GeekRebel Launches

I've started a new site called GeekRebel!

I wanted to refocus Yeah!Fi on my personal experiences as an entrepreneur and have another space to discuss tech topics that are of interest to me. It's still early days, but I envision that GeekRebel will have a handful of contributors.

The focus will be mostly on technology, the people behind it and how it can change our world.

Head over to GeekRebel, grab the feed and watch it closely!

Geek Dinner Powerpoint Karaoke

I'm very stoked to see that the London Geek Dinner website is using my definition to answer the question: 'What is a Geek?'

A geek is NOT a computer nerd… A geek is not someone who wears 2 inch thick glasses and giggles at the sight of a woman.

A geek is someone who is curious, information hungry and on a constant quest for more knowledge. According to Wikipedia, a “geek is an individual who is fascinated by knowledge and imagination”

Geeks use information, logic and their imagination to make decisions or come up with new ideas. You get different kinds of geeks. Of course you have computer geeks but you also have botany geeks, philosophy geeks, music geeks, design geeks and (gasp!) marketing geeks!

So why the popular association of ‘geek’ with ‘computer nerd’? Because almost all geeks use computers. Why? Because a computer is the greatest information tool around and all geeks are information addicts. Many geeks will become extremely adept at using this tool and take some extra time learning how to get the most out of it.

One of the things they started doing at the London Geek Dinner is Powerpoint Karaoke. 5 speakers present slides that they they've never seen before!



I'll definitely try to attend the next time I'm in London!

Nurture the Geek Stars!

I had the great fortune to meet Rajendra Pawar, the founder of India's National Institute for Information Technology (NIIT) in Durban yesterday.

Rajendra is in South Africa as an advisor to Thabo Mbeki’s International Advisory Council on Information Society.

Rajendra has been instrumental in developing India's IT skills base to what it is today since founding NIIT 24 years ago.

He has since then expanded NIIT into other countries and has gained plenty of experience dealing with governments and helping to shape their policies to accelerate skills development with the same success as in India. Let's hope our government heeds his counsel!

The 2 topics at this year's panel were the high cost of broadband and our skills shortage crisis.

I spoke briefly with Rajendra about the foundation of 'Centres for Excellence' where talented students would be spoilt with extra attention and resources.

I believe that it's crucial that we establish schools for gifted children and identify kids from around the country at an early stage and give them a higher quality of education.

Of course it's not a very popular idea in South Africa at this stage. It would be seen as unfair for the state to single out smart children and treat them differently. Besides for egalitarian ideology, why spend extra resources on an 'elite' few, when we are struggling to even get textbooks to the majority of pupils?

Post WW2, similar thinking was pervasive in the US and discrimination based on a genetic factor such as intelligence was not something the state would engage in.

This changed very suddenly in 1957 when the Soviets launched Sputnik. Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce commented on the launch, referring to Sputnik's beeps as "an intercontinental outer-space raspberry to a decade of American pretensions that the American way of life was a gilt-edged guarantee of our national superiority."

Besides for an increase in scientific research funding, the foundation of DARPA and NASA, the school curricula were also dramatically overhauled.

Prestigious schools for gifted children were founded and smart kids were 'head-hunted' from schools around the country and given better teachers, more resources and advanced topics taught using new techniques.

Our schools will gladly identify top rugby players and athletes at a young age and send them on special training camps or provide scholarships to the top sports schools in the country.

Imagine we forced our best athletes to run only as fast as the average speed of the rest of the team in the run up to the Olympic games? Sounds bizarre, doesn't it?

However, this is exactly what we are doing with intellectually gifted kids in public schools. Although our sports stars will inspire school kids to give it their best and often promote South Africa as a brand overseas, it’s our ‘geekstars’ who will come up with cures for diseases, solutions for poverty, software that aids medication delivery and build businesses that will employ thousands and bring millions of Rands into the country.

Although South Africa is not in a Cold War with any other country, we are definitely at war with poverty and poor education. Let's start fighting!

Are You a Geek?

Last week saw the Cape Town launch of 27Dinner which managed to set off a bit of a geeks vs. marketers war on the SA blogosphere.

Some of it is related to a misunderstanding of the meaning of words such as 'geek', swearwords such as 'marketer' and funky new words such as 'jeek'.

Let's have a look at some of these words.

First off, 'jeek' is the stupidest word of 2010. Remove 2.7182, throw in an 'r' and you get 'jerk'. Furthermore, the definition that's been touted on some blogs for 'jeek' is just plain wrong. A 'jeek' is NOT "someone who succeeds at the nexus of media, technology and business"

In fact, 'jeek' is a cross between 'jock' and 'geek'. According to the Urban Dictionary: "Might be socially inept, but usually muscular and takes various sports. Often has some close friends and gets good grades. Spends life on computer when not working out or playing sports."

So that's sorted... Now, let's move on to 'geek'.

A geek is NOT a computer nerd... A geek is not someone who wears inch-thick glasses and makes toilet bombs with Sodium Iodide and Hydrogen Peroxide. (okay, sometimes we do)

A geek is someone who is curious, information hungry and on a constant quest for more knowledge. According to Wikipedia, a "geek is an individual who is fascinated by knowledge and imagination"

Geeks use information, logic and their imagination to make decisions or come up with new ideas. You get different kinds of geeks. Of course you have computer geeks but you also have botany geeks, philosophy geeks, music geeks, design geeks and (gasp!) marketing geeks!

So why the popular association of 'geek' with 'computer nerd'? Because almost all geeks use computers. Why? Because a computer is the greatest information tool around and all geeks are information addicts. Many geeks will become extremely adept at using this tool and take some extra time learning how to get the most out of it.

So why the perceived threat from marketers? This is because many marketers up till now have not bothered with the information, but rather relied on soft-skills. Some marketers are catching up and are spending a bit more time in front of their computers, slowly evolving (being upgraded?) into geeks.

Marketers need to KNOW what is going on and they have to be constantly increasing their knowledge base. Another definition of a 'geek' offered by Wikipedia (as the one most common among geeks themselves) is "one who is primarily motivated by passion". The stereotypical marketer is seldom motivated by passion, and therefore is seldom 'geek'. However, lately this is starting to change. Seth Godin is someone who is clearly motivated by passion and so are quite a few marketers I've met lately.

So why am I bothering with this post?

Because I strongly believe we should keep the 27 Geek Dinner concept going, rather than pitting 'geeks' vs. 'marketers' or bringing silly terms such as 'jeek'. Mike and Dave are two deep geeks, and they've done a lot to bring together geeks of different disciplines: programming, media, marketing, podcasting, mobile technologists and you name it.

The computer geeks build the products, but need to understand the marketing better. Vice versa, the marketing geeks need to get a thorough understanding of the product and the market.

Marketing geeks should not just be involved in selling products dreamt up by programming geeks, but should be more involved in the design process from day 1.

All these people are geeks, but they do different things and can learn a lot from each other. Bringing them together will lead to better products reaching more people! A win-win situation.

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Googlethu

The picture below is of Alan Levin. Alan is one of the early internet pioneers in South Africa. He is also 43.9% geek. Now, that doesn't sound like much, but that's the highest score I've heard of so far. You just need to have a look at the Geek Test to know that that's no idle feat! Alan beats my 43% test score and in the geek underworld this means I'll henceforth have to call him Master.

Of course, much more interesting than Alan is the T-shirt he's wearing. A play on the name of a Cape Town township, Gugulethu. For more Gugulethu fun read my post about Township Entrepreneurship and Naked Kings