In a commencement speech to Caltech students, Radiolab’s Robert Krulwich stresses the importance of scientists geeking out to non-scientists to battle the forces of ignorance. Tell me a story, he implores.

For us workers on the Web we have plenty of opportunities to geek out in virtual environments like mailing lists, Twitter, IRC and instant messaging but there’s still nothing to beat the enjoyment of geeking out face to face. I feel very fortunate to live in Brighton where there is ample opportunity for in-the-flesh geek gatherings. The town has a strong whiff of what Kevin Kelly calls scenius.

But for pure geekout overload, nothing beats a gathering of the tribes. That means BarCamps and conferences.

There are some geek gatherings in the offing that I’m particularly looking forward to. In just under a fortnight, I’ll be heading out to San Francisco for An Event Apart. This will be my second AEA—my first was in Chicago—so I guess I must have done something right. If this one is even half as good as my first experience, it will be wonderful.

By the way, if you’re thinking about heading along to the conference, tickets are still available. If you decide to register, use the code AEAKEITH to get fifty bucks off.

Then, just a couple of weeks after An Event Apart San Francisco, Brighton will be hosting the annual geekgasm that is dConstruct (followed immediately by BarCamp Brighton on the Saturday and Sunday). There are still a few tickets available for dConstruct but they’re going pretty fast.

I’m all set for An Event Apart but I still haven’t prepared my talk for dConstruct. I’m starting to feel the pressure. I’ve made a start of trying to get my thoughts out of my head and onto post-it notes as a first step but that has thrown the magnitude of my task into sharp relief. There’s so much material I want to cover and I want to do it justice. If I succeed, I think I can deliver an entertaining 45 minutes of geeking out. If.

I really should get on with preparing that talk. Maybe I’ll veg out with some mindless entertainment first.

I’m in a lovely little cottage in the town of Ironbridge, the self-styled birthplace of industry. This is the setting for the current Britpack geekend, and the turnout is pretty darn big.

We’ve been doing some touristy stuff; strolling through the quaint village in lovely weather, eating pub lunches, going to the Enginuity part of the museum of iron, and this evening we went to a fireworks display at a Victorian town.

Of course, the real reason for travelling all this way is to feed our latest dirty habit: playing Werewolf with fellow geeks. That’s what we did tonight, ensconced in our cosy cottage. Now, with the air thick with paranoia and recriminations, I think I’ll call it a night.

Before leaving tomorrow, I must remember to actually walk across the eponymous iron bridge and take some more pictures.