A Geek with a Hat

along with posts for non-tech readers, including a blog himself making  Wild Mushroom Stroganoff.

I found myself intrigued by his blog – (the posts I could understand.) And I was not alone in my gratitude for his ‘Why Programmers Work at Night’ article.  He, however, was surprised by the response. “I felt it wasn’t a very informative post, just musings of a hacker who has always loved the night-time,” he wrote.  He was ”certain it wasn’t that interesting,” and  surprised that it became his most popular post ever. “How did  all of this happened? I honestly haven’t a clue, there are tens if not hundreds of posts on this blog more deserving of such infamy, but I guess people like a good pat on the back and an easy “Yeah totally. I can totally agree with that!”

True to geek form, he monitored his web stats and traffic. And he shared them.

 ”A geek with a hat” is a 5 year old blog that normally gets 30,000 visitors a month. That’s impressive enough. By the 4th day after he posted the article, he had  627 + (likes) on google plus, 550 tweets mentioning the article, 288 new twitter followers, 475 comments on Reddit, 173 comments on his own blog, 89,000 visitors on Friday alone, not to mention 7,000 facebook likes, and 192,208 unique page views.  That’s a 5000% increase over the normal traffic!

I hoped he was from Las Vegas or LA so I could interview him in person.  His twitter said he was from Ljubljana, Slovenia.  Clever, I thought.  Only a geek with a sense of humor would have listed that as a location. I felt encouraged. Maybe he was one of those cool dudes from LA, a Hollywood hipster geek perhaps?  I wondered if he would drive to Vegas so Tolga and I could take exclusive photographs of the geekster.  First things first.

Who exactly is Swizec Teller?

The Skype Call

I asked him what % of his closest friends are programmers. He paused for a sec and said, “All my friends are programmers, so close to 100%.”

I didn’t know what that meant, so I looked at Tolga who gave thumbs up. I said, “Wow,” and included it for my hacker friends like Trevor Blaszo and others who will understand. Swizec is a hacker and a programmer, but he has never been to a Defcon or a PyCon or even a developer conference for that matter. In Ljubljan, they have “BarCamps” where attendees give a demo, a session, or help with one. He participates in those.

His goal is to finish college in Slovenia, head to Silicon Valley and launch a tech startup.  Silicon Valley is the perfect place for the hipster-looking geek with the hat – they will love him there. Maybe the guys with the Hackbus can meet him and give him a ride to his first Defcon where he can hang with Trevor or code with Tolga all night.

I suspect you’ll be hearing more about Swizec Teller in the months to come, so keep your eye on him.  He’s worth following.

His blog: http://swizec.com

His twitter: http://twitter.com/swizec