http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/nerd-and-geek-should-be-banned-professor-says/?partner=rss&emc=rss

And well, David Anderegg thinks I have been damaged by this or my son will be damaged by it.  Well here is my response to Mr. Anderegg.

Mr Anderegg,

Many words can have a negative connotation and when I was a child, nerd could have been one of them.  But now Geek and Nerd are words of power to my culture.  You coming along saying that they are word of damage proves that you haven’t worked to really understand the culture of nerds or geeks.  I love being a Geek.  I work in the land of IT. I do amateur photography as a hobby.  I tear apart tech to make it do things it wasn’t meant to do.  I play video games.  I love to work with wood and build things.  I love knowledge.  I am married.  I do what I can to be the best father I can.  I am working to do what I can to instill the geek into my son.  I have a solid core of friends that I can trust with my life.  I live in Mid-Michigan, certainly not a geek mecca.  I am not perfect. I have flaws but damn it, it wasn’t being called a geek or nerd that built these flaws.

I am tired of this crap thinking that we need to protect people from hurtful words.  We need to instill and build our children with the power to identify hurtful words and know how to grow from them.  I remember as a child one day clearly someone from a class older than me called me a faggot.  Now, I know didn’t know the slang of it was meant to be a hurtful words for homosexuals.  Heck, I really doubt she knew what faggot meant at that time either.  It hurt to be called that.  But it was from tone of voice and actions that made that word hurtful not the word itself.  Because of that, any word can be harmful.  What is next in your mind are we to ban the words Grease Monkey because to often in the media Grease Monkeys are reflected to be simple people working on mechanical devices?  I respect my Grease Monkey/Mechanic because he has knowledge that I do not.

It seems that the only people that sling around Geek and Nerd (or even Dork) in a hurtful way anymore are people that are jealous of the Power of the Geek.  Are you jealous of us Geeks?  Are you wishing to remove the power from us that we have build for ourselves by accepting label but then remaking the label to be one of power and status?  Are you trying to attack us and what we want of our children to be proud of what we are?

I am a Geek, a Nerd, a Dork and I am proud.  I wear it on my sleeve without fear.

Today I decided to start looking into some of the aspects of my life as a designer, I’m sure though the message is relevant elsewhere.. Please let me know what you think and if there are points you’d like to read about in more detail or even just ideas for topics you’d want me to explore.

The most critical aspect of the whole design process is communication, it is also disregarded the most often. While communicating should be a natural part of designer/client interaction it doesn’t seem to work out that way. I’ve had many meetings with clients where after they have left I go to my designers and ask “what is it they really want?” I’m guilty of not being clear myself and recently that point was driven home from my personal life and has me thinking about how can I more effectively communicate my intent where preconceived assumptions contradicts the words being said. Graphic design is all about selling the viewer, be it advertising or simply just a new company logo, you can’t just jump in knowing nothing of the product. More importantly you must know the client, what drives them. I’d say in my experience the rule has been clients rely too heavily on the creative team to read minds and know what to do, I’ll also go out on a limb by saying its due to them being afraid of the creative process. Just because in the past we designed something similar for that other company doesn’t mean “Just do something cool like you did for X” is going to mean you’ll see a finished ad campaign by 5 today. Every time a client came in and gave us total creative control without any direction and short deadlines the first draft has been completely rejected. It doesn’t stop with the rejection either, the deadlines are missed and the longer the project goes the more irritable the client and everyone becomes. Now when a client has a clear message, we have fewer redesigns and revisions and the project goes smoothly and on budget, the bonus being everybody is happier. Sure things are most typically a mix of the two extremes and thats where the knowing your client really helps because both parties are more relaxed and willing to discuss problems before they become major issues.

I don’t pretend to know how to be the greatest communicator on the planet nor do I have the answers on how to become better. What I do know though is it is something we all need to be aware of when we meet with clients and ask ourselves “Am I doing all I can to put the client at ease and allowing him to express concerns and explaining the process clearly?”

In a way its like what our parents would tell us when we were children “Those bears are more scared of you than you are of them”

You know what I want to know really….what happened to the computer hackers, like the white hat freaks in the garage or at workbenches making stuff doing wacky tasks?  Where are the people that just want to do something for doing sake?

