Lately, Korean musicians, actors and actresses are enjoying their popularity over in Asia.  Seeing Japanese teens crying while a Korean singer is rapping with amazing moves is just amazing.  A lot of them are more famous in other Asian countries like Japan, China and Taipei than they are in Korea.  This phenomenon is called HanRyu which roughly translates to Korean Wave.

I am over 30 now and I already feel like I am living in a different world.  These stars don't psych me up anymore.  Even though I watch those Korean shows where latest stars come out to make fun of themselves, I certainly do not tear.  Sign of getting old.  Or maybe my mental age is at my daughter's.  I certainly find myself speaking like her even when I talk to my wife...

But I have different kind of stars.  I will call them geek stars.  These are people like Robert Scoble, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Tim O'Reilly, Ray Ozzy, Dave Winer and Anders Hejlsberg, just to name a few that come to my mind right now.  These guys are total geeks and I love that!  They do geeky stuff and they are proud of that.  Oh, by the way, I ran into Anders Hejlsberg two times past two months.  First time was at the cafeteria.  I froze.  My heart started beating.  He ordered his food with his unique Danish accent and went away.  Only then I was able to breath again normally.  Second time was today.  I won't disucss where I met him.  But he passed me and turned to look for a couple of seconds.  Again.  I froze.  My heart started pounding.  Yeah, call me geek, nerd, freak or whatever.  If I am allowed to have 10 min meeting with Anders, I will schedule it at least one month out, start preparing for what I will talk about, learn everything I think I should know to have a good conversation with Anders, ask for permission to record the session and burn it to 20 different discs so that I can have it for the rest of my life!

These geek stars are obviously different from normal celebrities.  Geeks by definition have a huge influence on how technologies evolve.  They are the ones who create next big thing and they are the ones who kill weak ones.  They are the ones who make things like voice activated GPS system in your brand new Range Rover.  And by being a fan of those people, I tried to imitate them, just like how teens try to imitate their stars.

Oh, by the way, every time I go to those big concerts, I think about ways to throw geek concerts.  Instead of singers singing and dancing on the stage, a bunch of geeks will go on the stage and show off their creations.  It's different from those conferences.  Conferences like TechEd or PDC have a goal of convincing your potential customers to buy your stuff.  What I have in mind is purely showing off how good you are and how cool you are.  Instead of potential customers, you will have your fans (of course they are geeks too) screaming, jumping up and down and maybe start crying because of the latest algorithm you just showed off.  The closest thing I can think of is Mix06 but this one still smells a bit like marketing campaign than geek concert.

Who's your geek star?