JoziGeekDinner – more delight with less delirium this time | Hunter of Genius : Max Kaizen

THANK YOU MIKE!! Huge thanks to that force of nature: Stopforth wentforth and magicked up a brilliant evening for the Jozi geeks to map their network offline.

Big smiles and lots of surprised people, whose illusions/delusions of what geekery is, have been soundly smashed. It rocked.
Mike & I are now veterans of the SA Geek Dinner scene, and give bountiful thanks to Graham Knox of Stormhoek Wines for starting the meme (you’re a legend dude!) along with the blogging behemoth Hugh MacLeod (Gaping Void) for making it sooo sexycool to get out from behind our screens and play realtime : where LOL actually has an associated sound component.

I was completely staggered by the fact that right at the moment I’d been waiting for all damn week – the Seth Godin surprise (the real Free Prize Inside of this event) – I went to pee.. charming. (thank you Mike for the replay mate.. and respect to Seth for potent inspiration that gave us renewed fire under our broeks!) Especially love Seth because of Small is the New Big meme – if you’ve ever met me you’ll know why :-P

Met so many bloody brilliant beings, and reconnected with buds that I haven’t seen in ages who I seriously digg: From dazzling mate Christof & his real sillybilly (yes I do mean boy-goat) story that celebrated South African quirkiness to the sobering strength of storyteller supremo Aiden; the incisive clarity of Gabi the sharp brutha (sorry I didn’t get to chat more to you, and Adriano); Roger the macgeek who introduced me to young visionary Thando, and assaulted by Jacques who tagged me a hippie (hahaha.. I only wish!); all too briefly pinged Heinrich; my bud Mark (who was 1 of the surprised fellows that we geeks don’t look like troglodytes); readjusted the Scott awhile by asserting the fact that I’m actually a girl version; blazed by Metacognitive Carl (you’re a keeper bru!); rapped about nanotech, RPG’s, math, arcane Egyptian philosophy and other scruptious brainsnacks with Andrew; am determined to discover more about leadership with George; got lots of love from the irrepressible Tumi; did the quick connect-in with the Missing Links who I think looked at the rest of us pretty disdainfully.. but went to their office next day and was blown away – you guys are too damn cool for school, especially Rich who may well be one of the scarysmartest peops I’ve met in a while (if you get a chance, wangle your way to their playspace you wont be disappointed)..

I missed my Cape Town geeks madly.. maybe we come up with a crazyass way to do this gig in the air next time. Thanks to all of you for making me feel so welcome back in gold-veined Jozi.. I loved it, and think I may actually have been well-behaved this time!

The beginning of many outstanding collaborative projects will emerge, like Bar Camp, from this dinner. I’ve seen the power of loosly banding brilliant people with brave ideas together and allowing for freeplay; which is why my impassioned rant was heartfelt >> go explore beyond your boundaries and discover that there are many more wild ones out there to support your own crazy ideas than you ever imagined.

PS. hugest thanks to my mate Dee (fellow F8r, beautiful, brilliant friend and generally outstanding being) who marvelled at the bright jozigeek (jeek – thx Mike) mindsparkings (we’ll make a geek of her yet!)

12 comments

Mike says:

Oct 9, 2006

You were a big part of the evening’s success – thanks for the generous constribution of your time and thoughts – you inspired many of the Jozi ‘Jeeks’ into thinking beyond the mundane.

Good job friend.

contribution even

rafiq says:

Missed you did I Max, glad you’re back :)

Me thinks its time for BarCamp Cape Town #2

Just with morethan the amount of pplz there were last time , ooh & in touristy season too so we can have geeks from around the globe coming to barcamp isiKapa on their South African holiday/vacation.

What you think? Conrad/Dave/Mike/Max?

Maximillian Kaizen says:

Thank you mrIQ.. I missed ya too :-P you would’ve had a jol with the Jozi okes!
Timing it with the holidays is a gr8 idea>> then we can really have some fun with it cos it’ll be summer & we can get more adventurous – bigger bolder barcamp rocking perpetual beta

Roger Saner says:

Indeed – here’s the phrases which I sms’d to myself as you spoke:

“Irrationally optimisic determination.” “Don’t buy into the average.” “Honour your bravery.” Thanks Max!

Andrew says:

Thanks for a wonderful “fly-by-the-pants” speech – admittedly I’m still not entirely certain what we’re meant to do with genius once it has been captured… but nevertheless, your presence was quite wonderful and inspired substantial quantities of thought and ruminations.

Hopefully at some future date we’ll get a chance to thrash out how the Fourth Way really works and trade books and ISBN’s, but until then continue having as much fun as humanly possible.

YAY for you Mr Saner (BTW Saner than who? how cool, wish I was). I believe we\’re at the point where a gr8 deal of irrational optimism for the future we can construct will be needed in HUGE supply (particularly in South Africa where many seem positively addicted to safe-buckled cynicism).

Geeks know better than most how to build whole worlds where none imagined they could.. which is why I still firmly believe that the geek shall inherit the earth :-D

Andrew – so excellent chatting to you Bit of the polymath in you I think. Well I am seriously looking forward to more insightful exchanges: okay I\’ll trade the 8-fold Way for your 4-fold
..and oh my gosh ISBN\’s (dude! that\’s almost erotic ..worked at Exclusive Books for many more years than I should\’ve because of my book fetish.. yum!) scary, sure I shouldn\’t have divulged that bit of info :-P

Oct 10, 2006

I think I’m far too much of a dilettante to be a polymath right now (thankfully I have a lifetime to change that). The big step right now is to hammer in all the necessary self-changes to become a full autodidact and use that to bootstrap in polyglotism.

I’m afraid that this isn’t a particularly erotic ISBN (I’ll try *harder* next time), but it could tie in very nicely with your previous post about time keeping and whatnot: 0874775043. This recommendation is based upon the assumption that you’re doing the odd bits of procrastination (although I’m tempted to believe that it afflicts everyone in Cape Town…). If this indeed the case, then you should first realize that once you understand a concept, you can then alter it with far greater ease. The Now Habit is quite wonderful in that regard. Over and above my recommendation, the GTD meme/cult has latched onto this book as another Ye Elder Holy Book and I am patiently waiting for them to stumble onto Flow and see what unholy trinity could spring from that.

Oct 12, 2006

oh you are too fabulous Andrew! ROTFL :’-D .. considering how we can in fact play a little role in swinging the potent Csikszentmihalyi creative duo (son Chris a dangerman in no small way either!) flowing to the southern shores.
Keen to swing a plan together.. maybe we crowdsource an ingenius lure..even craft something we could accessorize with an ISBN (hmmm…)

Oct 13, 2006

Hmmm. I am most definitely game for any such plans – throw me an email if you start any undertakings in this and I’ll see how I can help play it out. And I can’t help but picture you accessorizing a gaggle of GTD geeks with little ISBN pin tags – “Ooh! I’m 1585424579, who are you ?”. PS – Don’t mind me: I’m only mildy eccentric.

hahahaha… oh thank heavens I don’t feel so utterly bizarre now! damn.. think we gotta get this happening if for nothing other than it’ll be brilliant good fun working with you !-D