I'm proud to introduce the top geeks: Miguel and Fernando.

Miguel and Fernando receiving their prize for winning the quiz

Last week our team was at Pixels Camp, a gathering of geeks from all over the World, with talks, hackathons, and challenges. You can win slick prizes, try to learn a new technology, listen to your peers' talks, and just geek out, free of judgment.

During the second night, there was a Quizshow on the Main Stage, and the winners were our very own craftsmen Miguel and Fernando. In this video, they are being proclaimed, live on television and youtube, as Pixels Camp's "Top Geeks." That was fun to watch!

If you're interested in reading more about the quiz, Miguel wrote about one of the challenges for the classification

However, being "top geeks" wasn't their best achievement; it was the talks each of them performed.

It's hard to give a talk that adds value to an audience. You need an interesting, original idea (or at least an original approach to that idea), deep research to make sure you know what you're talking about, an engaging storyline to present your content so it's easier to digest for the audience, and then you have to stand in front of all those people, with the lights on your eyes, a dry mouth, and sweaty hands, taking them through your thoughts and ideas, hoping they don't hate it. But if you want to make a really good talk, you need to take it a bit further. You need to show your early ideas to your team, get thorough (and sometimes excruciating) feedback and embrace criticism, so you can iterate and get closer to perfection. Both Miguel and Fernando did exactly that, and it definitely showed. I'm not shy to say they gave the best talks I saw on Pixels Camp.

Fernando in his presentation about bloom filters

Miguel in his presentation about mastering your tools

Not disregarding Fernando and Miguel's hard work, I think it's important to give some credit to our team at Subvisual. As a company, it inspires each one of us to grow, to explore our interests, and to be the very best version of ourselves. More importantly, it allows us to fail, without a judgment. As a team, we pay attention to each other. We listen and provide feedback. This is invaluable for people who often step out of their comfort zone and choose to do something that's not part of their job description. That's our kind of people.

In this last picture, you can see Fernando helping Miguel with his talk. It's two in the morning; that night, Fernando gave his talk and won the quiz. He needed some sleep badly, but he chose to help Miguel to prepare his talk. This picture is, by far, the best prize we could ever get.

Fernando and Miguel sitting on a couch with their laptops

Last but not least, the usual, interesting content that we gather from all over the internet

More Than Fluff: Dismantling Journalism’s Hard News Bias

Japanese writing system basics

Moishe's Blog - Lowering the bar

The most broken part of your user experience is email — uxdesign.cc – User Experience Design

Why's that company so big? I could do that in a weekend

Shaping a School