I don’t know if it is an age thing, something with society or what, but it seems as time is moving on, there are less people wanting to break and remake things.  I pick on the iPhone as it is one of the most popular things at the moment that is perfect to explain this.  I understand people wanting technology to just work and I understand that some do not want to hassle with things.  But to mindlessly drone forward about things seems a bit dumb too.  I know there are groups out there that have jailbreak’ed the iPhone, but in the end, that is quasi-legal/illegal.  Why?  Why are we so willing to be told how to use a piece of tech?  Why are we ok with the idea of Apple choosing what apps and functions the iPhone can do?  I understand that is just how Apple is, but why are we taking it so easily?  Why are we sheep simply obeying?

I have never liked this attitude.  I have sucked it up for 10 years now as it is really SOP of mobile phone companies.  If you didn’t know SOP is Standard Operating Procedure and if you didn’t, you have been a very lucky soul never to work in the likes of Best Buy or similar.  This SOP shit has been the main reason that I see my cell phone as just a phone, nothing else.  I cannot allow it to contain data or processes that I may truly depend on one day.  As I may need that data for something the mobile companies do not “allow.”  But now, I am wanting a smart phone of some sort and you know what, that iPhone sure is purdy.  But do I really want to have to play by more and more rules?  Seeing how Apple seems to be pulling apps or denying apps on what feels to be whims.  Why are accepting to be locked into only one carrier to only have one bit of tech?  When coverage sucks for some carriers, I should give up coverage for that bit of Shiny?

It seems that I am down to one choice in the land of phones, some sort of Blackberry, as it seems to be the most open of the lot with decent coverage but that isn’t saying much in the end.  Still, Blackberry is in the traps of only certain hardware on certain carriers.

Dammit it all, people give me a piece of tech that I can move around with and carriers make it worth while to me to be with you for allowing different tech on your system but giving me coverage.  Coverage to me is the key to the worth of a carrier.

Why?  It was more given to me really.  I had a coworker once that was fond of saying “Do it up Captian” or similar just referring to people as Captain.  Nothing really odd, I know.  But in this same group of coworkers, it was common to ask me if I had my Angry Pants on that day.  I can be a surly cuss at times.

Once and while, my handle is used in real life, but usually more so when someone is making a joke or if I am being a surly cuss.  But on a daily basis, I am Eric.  That is my name.  I like it.

Ok, ok, so I am rambling.  But it is at least partially at heart to my question:  Why do people use their very obviously fake names in real life?

Now I can understand having a stage name, cause well, we need our strippers and pornstars.  But it seems really queer to me to for the more average person even the “internet special” person to be using a stage name in real life.  You go to some meeting or convention and they want to be referred to as the stagename.

I’m sorry?  I wanna call you Bill or Sam or Angelica.  It just seems impersonal to call them by their handle or it seems douchey on their part to want to be called by the monkier.  I want to communicate to the person inside, not the faux shell.  And don’t even get me started on those special types that desired to be called their Wiccan, Werewolf, Fae or Furry names.  *shudders*

I guess I live too much in a closed off world or are they just douchebags?

I disagree completely with this logic.

See, I don’t know of anyone that uses an upgrade path for OSes anymore.  It is just silly.  Nearly every single time I have installed an OS as an upgrade it has lead to the machine needing a format and reload.  Thing just don’t usually translate well.  Plus, it is just nicer to have a clean machine for the new OS to play in.

And really how is Win 7 going to get into the hand of people, they are going to buy a new machine with Win 7 preinstalled or they are going to buy a copy.  And buying a copy by itself, yeah, I only know the computer savvy to do that and we like to nuke our drives for that squeeky clean feeling for the new install.

The other way it is going to be in the users hands is in the work place.  And I know few places that are going to just hand discs out for random installs in the workplace.  They are going to either purchase a machine with it preinstalled or an IT professional is going to prototype, test and probably make an image for a rollout.  And I don’t see using a preinstalled XP for the prototyping.

Anyone that is using this as an excuse to think Microsoft is doing something stupid just isn’t thinking about it.  I think it is wise to make this cut off.  Win 7 at its core is similar to the core of Vista.  That means drivers are the same mostly.  XP drivers are not compatible.  And if anything is going to break an install, it is drivers.  It is nearly always drivers.

