 Welcome to Think Tech on Spectrum OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Jay Fidel. And I'm Cynthia Sinclair. And I'll show this time we'll visit the annual geek meet on Magic Island at Alamo on a beach park. There were hundreds of fun-loving geeks and interesting booths and exhibits there on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. The Hawaii Geek Meet is a fun, casual, family-friendly, social and science gathering for people who are curious and have a passion they love to share. The Hawaii Geeks have a very inclusive definition of the word geek. That definition includes gadget lovers, coders, designers, makers, artists, and much more. As they like to say, everyone is a geek about something. The first Hawaii Geek Meet was held in April 2008, kicking off a decade of family-friendly, outdoor celebration of all things geek. As it has evolved, the annual Hawaii Geek Meet is literally a grassroots gathering for creative and curious people of all ages. The geek meet this year was held on the Magic Island lawn adjacent to the Lantern ceremony at Alamo on a beach park. And we could see that the preparations for the ceremony were going strong. We went at the invitation of the geek meets chief geek and organizer, Ryan Ozawa, famed co-host of Byte Marks Cafe on Hawaii Public Radio. And of course, he was there. It's barely controlled chaos. It's a geek village that rises up in the summer. Once a year, this is our 12th annual event. And basically, it's a celebration of all things geeky. And these days, that is so all-encompassing and inclusive that pretty much anything qualifies. So everybody from actual scientists to do astronomy and hard science to esports gamers to cosplayers, I can't even run down the list it's so long. It's a free event and I'm actually grateful for every organization that comes and has to haul all their stuff here to the middle of the park. It was a beautiful sunshiney day and the geeks were out in force. So as we always do, we walked the lawn and checked out the various fun and zany geek booths and exhibits. In fact, we said hi to a number of geeks at the meet. We learned a lot about what they were doing in their projects and as always, we enjoyed their enthusiasm, creativity and good nature. We're here with parents and children together talking about our makery program. Our makery program is a free course that we teach that teaches people some computer-rated drafting, some finishing and designing. So essentially what people do is they make, we're able to create and design products and then have them for different kinds of events or to sell them to make their own business. We can do very simple things like so this is just a really quick puzzle that we were able to make. These are some more advanced stuff like boxes. This was a centerpiece for a graduation last year all up to something like this which is our that's my favorite for sure. So what this is a puzzle that this woman just solved which is what is Hawaii's most valuable resource and then you put the gears in place to create the answer to solve the puzzle. Get them outside and to look at all the different stuff that she's interested in STEM so she likes robotics and things like that so I thought it'd be cool to come down just to check it out. I'm owner and operator of Puzzle Company. I make games toys and wonders. It's a solar powered lawnmower among other things. It also has a winch, a tow ball and I got some other attachments at home. There's a 3000 watt inverter in there so you can power your electric tools, your microwave, four 52 pound gel batteries in there, a 90 pot panel on the top and a backup alarm. So we've got a filter on the top to block out the majority of the of the sun's rays so that you don't get blinded if you look through it because you should never look at the sun directly. So we both work at the IFA together. John here's a postdoc, I'm a grad student. It's actually surprisingly light because it's mostly empty inside. The important expensive parts are of course the mirrors. So if you can imagine how much light we can collect from this, how much you can collect from something that's 30 meters diameter. You know I know IFA is capable of incredible things but arranging the sun on me. I'm a menuhuni. I have amazing powers. A few weeks ago we had the open house which is a yearly event so there's all sorts of activities for people of all ages and coming in later in the year there's the transit of mercury. You'll get to see mercury crossing the sun, the Gemini meteor shower in December. So it's a little quiet in the summer but you can enjoy the sun in the meantime. It's pretty amazing. I can't wait to see the end result. It's going to be incredible once we get there. I think it might be delayed into next year or the one after that but we'll see. We'll get there. I know with hard work and dedication they can pull it off. We're here with the 501st Legion. We're here to support the geek meet because we're fellow geeks. Come together, sharing knowledge and geeked them. We have some helmets here that are made by our members. We're an international costuming group and our members make our costumes by hand. We try to emulate the same quality that's on the film in person. It's got some actors in there but this helmet it came on the the day after my mom passed so this is like an heirloom if you will. So I've got friends. I've got all the members here in it. I do have some of the actors in there so this is a real piece of my life, my family. The DLT-21 blaster it's used by like our navy troopers. You've seen some rebels may use it. You've got the very iconic E-11 blasters, a gaffy stick, something used by the Tusken Raiders or the Sam people from Anu Hope and then you've got something from Rogue One which was the rocket launcher. So my call sign is DZ-64332 which is my ranking and my number affiliated with the 501st. To get back to the gaffy stick which is a weapon used by the Tusken Raiders the origins in real life are from a Fijian Totokia War Club but it was modified in the Star Wars universe to hold more of a spear-like appearance and it was altered for the Star Wars universe but it was based on the real-life Fijian Totokia War Club. This is a BB-8 from Star Wars Astro Make Droid from Episode 7. So I made it with a 3D printer but I want to make it more beautiful, more lighter weight and more movable. The unit was made for the new movies the Episode 7, 8 and 9 so just kind of a companion to get the kids interested in it and I think at the time it was really a it was a new and exciting model that nobody