Looking ahead ...

Geeks FSO, a local virtual community committed to open source development, is offering a free “open court/drop-in” workshop for coding apps and creating content every Friday evening from 4 to 7 PM at The Rack Café, 1844 Springfield Ave., Maplewood, NJ 07040. Our mission is to provide access to practice, like shooting hoops at a local gym or park.

If you want to hone your skills in coding apps or creating content then bring your laptop, tablet, or smartphone and join us. If you don’t have one of those, come on down anyway. We’ll work something out.

Starting with the first Friday in the coming academic semester (a la Essex County College), January 30^th, we will organize around a maximum of five continuing teams of two persons each, a “mentor” and a “student,” in addition to the “open court/drop-in” format. Team members will be selected on a first come/first served basis from a list of workshop participants who register and apply. After participating for two Fridays in a row, an individual may register to apply. After three Fridays he or she may apply to be added to the respective student/mentor lists from which team members are selected as vacancies occur. Teams will disband when either member dro ps out—either intentionally or after two consecutive absences from the Friday workshops—or after the last Friday of the academic semester, April 24^th in this case.


Some of the projects we are working on:

- Website basics: HTML, CSS, JAVA
Use w3schools.com website to learn and practice coding websites as an introduction to coding.

- Performance videos:
Participant paired with video professional to produce the participant's video of her performance.

- Live stream events:
Every Monday morning between 9 and 10am Geeks FSO holds a community forum as a livestream event at The Rack, as well as conducting the workshop as a livestream event.

- "How to" videos:
We are working on a videos that show
1. How to use products that have social value such as pedestrian safety reflectors.
2. How to use multiple cameras to enhance the visual effects of telling a story or providing information.

- Local virtual community for our Seniors/Older Adults:
See NYTimes: Retirees Turn to Virtual Villages for Mutual Support
Hilding "Gus" Lindquist, workshop coordinator, is a member of the virtual community of Community Geek: Using Science to Build Better Communities, providing resources for building successful online communities at communitygeek.com