#residentgeeks

A programme funded by the Australia Council for the Arts: a Geek in Residence is installed to deliver dynamic digital initiatives across an organisation and its community.

The idea being that the techies provide the "skills, information and connections needed to succeed in the digital era". The project appears to be in abeyance currently but I wonder why. It is funny how everyone has become a geek these days so maybe that is it.

But I am still waiting to see some of the really useful filtering/predictive text - multi-thread poetry, Boolean verse, 3D structural holographic towers of words and I wonder who is actually working on this stuff now. Rather than just getting scored up on a really good tweet - of course that is fun too - but...

The old news story is here http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/news/media-centre/media-releases/new-geeks-in-residence-for-arts-organisations/

And yes there is still just a really small part of me that would be happy if I could open my front door electronically at the press of a button...

Geek Pride 2014

Seeing as our clientele have an interest in this - cite most popular posts to your right most days....here is the Facebook page cataloguing everything that is going down for Geek Day this year.

e.g.this event last year in Croton-On-Hudson in the United States-  a place with a name that surely any geek would want to visit - featured entertainment & activities including which can serve as a blueprint for organising your own event:

• DJ music & karaoke
• Zombie Tag (epic - I thought this only existed in Scotland)
• Scavenger Hunt with Geocaching
• Board Gaming Tables
• The Cosplay Catwalk (open to all cosplayers*)
• Raffles for PRIZES - TWO 3-DAY PASSES to NY COMIC CON & more!
• Special Edition Geek Pride Day Trivia Contests
• Giant JENGA
• A Geek Swap Table (oh the mind boggles - did they swap actual geeks? or just geeky things?)
• Food for the Masses
• ...and general geekery for all ages!

Add your event with pride at https://www.facebook.com/GeekPrideDay.

Ada Lovelace Day

Women geeks.

This whole concept annoys me!

Why do people need to put the word women in front of geek as if geek was an inherently male concept?

This movement is to do what? Attract more women into technology/IT/ and maybe even science? (Though scientists are not in my opinion geeks...they are something else entirely.) It is not attracting me.

I have worked in and at nerdy workplaces for almost 20 years from the British government, Microsoft, Oxford University, to the BBC and BT (where not that long ago there was 2 female toilets in a multiple storey building "for the secretaries"). And I have always had women on my team. Because women are geeks. And can outdo geekiness in anyone else.

Why? Because the women I have worked with were creative problem solvers who loved their jobs; they were dead cool; wore the wrong clothes but tried hard (like most geeks) and were excellent colleagues who have gone on to attain great things. Many obsessive programmers just didn't have these skills - they could program well and tirelessly - but that imaginative element was missing. And yes, they weren't necessarily male either so don't make that assumption.

What this argument boils down to is geeks versus engineers? The industry needs more geeks and they can and should be of either sex.

See more here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19884720

And btw Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer. Male or Female.

N.B the image shows Frankenstein's monster written by the geeky Mary Shelley.