Share
The Lego Robotics team from the Fort Mill Area Homeschoolers had just finished its "How to Make a Video Game" class when a man rushed in.
Check out the table in the lobby, he insisted, where you can make your own DNA necklaces.
And they were off.
It was a see-it-for-yourself kind of day at the sixth annual Geek Fest, held Thursday at Central Piedmont Community College's Levine campus in Matthews. It is billed as THE Geek Fest, to emphasize its originality and to direct people to the right Web site at www.thegeekfest.com.
Up to 4,000 guests were expected to check out the daylong event highlighting cutting-edge technology. It included hands-on classes in creating video games, sessions on social networking, green careers, and more.
The crowd size reflected how more people are embracing the "geek" way, said event co-founder Barry Gilmore.
"Now, it's very stylish," said Gilmore, student life coordinator at the Levine campus. "People are seeing it in everything. The older generation is coming on board now - Googling stuff, buying things, researching gifts."
While a range of ages packed a classroom for a demonstration of Google Wave - which allows online, real-time group communication - festival co-founder Adam Brooks roamed the hall with a megaphone, using it to announce the start of new classes. A CPCC student kept a lightsaber in hand while staffing the table promoting the college's Web Technologies courses.
Terry McMicking, an executive secretary at CPCC, sold her "Chic Geek" accessories that she makes solely for the festival. Think computer "Tab" keys as brooches, and pieces of computer circuit board adorned with hematite turned into necklaces.
"I was looking at circuit boards one day and I said, 'That's cool,'" said McMicking, a metalsmith.
Then there was that DNA jewelry. That table stayed busy with visitors who swished Gatorade, spit in a cup, and then added a soap solution and cold ethanol to preserve the DNA in a cloudy white concoction. They finished off the task by using a medicine dropper to deposit the liquid in small decorative vials they could string around their necks.
"I thought it would come out gross. It's pretty cool," said Erica Lou Allen, a 19-year-old CPCC nursing student.
That doesn't surprise Gilmore: "People are really realizing that geek is chic."
