Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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The Five Food Groups of BarCamp Tampa [Geeks Love Pink Sno-Balls]

Posted Sep 29, 2009 by Jeff Houck

Updated Sep 29, 2009 at 07:15 PM

The 2004 movie “Napoleon Dynamite” was “Citizen Kane” for geeks and misfits and the people who love them.

My favorite part of the magnum dweeb opus was the way that actor John Heder as Napoleon would smuggle Tater Tots in a pants pocket and throw one down in the middle of class at school.

His source? His friend Pedro:

In one scene, Napoleon gets very protective after a classmate goes after his favorite foodstuff:

Randy: Napoleon, give me some of your tots.

Napoleon Dynamite: No, go find your own.

Randy: Come on, give me some of your tots.

Napoleon Dynamite: No, I’m freakin’ starving! I didn’t get to eat anything today.

Randy: [kicks the tots]

Napoleon Dynamite: Ugh! Gross! Freakin’ idiot!

Classic stuff.

So it was with no small amount of irony that I observed the food habits of real life geeks in the wild over the weekend at the BarCamp Tampa conference on Sunday at the University of South Florida.

Especially since I was one of them.

What is BarCamp? To be honest, I’m not really sure.

Okay, that’s not entirely accurate.

Think of it as a free-form gathering of people who are heart-attack serious about social media and are looking for ways to do it better and develop more effective software and techniques. How free-form? You show up, write a topic on a sheet of paper on a wall and 30 people follow you in a room to talk about it for an hour.

Sexy, I know.

I was invited to attend by Julia Gorzka of Brand Tampa, whom I’ve written about for her efforts to help La Bonita Ole’ tortilla company use social media outlets to generate public support and save the business from bankruptcy creditors.

I threw my two cents into the bull ring about how newspapers can profit from social media (You can stop laughing now.). Then I went out to the atrium of the college of business and surveyed the landscape as my brethren in social media geekdom foraged and gathered grindage for lunch.

What do geeks eat? Well, there’s a term for that.

One of my favorite sites, Urban Dictionary, defines the phenomenon:

geek food

Food that, stereotypically, computer geeks, specifically programmers, eat. The food falls into three categories: high in calories, easy to make, and high in caffeine. The idea of geek food comes from programmers staying late into the night, well, programming. In order to waste no time, they need sustinence that can be made quickly and can give them a caffeine boost. Some typical foods include hot pockets, ramen, bawls/jolt cola, take-out chinese, and various chips.

Usage: “Man, I’ve been programming day and night, get me some geek food.”

Think lots of carbs.

There were no tots at BarCamp, but if the event on Sunday was any indication, there are essentially five geek food groups:

1. Novelty Cereal

2. Miniature Candies

3. Pink Sno-Balls

4. Twinkies Made With Red Dye No. 6

5. Stoner Pizza

It could be worse, I guess. I saw a guy once pour Red Bull on his corn flakes when he was out of milk. I don’t think even Napoleon Dynamite would approve.