Geeks United!

I'm a little sad I won't be able to check out much of the first ever Geek.kon, to be held this weekend at the Humanities building on the UW-Madison campus. I'd been hoping to at least take pictures of the costume masquerade, if nothing else. You see, I've got guests coming in from out of town to work on our routine for IDKE Vancouver (holy crap that's this month!), and being a good hostess precludes me from wandering off to get my geek on at the con.

I don't know that they'll miss me, though, with over 600 people already pre-registered and God knows how many who'll just show up. We've been covering the crap out of the run-up to the event over at dane101, which is a good place to go to get the low-down if you're interested. That and the website for the event itself, of course.

It's been interesting to read the "mainstream" press' coverage of the thing, too. Especially amusing was the article in today's WSJ, wherein the author took the usual liberties with the interviewee's words. See a compare-and-contrast over at The View From Now.

Strange how even the current spat of "Geek Chic" still seems a bit...condescending...toward those of us with interests that range beyond football and shoes (and hey, there's nothing wrong with either one of those things). For all of the media's recent seeming embrace of all things nerdy and geeky, the angle they come at it from is still very much in the vein of "oh hey these people are bizarre and novel and we're going to exploit them for the entertainment of the slack-jawed masses." Which is insulting to the masses, as well.

We're still getting picked on and beat up in school, in the workplace, and at home. You can make a (valid) argument that it's part of the rite of passage that all truly interesting people go through to make them stronger and more capable...but it still sucks.

Anyway, social politics aside, you should go check out the convention. It is free, after all, and if nothing else you can just go to watch a sci-fi flick or episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Hooray!