It has been over a decade since I first installed WordPress. I remember at the time how happy I was to find a free, open-source application that did almost everything I wanted a blog to do, effectively killing my own efforts to create a blogging platform of my own.
What impressed me most at the time was the potential for the community of developers that contributed custom web themes and plug-in functionality that could quickly extend WordPress well beyond what I might be able to do on my own. I knew just enough PHP to be dangerous, and that was empowering in a system that let me tweak existing code and feel accomplished.
Today, WordPress is more stable, more powerful and less of a headache to maintain. It is still a crapshoot when working with themes and plug-ins you didn’t program yourself, but even putting together this blog, I felt a great deal of satisfaction just playing with the interface, hacking when needed, and exploring what is possible.
That, too, is the essence of being a modern geek: find things that are interesting enough to grab your attention but imperfect enough to demand some tinkering. Throw in the social nature of that experimentation, and we have the foundation of a playful learning experience we call Geek Camp.
Now in its fifth year, a week of technology fun with family and a couple friends has become a multi-week, multi-age endeavor. I don’t get much vacation each year, but I gladly spend a week of it to watch and participate as kids from kindergarten to high school join us, having fun with failure and celebrating any success.
