I had planned to blog about this earlier, but as Alex said, we were internet free all weekend. For people who tend to im to each other when in the same apartment, you know this was more than a small disruption for us.
In any case, last Tuesday I took part in the technology career day at the High School of Computers and Technology in the Bronx. I was super nervous about it to begin with, but then became even more nervous when I realized other speakers included people from MTV and Honeybee Robotics. Just to give you an idea of how this makes one nervous—Honeybee makes robots that hang out in outer space. For serious.
Tuesday morning started with a two hour subway ride from Brooklyn to the Bronx (two transfers!). When I was about 10 stops from my stop, my subway neighbor threw a bible on the floor and started yelling at everyone on the train. When he finally got to me, the only parts I could understand were dirty whore and cancer. Hey! Whatever you said, that’s not nice and I still have five more stops to go!
When I finally made my way to the school, things started to lookup. I grabbed some coffee, met up with Ed Bringas, found a projector in the classroom I was using, met a few nice teachers, learned the Honeybee guy would not be joining us (perhaps he was intimidated by MY bio?), and met some of the kids.
Since I needed to have a 45 minute presentation ready, I actually had index cards with topics to talk about – that’s the kind of nervous nerd I am. I talked about everything from working on the high school yearbook (sports editor represent!) to SubAlerts (Woot! Woot!). The kids seemed mildly interested and asked some wild questions like “How much money do you make?” “Are you happily married?” and “Will you hire me? I need a job.” They also had some serious questions like “What do you like best about your job?” By the time the second presentation ended and the questions were repeated, I realized their teacher had given them a list of suggested questions to ask.
Overall it was a pretty good experience. The kids were into social software, especially myspace and blogs, and game design. Sadly, I only know what I hear about games via Alex, so I talked about what I thought might be involved in such a career, but if we have some game designers out there, I think these kids would love to meet you.
Check out some photos from Mo!
