Geek Genome Project

[Omra]

With the kind permission of the GWC Community I would like to put together a GWC Geek Genome Project (kinda like Pandora) to reflect both the vast diversity of interests and what we all share in common. Here are my ideas so far…

To show how we all were influenced and how we reacted to these influences I am thinking of main categories and sub categories I am not sure about flow charting or whatever but please feel free to offer any advice as how to group these or make them easier to read and or fill out, OK here we go,

Media- with subcategories of: Radio, Music, Podcasts, Movies, Television

Literature- with subcategories of: Books, Graphic novels, Comics

Hobbies- such as model building, building props, making costumes, drawing etc.

Games- subcategories: Board, Role playing, Video, PC, MMO,LARP, Killer, Lasertag etc.

Collections- Art, Posters, Busts, Figurines, Props, Autographs, Photos, Comics, rare books etc.

Clubs- Doctor Who, Star Wars, SCA, Live Steel, MFP, Star Trek and so forth.

Conventions- self explanatory

And the other three main influences would be- Friends, Family and School.

And each of these Sub categories I am thinking of breaking up into five slots which would be-

Earliest memories, Childhood, Teens, Young Adult, Adult

And each of these slots that you place and item in you would score 1-10 as to how much it influenced you.

Example:

Television: Childhood- Land of the Giants(5) Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (5) Lost in Space (3) Johnny Quest(9) Star Trek (10) Wild Wild West (7)

Does this make any sense? I am realizing what this is a lot of work but I hope that it may allow us to better understand each other and where our strongest influences came from and at which point on our lives they came about.

Heres another example:

Literature: Teens- Larry Niven(10) Edgar Rice Burroughs(7) Robert E Howard(9) Piers Anthony(8) Ray Bradbury(7) Harry Harrison(9) Graham Masterson(9) Richard Matheson(7)

I am fearing that this format may be too unwieldy and that no one would be willing to fill such a thing out, though I will say that spending the time to reflect back and recall your earliest geek moments can be quite enlightening. And it may be fun just to fill one out for myself and have it for my own records.

I am not entirely sure anyone else would be willing to do this kind of soul searching or not, or if once done you would fee comfortable posting such data, who knows it could be quite cathartic, maybe even bonding.

Please comment and offer suggestions.

Thank you,
OMRA

[Kiki_Rowan]

I am fearing that this format may be too unwieldy and that no one would be willing to fill such a thing out, though I will say that spending the time to reflect back and recall your earliest geek moments can be quite enlightening. And it may be fun just to fill one out for myself and have it for my own records.

I am not entirely sure anyone else would be willing to do this kind of soul searching or not, or if once done you would fee comfortable posting such data, who knows it could be quite cathartic, maybe even bonding.

Please comment and offer suggestions.

I think this sounds like an interesting idea, and a cool way to find other GWCers that might share some our more esoteric interests.

I do think it would be a bit tough to try to rank every influence and to try to rank all the categories at once. Maybe have separate threads for the different categories you’ve devised? Also maybe making it a top 5 list, with encouragement to add runners-up in an unranked list at the end might help simplify the process, so more people might participate. I’m not sure about how to incorporate the different ages…it adds a whole separate layer of complexity. Maybe simplifying to 2 age categories: Childhood and Adult would allow someone to acknowledge how much Scooby Doo influenced their childhood, and also how much BSG influenced them as an adult without having to figure out which ranks higher in the grand scheme of things.

At the end maybe we can compile the data - maybe do some tag clouds or some kind visual data mapping? I don’t know a lot about how to do all that, but I’ve played around with it, so someone with more art or tech genius than me could come up with something very cool.

[Pike]

Sounds like the old Geek Code

[Omra]

Sounds like the old Geek Code

Never heard of that before, thanks for sharing.

[Pike]

Never heard of that before, thanks for sharing.

It was fairly popular amongst geeks back in the day, but it kind of faded. There’s been a few attempts to revive it (the categories are a bit dated) but that just led to confusion. A fresh start would be an interesting excercise.

[frakkintalos]

Sounds like the old Geek Code

Yeah. I was thinking something like that while reading Omra’s post.

As a starter, it could be quantified with a questionnaire and a rating system.

List a bunch of TV series and you rate them by much you know about them.

For example,

Star Trek - *****
BSG (1979) - ***
BSG (2005) - ****
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - *
Angel - *
V (1980) - **

This are not ratings of the shows quality but how much you as a geek know about them. You are essentially giving yourself power rankings, similar to the GWC Fantasy/SciFi team cards.

We could start with Omra’s initial set:

Media
Literature
Hobbies
Games
Collections
Clubs

Then rank your knowledge of these categories.

For me, it would be something like:

Media - *****
Literature - **
Hobbies - *
Games - *
Collections - **
Clubs - **