EVENT
Origin of Geek Cruises and Karaoke with Neil
- The entire global phenomenon of Geek Cruises—which eventually brought thousands of developers and open-source pioneers together on luxury voyages—grew out of a Portland classroom, a stack of code printouts, and a local karaoke bar.
The Fateful Tutoring Session
- In 1999, Neil Bauman was a student in my open-enrollment Perl programming classes in Portland.
- Neil was struggling with some code he had already written and asked for extra help after class. I agreed to sit down with him, but when our scheduled hour ended, Neil still wanted more time to review his printouts.
- Eager to head out for the evening, I gave him an ultimatum: "Look, I'm going to go to karaoke tonight. You can meet me there and bring the papers. As long as you keep paying for my drinks and let me sing from time to time, I'll keep working on your code with you."
- Neil accepted, bringing his code papers to the bar. Between my stage performances, we sat at the table debugging his Perl script.
The Inspiration for Geek Cruises
- Neil had an absolute blast watching me perform and realized the social power of blending high-fidelity technical tutoring with a fun, relaxed environment.
- Combined with a subsequent family cruise where Neil noticed how a ship naturally breaks down barriers between celebrities (like Star Trek's George Takei in an elevator) and fans, the concept of Geek Cruises was born.
- A few months later, Neil emailed me to ask if I would be a featured speaker on the very first voyage: Perl Whirl 2000.
What links here
These facts are as Randal recalls them, but much time has passed for most of this. If you find a factual error, please email realmerlyn@gmail.com.