Calling All Geeks of All Kinds
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I just got back from a wonderful time at the first Hawaii Geek Meet at Ala Moana park. There was a great turnout, with lots of food and interesting demos. As my friend Keith said "The collective brainpower gathered at Ala Moana...is staggering!" Ha! I don't know about that (I certainly am no genius) but I did see a large number of people who were interested in the same things I am! "These are my PEEPS!" I told Ryan, who laughed at the word "peeps" coming from my mouth!
I knew I was having fun when early after set up, I was able to contact my South African ham radio friend Dave (ZS4DT) via IRLP (Voice-over-IP technology with radio) and talk with him awhile. During our contact, Chris and Wayne got their ID-1 connected which provided wifi service to our area through their D-STAR amateur radio gear. I then thought it would be totally cool to live-stream video from our location on Ustream.tv/kh6dad and Dave in South Africa was able to see our beautiful park setting while we were still on the radio. THAT WAS COOL!
As the day progressed we got to talk to a lot people about ham radio and the current and coming capabilities of the technology. Talked to nearly as many people about Geocaching too. I got to see a Stirling engine in operation and look at the sun through a special sun telescope. Unfortunately, there were no sun spots to see, but if there were, I'd have seen them!
I got to meet Auntie Lynn Pupule, Peter Kay, Burt Lum(of Bytemarks), Allison Stewart (The Click Chick), a lot of old and new ham radio friends, Midweek reporters (watch for an article) and near the end Neil Abercrombie sat down in our tent and visited with us a while. I got to tell him about ham radio and even about Geocaching! It was totally relaxed and tremendous fun.
I'm so glad to see so many people there. I'm guessing there was 70 people there at the one time I counted, and probably 120 or more that drifted in and out total. There are many of you I had wished were there, especially from my twitter circle, but that's OK... There's always next year!
Wishing you Peace and Love in Geekdom,
Rich
5 comments:
Thanks for the great into to HAM radio and the repeater demo! I met some great people and learned a lot at the Geek BBQ. I think I'll work on getting my HAM license and maybe I'll see you at the next swap meat so I can score some gear!
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Geek Meet was absolutely AWESOME!
I finally got to meet you. :)
Can't wait till the next one.
Auntie Pupule
Rich, I regret not stopping over to say hello. I grew up with ham radio thanks to my Dad and even learned the morse code when I was a kid. It's truly the reason why I got into this business. We'll have to meet at the next get together. Looking forward to it! And GREAT blog!!!
Mahalo,
Angela Keen (Twitter addict)
Midweek finally put out their article on the Geek Meet:
Calling All Geeks of All Kinds
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