Geeks

Occasionally known as Gerhard Killesreiter, Killes is a resident of the town of Freiburg (in Baden-Württemberg), and is also one of the oldest, most-valued, and most central members of the Drupal developer community. Seeing that I was passing through his neck of the woods, I was lucky enough to get a hold of Killes, and to meet him in person for the first time. Despite his fierce reputation as a "blunt, rude newbie-killer" when online, Killes is actually a very friendly and easy-going guy in real life, and he was more than happy to take me out for a tour of his town, and for some dinner and drinks this evening.

A few days ago, I e-mailed my friend Moshe Weitzman (one of the people that I met at DrupalCon Sunnyvale, back in March), to let him know that I'd be coming to his home town of Boston soon. Well, as it turned out, the Boston Drupal Users' Group (Boston DUG) organised their monthly meetup for tonight! Moshe, of course, was nice enough to invite me along for the evening. So after finishing my jetlag duty today, I headed over to the Berkman Center at Harvard University, to meet and greet the Drupallers of the city of Boston, and to see what's going on Drupal-wise in this part of the world. Oh yeah — and also to catch up on the goss from (unfortunately it was too-far and too-bad-timing for me to attend) DrupalCon Barcelona, which took place about a month ago.

Victor is an IT guy, who's originally from the UK (grew up in the US), and who's been living here in BA for almost 30 years. Over the past year or so, he's been getting into the Drupal development and consulting world, and he's lucky enough to be attending DrupalCon Barcelona 2007 next week. When I told Victor that I was in town, he invited me over to his apartment for dinner — so tonight, we met for the first time, and had a nice geeky old shmooze.

I first met Oly almost three months ago, when Chris and I bumped into him, along with his girlfriend Stef, and their crazy friend Sophs, on Lake Titicaca. Well, what do you know: I've bumped into him again, here at the Secret Garden in Quito. Oly's a web designer from England, a guy who likes a beer or two, and (at the moment) a travelling junkie.

Carlos Joel Delgado Pizarro is a young guy studying computer science at university, here in Cusco. Carlos was told about me (and vice versa) by — who else — the king of Linux and of Linux-folk here in Peru: my friend Antonio Ognio (from Lima). I met with Carlos today at my host family's house, and we had a good old chat about Linux, open-source, programming, the state of IT and of open-source in Peru, and even Drupal (a bit). Plus, I managed to talk with him in Spanish the whole time! Not bad, especially considering that I really wasn't feeling too good today (more food poisoning). Great guy, and a many with many questions.

Louis is a French computer science student, who's on an overseas "work placement" of sorts (the voluntary sort) at Amigos. His main task at Amigos is to build them a new web site, which he's doing using the very cool system Ruby on Rails. He hasn't got much experience with web design or development, and he hasn't been given many resources (he has his own laptop, but no Internet at Amigos!); but he's done a good job so far. He's also a juggler, a fearless drinker, and a great part of the Amigos team.

Alexis is a friend of my buddy Antonio, as well as the only Drupal developer in Peru. He's a really interesting guy: he's run his own web hosting company; he's built his own house; he's written a book about how to work from home; and he's developed web sites for a bunch of different clients. Today, I visited him at his home in Chaclacayo, and had great fun eating, drinking, chatting, and recording with him.

Today, I got taken on a big excursion, by Antonio and his friend Clevér (yep, that's his name!). The three of us went to Chaclacayo, which is virtually a town by itself, right on the Eastern edge of Lima, almost in the mountains. There, we visited Alexis Bellido — another of Antonio's Linux friends — who has a house out there, and who is also the only (known) Drupal developer in Peru!

After an afternoon nap, I met up with Antonio again for dinner this evening. However, this time there were 10 of us dining together! Seems that Antonio managed to get together a whole bunch of Lima Linux people, and at very short notice. We went to a restaurant called Norky's, which does great meats of all varieties, and we discussed all things geeky.

Today, I finally met my Lima-based friend Antonio Ognio, the king of all Peruvian Linux geeks. As an introduction to his home city, Antonio suggested that he take me to a nearby all-you-can-eat buffet — serving a wide variety of popular local dishes — and that he give me a small walking tour of Lima. Turned out to be a great day.