Geekulcha And The New Obsession - Skateboarding

Why did the chicken cross the road? Because it wanted to see what's on the other side. The world is growing, things are changing, getting smarter and more integrated than ever. Geekulcha honoured an invite by the Northern Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism (DEDaT) to take part in skateboarding activities in the province - the Kimberley Diamond Cup (KDC).

KDC is one of biggest skateboarding events with over 15 annual regional qualifier events for the Skateboarding World Championship. Part of KDC is the Skateboarding For Hope which certainly gives hope to local youth and empower them into a global platform of skateboarding. Local and international skaters will all gather in Kimberley 07-10 October for the main event, Skateboarding World Championships at the Kumba Skate Plaza.

So why did the geeks go skateboarding? Besides wanting to be cool, we wanted to see a role that ICT can play in the sport. We hosted the first Sports Science workshops in April where we integrated Tech to a skateboard to make it cool and smarter.

Local skaters gave ideas of how cool they want their skateboards to be. Ideas ranged from tracing stolen skateboard, determining and spotting high crime areas, to having a skateboard with a wireless music player and others. Sounds exciting? We thought so too hence we decided to embark on a Maker Culture journey with skateboarding.

Taking advantage of open source technologies, our serial Makers took the challenge and integrated a set of sensors and communication modules onto a skateboard and it's a thing connected to the Internet. DEDaT believes that these Maker activities will attract the local youth to explore the fields of science and sports as their careers.

It was certainly not surprising to see a skateboarding solution at the August NCDevHack, an app called Sk8t Quizz was developed by local youth to help youngsters understand the sport. The skateboard also featured at the Maker Library Network Digital Innovation festival events by the British Council of South Africa. Everyone should join in and have fun, let's Hack-a-Skate.

In October, the geeks will set up SkateHacks Maker Space at KDC with live hacks in making the skateboard more cooler. Hopefully they will finally learn how to skate.

It's up to us to adapt and find our place in this growing world, we need to grow with it. For more information and be involved in these Maker activities, visit electronics.geekulcha.com/skatehacks or email electronics@geekulcha.com.