Powers of Nerdly Love - Activate!

Filed Under BBT Magazine, BBT, Fantasy, New England, Blogging, NY Comic Con, Boston, CBLDF, Kevin Smith, New York, Appletown, NY Comicon, Nerds, Comic Books, Fandom, Boom-Boom, Lucien Spelman, Descendum Pantorum, Arsgeek, being twelve, freegeekery, Greatest American Hero, Gamers dvd, Comics | 2 Comments

 

We have a chance here to make a dream come true for someone.

Our good friends at ArsGeek are trying to get a real life hero to meet some of his fantasy counterpart’s creators and we have it in our power to help.

Open your minds and pockets for just a few seconds and help this young man to lighten his load a little.

Here’s Ben with the story:

 

My name is Benjamin Gerber and I’m the owner and Editor in Chief for ArsGeek.com, a tech/life oriented web community with a focus on culture, art and new and emerging technology.

ArsGeek will be at the 2008 New York ComicCon and we’re working on getting one of our own heroes there with us.

Meet Jonathon Masuoka. Jonathon was born with spastic quadriplegia cerebral palsy. He’s spent his life in a wheelchair and although he has the mind of regular 15 year old, he’s unable to utilize his body and has difficulty speaking. Jonathon has a wonderful mind and personality trapped inside his body where he’s limited to some use of his left hand.

Jonathon has a true love for all things superhero. Comics, movies and video games, they have all given him joy and strength and he would like nothing more than to meet the people behind his passion. We’re going to do the best we can to see this dream come true.

He’s enriched his life through the idea of superheroes - people who can literally do anything. His love for superheroes and all that they stand for has helped him through some very rough times, for instance by taking on their persona’s before and after many of his surgeries.

Our goal is to acquire the necessary resources to get Jonathon and his mother Dawn, who is an editor at ArsGeek, from Oregon to New York to attend the convention with us and make his dream of meeting the creators of his fantasies come true.

We are hoping you can help us out in this regard. Either with direct sponsorship, or simply spreading the news of our campaign to get Jonathon to ComicCon NY. There are several ways you can help Jonathon.

  • Direct sponsorship of the trip (cash).

  • Indirect sponsorship (helping to spread the news of our campaign).

  • Lending your name to the campaign.

  • Arranging for in-kind services to help Jonathon – hotel rooms, admission, travel, etc.

Any support you can lend to this campaign would be most appreciated. Of course, any support would be publicized on the ArsGeek.com website if you desire.

ArsGeek currently receives over 240,000 unique viewers a month and we are steadily increasing our numbers. Our current Google page rank is 5 and we’ve been featured on BoingBoing.net, LifeHacker, have been on Digg and Reddit’s front page many times and are increasingly becoming relevant to those interested in new technology and geek culture.

You can read more about Jonathon and our campaign at http://www.arsgeek.com and reach us at comiccon@arsgeek.com.

We hope to hear from you soon about our campaign to get Jonathon to ComiCon NY!

Thanks for your time,

Benjamin Gerber

Owner, Editor in Chief

Arsgeek.com

 

Do yourself and Jonathon a favor, and use your powers of nerdly love to make his heart full.

- Lucien

 

 

 

The Future of Meetings. Sweet, Sweet Meetings.

Filed Under BBT Magazine, The Future, meetings, second life, Arsgeek, technology | 15 Comments

Arsgeek
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Since I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time in meetings this week, my column will focus on the joy and wonderfulness that will be the meetings of the future. Technology will bring us to new heights of group ineffectiveness as our simulated shelfs doodle on simulated note pads or dream simulated dreams while emulating a light doze.

Wait, perhaps that’s not quite the image I’m looking to get across as we peer into the future of the online meeting. Let’s lay down a little ground work on what will power these virtual meeting spaces and our virtual selves who’ll meet in them.

avatar.gifThe first thing we’ll need to bring to a virtual meeting is – ourselves. How will we be represented? Why by the avatar of course. If you’d like to see a current and wonderful example of just how avatars work, I suggest you head on over to Second Life (after you finish reading this here article of course) and sign yourself up. Avatars are virtual representations of ourselves. They can take the form of well, ourselves but in pixilated joy or they could be dragons, giant furry pandas or a walking, talking waffle iron. Whatever form they take, they’re supposed to represent our consciousness as we stride around virtual space killing orcs or building virtual palaces. Or attending meetings.
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