GeekDad’s 2nd Anniversary – Matt Blum’s Story

My GeekDad Story: GeekDad has become a huge part of my life, and I couldn’t be happier about it. It’s one of the few things—perhaps the only thing—from which I derive unqualified joy. I mean, I love my wife and kids desperately, but they do sometimes annoy me; GeekDad is only now and then annoying, and that only when TypePad is misbehaving.

I first stumbled upon GeekDad early in April of 2007, following a link from a post on another blog I regularly read—probably BoingBoing, but I really don’t remember. Since I was a geek and a dad, and the blog was being written by Chris Anderson, I immediately added its RSS feed to my reader. Then in late April Chris put out the call for new writers; I was intrigued by the idea, but I didn’t apply at first because I hadn’t done much blogging up to that point. Then I figured there was no way it could hurt and I sent Chris an e-mail; ten days or so later I’d been accepted as a guest writer on the blog—guest because of my relative inexperience. A while later Chris promoted me to regular writer status, but I still didn’t post that often because I hadn’t really found my groove yet—it just wasn’t coming naturally to me. I didn’t really find my groove until early last year, and I started posting more and more frequently, to the point where now it feels weird to me when two days in a row go by without my writing something.

Being a writer on GeekDad has been a great experience for me. I’ve met, spoken with, and corresponded with reasonably famous people; I’ve had a chance to review books, games, and TV shows before they’re published; and I’ve had some really cool geeky merchandise sent to me. But the best part is that I really do feel like I’m a kind of journalist now: I get a warm glow just from the knowledge that people (and geeky people, at that) are reading what I’ve written, and when I find out that they liked it or that it affected them in some way, it feels even better. That’s really why I keep doing it; the rest is gravy. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to Chris for taking that chance on me back in May of ’07—it really has changed my life.

My Most Significant Article: I’ve written many articles that I’m very proud of, but the most significant one I’ve written would have to be the post-election list of 5 signs (then) President-Elect Obama is a geek. At the time, I really didn’t think it was that big a deal: it was just a fun post at a good time to write it. But it became really popular, and was linked to in all sorts of places, and eventually turned into my being interviewed by an AP reporter and quoted in a wire story. Seeing my name show up in newspapers all over the world was a surreal experience I’m not likely to forget.

A Few Other Matters: I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our loyal readers. I’d also like to express my gratitude to Ken Denmead, who’s done a fantastic job of keeping GeekDad’s quality high and chaos low. He has to coordinate writers spread all over the U.S. and a few elsewhere in the world, most of whom he’s never met in person. It’s not an easy job, but Ken does it so well he makes it look easy, and he doesn’t get enough credit for it. So: thanks, Ken!

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