So I am looking forward to Win 7.  It has been working better than Vista in my experience. I am looking forward to using it at home and I am planning on suggesting it for replacement for XP in many of the work places I watch over.

I just fear the SKUs.

Good Morning Jason,

I know that this message is mostly likely going into a huge inbox somewhere and I really don’t expect a response, but please use this as another bit of ammo for communication to the content providers that are on Hulu.

We want our entertainment.  We want it when we want it.  We want to be able to retrieve it easily.  Now the we here I speak of is my family, but I have a funny feeling that many other tech savvy types are very very similar.

Hulu is great, why?  Because it has a huge achieve of shows that I have loved from the 80s when I grew up to recently ran shows.  I can watch them anywhere if I need.  It is great to have this access in my office or on the road.  But here is the thing, I DO NOT want to be restricted to a 15 inch or 22 inch screen at home.  I have a blessed plasma HDTV in my living room for view media.  I want to be in my La-Z-Boy with a beer in hand.  Yup, I am the tech savvy joe public type.

So I have cable service but I rarely watch at the times shows are on.  Why?  Because I am busy.  I am a father, a husband and have two businesses.  I have a DVR in house.  (MythTV if you care to know)  I have this DVR record from the cable and from over the air content.  Guess what, this DVR has the ability to strip commercials from the shows.

Now on this DVR (a full fledge computer) I have Boxee.  Boxee is a god sent to me.  Why?  Because I can use my remote in my La-Z-Boy to pull up my content on my 42″ screen.  And guess what, when watching Hulu on through Boxee it is really no different than watching it with Firefox or Internet Explorer or any other browser.  When I watch Hulu, the media is full screened, nothing but the media is showing.

But here is the difference.  I watch commercials with Hulu delivered through Boxee.  Because they are there.  I don’t mind commercials.  Hell, commercials done well and well placed can be fun.  I understand commercials help bring around my entertainment.  I am ok with that, but please, vary the commercials, make them fun, make them worth my eyes.

But now Boxee has played nice, because Hulu took their ball and went home.  Because content providers didn’t like that new kid over there playing with the ball?  Hey News Corp, NBC/Universal?  Are you children that cannot share within reason?  Hulu is a nice free to me with limited use of commercials legit way for me to view the entertainment.  What I use to view Hulu shouldn’t be your concern.  Because us geeks, we will always find ways.  It is our Standard Operating Procedure.

Right now, since I am the La-Z-Boy type, I can just have my DVR get the shows, have it strip the commercials.  Then there is that other way of the Internet, downloading of shows from a non legit source.  And I have been told, that normally the non legit sources have the commercials removed too.

The under 40 crowd is quickly becoming an On Demand culture.  And it isn’t so much that I want something now now now.  It is more we want something when we want it.  We like to watch a season’s worth of TV in a couple weekend from a DVD collection or from a collected season on a DVR.  We don’t live in a world where we can give up 8 to 11 every night (yes eastern time zone for me) for shows.  Sometimes we need to watch shows at 1 am or from 11 to 4 on a Saturday (good replacement for the non sport type.)  This is who we are.  We are quickly becoming your main demographic.  Do not limit us unfairly.  We do not forget.   But if we do forget, we are creatures of habit.  And right now,  I am going to be less in the habit of watching content through Hulu.  Less eyes on your commercial support.

Here is my suggest for you content providers for the future.  Figure out how to use the Internet to deliver your content.  Figure out a way to deliver the content in the most simple of methods.  Do not worry about how the content in the end is viewed.  Because you cannot keep up with the technology, TV to iPod to laptops to netbooks to computers in the kitchen.  Make it simple, so simple, no one will want to put the effort into pirating.  You want money.  You need us to make the money.  We want your content.  But don’t limit us on how we are meant to view the content.

I am sorry Hulu.  Most of us in the interwebs understand that you are just a middle man in this issue.  Please continue your work.  Best of luck to you with ironing out these issues.  I love your site.  I love that I can watch show in a legit fashion.  Gives me warm fuzzies.  But I have to say, since I started to use Boxee a few months ago, I would say 80% of my Hulu use has been through Boxee on the big screen.

So, what is everyone else thinking?