Michael Kordahi asked people to write up what their geek origins were http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=1292. I had some fun digging around and finding old links from the past. So here is a brief rundown of my early years.

Early years:

My geek origin story definitely starts at school. My school was very forward thinking and every student was given an apple laptop, with a 4 grey scale screen! During school hours I’d be making Hypercard animations and games. I also got started with writing Quake 2 and halflife mods for fun and eventually moving on to homebrew on the SEGA Dreamcast. In my later school years I would experiment more and more with the school’s computers and networks. Every time they put up new restrictions, or installed new software like “Mac Admin”, it would only take me a few days before I was able to circumvent them. I was sent to the high school office on more than one occasion for this, and nearly expelled twice.

Those early years of “Burela vs. the admins” is probably what made me very vocal about computer freedoms such as internet filters (and also why I don’t get along with corporate IT in organisations very well).

University years:

I’ve always been a geek at heart, and the need to spread the knowledge has always been with me. University was a brilliant place to be who you want to be. This was definitely the origin of my love for participating in the developer community as I ended up running a lot of community events for geeks during these years.

It started off with me being nominated to be president of the University’s “school of computing society”, I found I had a knack for organising people and events and it all snowballed from there.

During one university year I:

This resulted in me becoming a Tasmanian finalist for “Young Australian of the Year” http://www.australianoftheyear.org.au/pages/page265.asp.

Because of those early origins as a community geek, to this day the early I am still running community events and participating every chance I get!

By David Burela