Hawaii Geek Week

Join HMAUS (Hawaii Mac & Apple User Society) Saturday May 23rd from 9 - 4pm as they present their MACSPRINGFEST at JAIMS (6660 Hawaii Kai Drive).

Plenty of great speakers including Peter Kay, Andy Bumatai, and Bert Lum; topics include iLife 09, Adobe Lightroom, and Social Networks and Livefeeds; plus there will be a camera and computer swapmeet by the Professional Photographers of Hawaii and HMAUS; and prizes and food just to name a few of the fun happening at MacSpringFest!

You can read all the details of speakers and events HERE.  Get the a copy of the flyer HERE.

Hope to see you there!

Mahalo to all the fascinating speakers, wonderful sponsors, and engaging participants that made Hawaii Geek Week such a success!   From Mactoberfest starting things off, to Podcamp ending the week, it was a great way to get all the Web 2.0 social-networking, photo-taking, blogging geeks together to highlight how technology is really changing our lives in some remarkable ways, right here in Hawaii!

Now, what about next year…?!

If you were able to attend any of the two-day Podcamp Hawaii event, you know how excellent it was.   But if you missed it, here are some stats with links to photos and tweets:

Stats

* Over 400 people attended the 2-day event.

* We had visitors from as far away as The Netherlands.

* Our official tag, “pch08″ was in 2nd place on both Twitter and Flickr!

* We had 40-90+ people in the live stream chat room at all times, and had viewers from around the world. Thank you to www.uStream.tv for featuring us on the home page of their site

[Source: Roxanne Darling]

Windward Community College is having their Tech Talk 2008, Friday the 24th, from 8am to 2pm. There will be free conferences showcasing UH Community Colleges’ education and training programs along with free workshops on the latest computer and Internet applications, including “WordPress for Absolute Novices” and “Digital Media Workflow for Educators and Presenters”.

It’s all happening in the Hale Akoakoa Building at WCC, with lots of door prizes and tours of the campus.

Friday and Saturday (24 and 25th) are Podcamp/Wordcamp Hawaii, in the Hawaii Convention Center.   Lots of great sponsors have come together to help make this event really special!   Add to this a great line up of speakers, including Matt Mullenweg, Congressman Neil Abercrombie, and Neenz Faleafine, on a wide variety of topics such as; Using Video to Build Community, Podcasting tips for Musicians & Bands, and Using Social Networks & Managing Privacy, and you’ve got two great days of networking, learning, and fun!

Check out the complete schedule for the event and be sure to register!   There’s even prize giveaways, and a Beach BBQ planned for Saturday night!   See you there…

Wednesday was the Web Weavers Workshop with Lorelle VanFossen, part of Hawaii’s Geek Week.   About 40 students had a great chance to learn the tricks and tips of successful blogging from Lorelle along with the hands-on steps of setting up a free Wordpress blog site.   All of the students received a copy of Lorelle’s book, Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging.

A large part of the class was designed to help each student come up with understanding what the purpose of their blog really is, the categories/topics of their sites, and even working on some sample posts.   Along with this was Lorelle’s great tips as a power-blogger, including Firefox add-ons like GreaseMonkey to help speed up blog posting.

If you missed this special Web Weavers Workshop, be sure to subscribe to Lorelle’s web site feeds for lots more great information!  Thanks to HMAUS (Hawaii Macintosh & Apple Users’ Society) for putting this event together!

[Photo by Eugene Villaluz from HMAUS.com]

The Blog Herald article by Lorelle VanFossen has a great run down of the of Mactoberfest and the Photo Walkabout that have started Hawaii Geek Week.   Lots of great photos and information in case you missed those events.

Saturday the 18th was the start of Hawaii Geek Week with Mactoberfest.   Lorelle VanFossen gave the Keynote on “How Wordpress Has Changed Lives” by giving a voice to millions of people through easy-to-use blogging software. (Lorelle will be teaching a class on blogging and Wordpress on Wednesday.)
Next up was a demonstration by Lorenz Sell of iLovePhotos, a face-recognition software application for Mac to help you tag and share your photos of friends and family.
Then John Dalton gave a demonstration of Studio Artist, allowing the user to “synthesize” images and movies in some really amazing ways.
After lunch, came the “Hawaii Geek Talk” with Burt Lum, Ryan Ozawa, Lorelle VanFossen, Neenz Faleafine, and Bob Lew. Discussions along with Q&A, plus the Door Prize giveaways, made for a very lively conversation!

If you missed it, or want to see what it was like, check out the iPhone to video captures that one of the audience created! (Thanks Edward!)

Don’t forget, there’s more cool Geek Week events coming up this week!

It’s official!

Eugene Villaluz with HMAUS picked up the proclamation from Governor Lingle’s office this morning, stating that the 18th through 25th is to be know as Hawaii’s Geek Week!

HMAUS be presenting the proclamation at Mactoberfest, Saturday, during their annual meeting.

Get your pocket protectors ready!

Here’s just a sample of some of the topics to be discussed during Hawaii Geek Week — October 18th through 25th:

Mactoberfest: Mac, Apple, iPod, iPhone, Macbook, flea market bargains, computer repair

Digital Photo Walkabout:  landscape photography, photo blogs, natural lighting, Hawaii’s beauty

Web Weavers Workshop: Blogging, Wordpress, articles, posts, comments, SEO, visitors

TechTalk: University of Hawaii technical education, training, classes, lectures, certifications, degrees

Hawaii Podcamp:  Podcasting, syndication, RSS feeds, subscriptions, Web 2.0

Of course, you’ll also find lots of other local Hawaii geeks at all of these events. But you better hurry and sign up now, spaces on some are very limited!