GeekFest Amman

GeekFest Amman takes place tomorrow at funky outdoor venue Q-Yard in Shmeisani. It's being put together by those nice people at Art Medium, specifically the UNorganisers are art geek Sarah Abualia and uber-blogger Roba Al-Assi. They've done a stunning job, too - as well as the talks there are a number of stations where various strange, interesting or just silly things will be happening. Because of Sara's involvement in art, there's a real arty feel to the event as far as I can see and I do think that's very cool (and something we can perhaps bring to GeekFest Dubai as a stronger element!)

The Social Map Project: 
An interactive installation where participants will physically create a tangible social map of their virtual connections by connecting their twitter handle name tag to their acquaintances online. Sign up for it here!

Twit-tionry 
A new spin on the classic game pictionary where a player's drawing on a computer will be projected on a screen using a Wacom tablet while participants tweet their guesses using a specific hashtag. The screen would be split into two sections, a section for the live twitterfeed of that hashtag and a section of the actual drawing.

Augmented reality interaction using Kinect
This will be interesting as all we manage to do with Kinects at GeekFest Dubai is behave like idiots.

Arduino workshopNow this is seriously geeky! Arduino is an open source sensor and controller array and programming language that lets people create  devices that use sensory input to control interactions and responses. Does that make sense? Here's the Arduino website!

GameFest
A mix of X-Box and Jordanian card-playing website Jawaker.

TFest!
There'll be a t-shirt making station where geeks can scribble on their own free t-shirt, provided by Mlabbas.

LegoFest
Yes, there's going to be a Lego station!


GeekFitti
As well as a jokes wall for everyone to make a mess on, there'll be live graffiti artists scrawling away through the evening!

GeekTalks
Rami Daher, an urban designer and architect who'll discuss the relationship between urban design, systems and spaces, and Jo Blin an artist who will be talking about environmental activism with art. Software engineer Fouad Mardini will discuss Artificial Intelligence and the philosophy of the mind and Roba Al-Assi will do an twitter engaging talk on that great question #IsThisArt?

As well as all that, there's pizza, cupcakes and knafeh along with drinks. Who could want for more? I'm not able to make it this time around and I'm insanely jealous. If you're in/going to be in Amman, you can follow @GeekFestJo or look 'em up on Facebook right here. Have fun, guys!

PS: If you are in Amman and planning to go along, apparently the 7th Circle - Khalda will be closed, so do plan an alternative route!