understood how it could work with the the body rolling and the head staying on top and so it took a lot of but a lot of geeks really got into it and tried to figure it out so that was our original plan is to make a moving model but and this is all Yusuke's work but it's a static model right now so it has some sounds and lights. So we're advertising for Comic Con Hanlulu and Kwaikon. Comic Con is coming up first week of August and Kwaikon's May next year. It's getting better every year bigger too so we're trying to expand to like more floors more events and stuff so anyone that has any ideas can message us and we'll get you a panel. The first one that comes to mind was like a big one is um if anyone watched Avengers Endgame it's uh or Avengers it's um the Red Skull um so that actor's coming down and he's a really big draw so I think a lot of people are excited to see him yeah we have a lot of like comic authors and stuff like that too. It's a pretty much a community event for all the people who love things geeky and video games anything in comic books um so it's just a place to gather meet new friends and do things that you enjoy. I'm Keith from Hawaii Saber Academy and we're doing um lightsaber combat so we treat these polycarbonate blades as lightsabers and uh they don't light up that well in the daylight but at night they're very bright and cool and they look like lightsabers. I'm Alex I'm with uh the Skull of St George we're a medieval combat group here. There are so few around these days. Oh yeah so few yeah. These here are fencing masks like you would see in um Olympic fencing these offer the best protection for lightsaber combat the um I forget the name of them the the mask for a kendo those work as well these are for these are children's masks basically these just for children we use polycarbonate blades like you saw like you heard keep talking a little while ago all the lights are in the hills here so it's just it's the it lights up from down here and just lights up the whole blade but after use it just kind of dies out. I've been doing this for about three years I started in 2016 I've actually just been knighted this year um week before last congratulations thank you and got my own little commemorative lay took me three years but I did it. May the force be with you right here as well right now. This is Makafet um and we're doing a test run on his costume and we're going to be still making adjustments to it um we have ears we're still at a work in progress to make him a test and writer and Banta so his costume is still in works so this folds up and I can pick it up and take it on the bus with me I put it put it kind of upright like this and just take it with me anywhere has a motor in the front wheel and it's lithium power it's kind of the same model they use for the school scooter rentals but I own this one I use it as a kind of a micro mobility solution I get about 18 miles on one battery charge and it goes about 15 16 miles an hour and I usually get around kakako and so I've removed a need for a car with it with electric bikes too I mean they don't count as bikes and this as well doesn't count as a bike but doesn't count as a moped because it doesn't go fast enough so you don't have to register it it's kind of in a weird space it's placed right now I think they kind of got a bad wrap when Lyme tried to come here and they got kicked out but most of those laws were related to sidewalk accessibility so I definitely would like to see some more legislation on these types of vehicles and where they can find a place alongside bicycles in Hawaii and also for the batteries as well we do have you know if we want to go towards eco-friendly vehicles and battery power we got to be smarter about how we bring batteries into the island actually we kind of brought out the big guns today but I mean just showing what what the drone industry you know is capable of so I mean all the way from consumer level all the way up to full on professional you know Hollywood all that stuff the FAA is working on some rules to start allowing beyond line of sight capability so I mean we're monitoring that seeing where that goes and you know in the future it might be possible the drones themselves are you know are evolving the technology is getting better and better actually just this past week DJI is the company that manufactures probably close to 80 percent of the market of drones that you see they just announced that they are incorporating an ADS-B system into all of their drones by 2020 ADS-B is an is an anti-collision system that a lot of like passenger airliners use and so the drones will have the same exact systems so we're live streaming so basically we have a twitch channel called Hawaii Stream Team and we all stream as a team on the channel and we provide different content even live streaming at events or want to do like hiking or boating or biking or anything you can imagine we want to cover great yeah so we could we want to bring Hawaii in a fun way online we're using a 4g technology that allows us to bond and get a remote internet access it's like an encoder that allows you to bond 4g and then broadcast it I mean and then we get to stream it live on to twitch you can't go wrong right so goys garlic chicken bento you know what I mean so this is what we had for our lunch today you know with a bottle water you know very healthy good yeah HSTE stands for the Hawaii Society of Technology and Education so our focus is to bring educational technology to teachers and show them how to use this not just as a toy but rather has a tool to get concepts across so all of the stuff that you see here is being used in classrooms by one of the three volunteers that came out today everything from a Piper kit that where students will actually put together the computer run the computer and learn more about electronics we're coding with the dash and dot robots right now the kids are trying out music apps we have AR VR so basically when you have the app you can create virtual augmentation on top of this we have our Harry Potter wand over here our micro bits so students are actually taking their digital creations bring them into the analog world into the form of the micro bit blocks us for storytelling we range so Hawaii Society of Education does a lot of professional development for teachers and that's our focus is to make sure that teachers are getting what they need mostly stem it's a it's a wide range stem computer science it could be something Google just teach them how to use Google tools make them more efficient at what they're doing absolutely