GEEKS OF THE (ARAB?) WORLD, REJOICE!
You know you’re in Beirut when you hear a girl screaming into her phone “Ta3o 3a Jimmeyzeh la2anna wel3aneh!”. Loosely translated that means Lebanese people know how to have more fun than any of us. On July 5th though, Jimmeyzeh is going to be wel3aneh with the sounds of Geekdom.
In what is apparently a pop-up street festival of geeky inclusiveness, Jimmeyzeh, known for its lively, young atmosphere, will come alive in a street festival called GeekFest 5.0. It is basically an OFFLINE (very important) event where ONLINE individuals can meet to socialize in a fun, educational setting. Bloggers, developers, and twitter kings, among others, meet to share ideas, food and drinks, and good music in a sponsored event with performances lined up for the whole day, with everything from ‘A Geek Fashion Show’ with real “geeks” as models, to a series of bands and DJ’s expressing their musical talent.
There have been some underground meetings of the Egyptian twitterverse here and there; most of have been in a politicized context. But to create a festival style forum for it is absolutely geeky genius. What’s surprising is that since the first GeekFest in 2009, there have been similar events in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Amman, and even our very own Cairo and Alexandria! Given the impact social media has had over the past 18 months in Egypt, with many online personas coming to light and even more falling from grace, a newer, fresher version of this celebration of the geeks, an Egyptian GeekFest, would not only be packed (we do tend to come in numbers), it would give us all a chance to meet the pixelated names we so avidly follow in a disarming, now potentially politically toned down, setting. We now “follow” the decision makers that affect our lives and hold them to ever higher and stricter standards. The online universe has turned into a portal of continuous checks and balances, and the Geeks that manage the pages we refresh so diligently need to come out and play.
The world has changed around us and I’m happy to report that we’ve kept up the pace. The fields of web development, graphic design, online media management, app development, and much more have taken center stage and transformed our understanding of “Information Technology”. The aesthetically pleasing and oh-so-helpful everyday tools we’ve become dependent did not spontaneously materialize. Beirut’s GeekFest is a more than just a meeting of thick-rimmed-glasses-and-ripped-jeans-wearing nerds, its an introduction to the movers and shakers of the vast and growing worlds projected from our PCs, that have come to affect even the littlest things we do.
The fact that there are no real rules or guidelines as to what should be done at a GeekFest make it the ultimate creative energy outlet defined by the signs of the times. I say we make our way to Jimmeyzeh to meet the awkward know-it-alls. We could learn a thing or two from the Geeks and more importantly this time around from our Lebanese compatriots, definitely not the least of which how to party right!