Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share

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Published by Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

First printing, May 2010

Copyright © 2010 by Ken Denmead Foreword copyright © 2010 by Chris Anderson

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eISBN : 978-1-101-40431-7

 

 

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To my amazing wife, Robin, who has seen fit to encourage and enable my geeky traits while helping make me the best father I could ever hope to be. This book would not exist without your love and partnership, and I would not be the happy GeekDad I am. I love you!

 

To my boys, Eli and Quinn, who are enough like me that I can share much of the stuff I geek-out over with you, but are different enough from me that you show me new things every day. You are the reasons I did this. Grow up strong and geeky!

 

And to my parents, Ellen and Walter: I don’t imagine the path I’ve traveled has been quite the one you expected, but I figure you’re pretty happy with where I’ve ended up. Thank you so much for starting me out on that path with such good preparation and support, and for being there for me every step of the way.

T
hree years ago, a man, of whose fame and shrewd intelligence I was only then vaguely aware, put out a call for volunteers to write for a blog called GeekDad. I took what I thought was an outside shot, and was lucky enough to be accepted by Chris Anderson to contribute.

Six months later, he asked me to take over running the blog, and once I’d scraped my jaw off the floor, I enthusiastically accepted.

The time since then has been an adventure, and a tectonic shift in the direction of my life. I am living a life I could barely have imagined and have been lucky enough to pay the favor forward to other geeky parents who have come to write for GeekDad, too. But it all started with the entrepreneurial generosity of Chris Anderson, the founder of GeekDad, to whom I am eternally grateful.

Of critical import in the whole “I got to write a book” process is being given the chance. Very special thanks go to Megan Thompson at LJK Literary for “discovering” me and nursing me through the proposal process, and Jud Laghi for getting my proposal looked at by all the right people.

And “all the right people” would be my editor, Lucia Watson, who helped me take a bucketful of cool ideas and present it in the (hopefully) fun and readable tome you now hold, and assistant editor Miriam Rich who has guided me through the strange new world of publishing.

I realize I’ve been very lucky to have fallen in with such patient and professional people, and I can’t express my gratitude for how much they’ve done for me deeply enough. Thanks!

The real success of the GeekDad blog comes from its family of writers, and I can’t take credit for this book without giving some back to the team that helped make it all work: Anton Olsen, Brad Moon, Chuck Lawton, Corrina Lawson, Curtis Silver, Daniel Donahoo, Dave Banks, Don Shump, Doug Cornelius, Jason B. Jones, Jenny Williams, John Baichtal, John Booth, Jonathan Liu, Kathy Ceceri, Lonnie Morgan, Matt Blum, Michael Harrison, Moses Milazzo, Natania Barron, Paul Govan, Russ Neumeier, Todd Dailey, Vincent Janoski, and the Mystical Magical “Z.”

Additional thanks go to Matt Blum, my right hand at running the blog, for his help copyediting the manuscript, and Bill Moore, Dave Banks, Russ Neumeier, Andrew Kardon, Brian Little, and Natania Barron for contributing projects to this book.

And thanks to the crew of Starbase Phoenix: On the edges of known space, a fire burns to light the way. You guys are that fire.

H
ere’s the challenge of being a GeekDad. You’re a geek. You’re also a dad. Geeks want to do cool projects, ideally involving science, technology, and anything that comes from Japan. Dads, meanwhile, want to spend time with their kids, ideally doing something kids want to do. Most of the time, these two forces are in opposition. But they don’t have to be!

The origins of this book, and the Web site that inspired it, were in finding ways to reconcile the call of the geek with the nature of the parent. In early 2007, I started GeekDad mostly for myself: I had four (now five) kids, all under ten at the time, and just could not bear the thought of playing Candyland one more time.

I was looking for projects and activities that were both fun for them and fun for me. Not fun for me and boring for them (most of my geeky stuff) or fun for them but boring for me (most kid stuff), but fun for both of us. In other words, a worthy challenge for all ages.