yeah things that you might not otherwise catch you know help you fill in the blanks and for the most part we're a non-profit so we provide free pd and we do it for all islands not just to walk well with the harry potter wand um you can kind of work with it and almost have your own magic right here in the computer but in terms of like all technology in general a lot of it is just having that mindset to kind of try things out and you know if you make mistakes you make mistakes but in the end a lot of times like technology speaks for itself and what we're seeing i'm a teacher actually and what we're seeing with kids is that they can do it it's just we need to give them the access and we need to give them the opportunity so this is history is like all about that how do we give access to kids but also to teachers because as teachers we want to know um you know how to bring it in in a good way for kids this is a 100 nail polish on a strip so you have the top coat color coat base coat and then an adhesive and you just peel it off press it onto your nail and then you file off the excess and then you have um nails that last up to 14 days and then you just remove them with nail polish remover like regular nail polish so what has changed uh the technology's miniaturized it's gotten better more durable easier to fly so yeah i mean we start off as a drone racing league just for adults and now we have a program that's been going for the last two years uh as a STEM program for kids on a high school and middle school level we typically have like a race every other weekend um but we are gearing up for arrow season three uh that's arrow's a STEM program so we have the returnees coming back from last year and we have middle schools now um for season three middle schools we had a couple this year just as an experiment but um there's definitely traction now on a high school level they build the big quads that go really fast on the elementary and middle school level is uh doctored quads that are micro like this and you know fun to fly but not dangerous it's the geek meet so um i guess technically i am a bit of a geek so perfect place for me but also i'm here with the last outpost many clubs community groups companies and organizations were listed as supporters of the event think tech was proud to be listed too want to know more about the geek meet or hawaii geek so perhaps realize your own destiny as a geek check out hawaiigeek.com and now let's check out our think tech schedule of events going forward think tech broadcast its talk shows live on the internet from 11 a.m to 5 p.m on weekdays then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends and some people listen to them all night long and on the weekends if you miss the show or if you want to replay or share any of our shows they're all archived on demand on think tech hawaii.com and youtube for our audio stream go to think tech hawaii.com slash audio and we post all our shows as podcasts on itunes visit think tech hawaii.com for our weekly calendar and live stream and youtube links or better yet sign up on our email list and get our daily email advisories think tech has a high tech green screen studio at pioneer plaza if you want to see it or be part of our live audience or if you want to participate in our shows contact shows at think tech hawaii.com if you want to pose a question or make a comment during a show call 808 374 2014 and help us raise public awareness on think tech go ahead give us a thumbs up on youtube or send us a tweet at think tech hi we'd like to know how you feel about the issues and events that affect our lives in these islands and in this country we want to stay in touch with you and we'd like you to stay in touch with us let's think together and now here's this week's think tech commentary inherent in social justice is justice yes the old fashioned kind of justice right you know and we have to be respectful of that we always have to preserve that in this country that's what in many ways that's what this country is about the central park five i didn't know about this but there's a series about it it's a really important series for those who have not heard it's called when they see us when they see us on netflix so ava duvernay is the i believe director and producer along with opa winfrey and they talked about the central park five who were famously accused of raping a woman in new york and then they were later found to be innocent yeah and so there's so many lessons from time in jail and they spent like 13 years in jail yeah yeah and i remember donald trump took out a full page ad to uh convict him and throw them throw them in jail so it's really hard for them to have spent time in jail that's what that's what the story is about in the central park five it is it talks it really goes into how there is such a huge need in our justice system and how if you look a certain way if you act a certain way or if you're at the wrong place in the wrong time you can be accused of a crime that you did not commit and had nothing to do with what troubled me the most i think were that these young boys were just that they were young teenage boys 13 years of their life gone it's where terrible things happen in the law and people go to jail for things they didn't do um and it's it's something we have to avoid our system of justice is of course sometimes it makes mistakes but it's calculated to avoid this sort of result and i think we have to take note when we find out that this kind of thing happened and redouble our efforts not to let it happen again i believe if we all do our part that we will thank you kisha thank you we'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of think tech but first we want to thank our underwriters okay synthia that wraps up this week's edition of think tech remember you can watch think tech on spectrum oc16 several times every week can't get enough of it just like synthia does for additional times check out oc16.tv for lots more think tech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on think tech visit thinktech hawaii.com be a guest or a host a producer or an intern and help us reach and have an impact on hawaii thanks so much for being part of our think tech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech energy diversification and global awareness in hawaii including gigtam and of course the ongoing search for innovation wherever we can find it you can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next sunday evening for our next important weekly episode i'm jay fidel and i'm synthia sinclair aloha everyone