For the past eight years, NYC artist/designer Chris Jordan, aka CJ (seej.net) has been organizing a tech swap with the NYC tech arts community. It’s lovingly called “G33k Xmas,” and every one of them has been recorded in timelapse at seej.net/create/geek-xmas/
Here’s CJ on how it G33k Xmas works:
People bring tech, then going around the table, everyone offers their stuff to the group with a brief intro if necessary, or just holds it up. If anyone wants it, they get it. If more than one person wants it, each party has to tell the group what they’ll be using it for, and the group decides which need is greater. If no one wants something you’re offering, you take it back. This really keeps useful things in the mix, vs “dumping” old stuff. This of course is just incredible fun, and gets pretty raucous.
The last one was on Feb 20th, and as always, it was… just wonderful. The photo (above) shows a fun moment when Josh Goldberg got a haptic interface from Josh Ott. To the left of Josh is Sean McIntyre, who’s in the current MAKE. Also pictured are Noodle-truck Mark; Ethan Voit, who started Bring to Light; Benton-C Bainbridge, the Beastie Boys visualist; Josh Ott who wrote the iOS app Thicket… and on and on… crazy people, hehehe.
It would be so cool if more people did this. A couple of people who were there on Feb 20th were talking about doing it again soonish, not sure when/where though. Also, some people might do one in SF.
Along with being fun, G33K Xmas is an education in hardware and its usefulness, it keeps people’s knowledge broad, and of course it reduces materialism– keeps gear in use and out of landfill.
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