Five Questions With: Brian Jepson

Providence Geeks and its technology meetups – rich with food, knowledge and networking – celebrates its 12-year anniversary next month. Providence Business News spoke with one of the group’s co-founders, Brian Jepson, on the history of the group and its mission of “helping Rhode Island digital innovators connect and collaborate.”

PBN: I understand it was a decade ago, or more, when the group began. Was Providence Geeks using the word “geek” before it became cool again?

JEPSON: I wish I could say that we were using the word geek before it became cool … we chose it because it was a little cooler than our original working name. At the time we started, there were a few “nerd dinners” around the country, and my co-founder Jack Templin and I debated which we thought was cooler, deciding on geek.

 

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PBN: Tell PBN readers a bit about the founding of the group and its growth. 

JEPSON: Going as far back as the mid ’90s, a small group of us in the AS220 orbit had organized tech meetups. The first one was SMT … a general tech advocacy group. We believed in a couple things: more computers were better, and public access to computers was important. SMT … eventually had a public computing lab up and running, as well as a public-access computer kiosk in the AS220 cafe. Working with IDS, one of the first Internet Service Providers, we became an early DSL adopter.

So, when my co-founder Jack Templin moved to Providence with a strong desire to build a community, folks sent him in my direction. His ambition and energy were way above the level I’d been operating at. I was probably dialed in at a four, and he was past 10, definitely turned all the way up to 11. Given the history of informal funky tech groups at AS220, it was a natural home for Providence Geeks. Since then, Jack has graduated to emeritus status, and Joel Evans has joined me in co-hosting Providence Geeks each month.

PBN: How have these connections and collaborations evolved over the past 10 years? What “links” or partnerships are direct results of Providence Geeks events or meetups?

JEPSON: I’m hesitant to try to take credit for anything anyone else has built, but I think a lot of good stuff has come out of it … there are a few things I think I can point to. Jack Templin, as well as a couple of other Providence Geeks pioneers (Owen Johnson and Allan Tear), would go on to start BetaSpring, a Providence-based startup accelerator. A Providence Geeks event was also the occasion of a tour of AS220 I gave to a visitor from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] who was scouting for a location for the Providence Fab Lab, which is now located in AS220’s Mercantile Block building. 

PBN: The group seems to be aimed at networking, education and collaboration-building more than directly advocating for the tech community and its potential economic benefits in Rhode Island. Is that an accurate assessment?

JEPSON: I’d say that’s fair … the group itself is very loose. We get together once a month, enjoy each other’s company and someone shares a presentation that we think would be of interest to the tech community. Now, as individuals, many of us are also advocates for the tech community. If you talk to any of my friends and colleagues who don’t live in Rhode Island, you’ll hear that I’m relentless in this regard. The founder of Maker Media (publisher of Make: magazine), Dale Dougherty, refers to me as the Geek Mayor of Rhode Island.

PBN: Who makes up the bulk of Providence Geeks – gamers, tech innovators, graphic artists, coders, software designers – all of the above?

JEPSON: All of the above, and a few I haven’t categorized. We talk about digital innovators, which is a pretty wide net. And it changes from month to month.

 Susan Shalhoub is a PBN contributor.