GeekFest. The Wrap.

The 3D printer printed, the talkers talked, the Oculus Rift immersive 3D gaming experience thingy was too scary for me to try out and Jay Wud played a glorious gig much, one suspects, to the unease of the various residents of Emaar's Downtown district. The sound splashing back from the surrounding expensive high rise was a strange demonstration of wave theory. I bet he's never played to a grassy sward scattered with geeks sprawled on bean bags before.

I got a 3D printed penguin from Jackys' Ashish Panjabi (a clearly unkind reference to the DJ I wore to host the t-break gaming and technology awards) which I find unreasonably cool. Grumpy Goat got his copy of Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy which appeared to make him happy (you owe me Dhs60, ya goat) and we all got to meet loads of people we haven't seen in ages - but see online every day.

Huge thanks to Nick Rego for organising the Oculus thingy as well as the stupid cartoon game that had a small crowd enraptured for the whole evening, as well as to the chaps from Eureeca, Sekari, the most laudable Sameness Project and Nabbesh - it was nice to see the Sameness Project folks, Eureeca and Nabbesh all work out they might have business together. Thanks, too, to Uber for the Dhs100 limo vouchers, although I'm not sure how many people actually used them.

DSF's Market Out of The Box (Market OTB) container-based alternative marketplace continues through this week and I do recommend a visit - there is much funkiness to be found there. Baker and Spice's pumpkin quiche is quite, quite ridiculously good.

There are no plans to do it again, but Saadia had a nasty gleam in her eye as we parted. She is small and I find myself all too easily bullied by small people.

GeekFest Gets A Website. And An Oculus Rift.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So you know what a website is, but what the hell's an Oculus Rift? Good question!

First the website. It's massively overdue, but then so's stuff like streaming the talks which just takes too much co-ordination, organising and general caring about things for us to get involved with. But now GeekFest finally has a website.

www.GeekFestME.com is the place to be.

It's the creation of UberGeek Aqeel Fikree, a talented website builder, photographer and bison wrangler. Right now it's an archive of things from GeekFests past, but has the potential (should this be deemed desirable) to act as a central repository for things GeekFest, from content derived from the various events through to community contributions, news and the like. It's really about what (if anything) people want to make of it. You can hit Aqeel up at @AkeelFikree or using the contact form on the website if you have ideas, content or contributions to make.

GAMEFEST MADNESS!

Now on to the Oculus Rift. This is a hyper-cool virtual reality headset the drooling gamer goons lovely chaps from t-break are bringing to GameFest. It's apparently the latest in puke-inducing immersive gaming gadgets. Apparently there are not only brain-spinning demos to play with but also @MrNexyMedia will be demoing his game in-development, so we're talking cutting edge beta type experience things here!!!

There'll also be a PS3 multiplayer area where people can make complete goons of themselves - always a popular element of GeekFest.

That's all in addition to the GeekTalks, TechnoCases, flowing Red Bull and a free rock gig from Jay Wud. I mean, what MORE could you want for a Wednesday evening?

PLEASE don't forget we're collecting old notebooks for poor Sri Lankan medical students!

Here's the PDF map. GeekFest will start, as usual, when you get there (if you come!) but about 7pmish is a guideline if you want to know what time to arrive late after. The talks will start around 8ish. There's no registration, no age limit, no height restriction or any other form of organisation. If you'd like to come along, you're splendidly welcome.