It’s Geek Pride Day! 10 traits that give away our own geek factor

Did you know May 25 is Geek Pride Day? People around the world use this day to acknowledge their geekiness and spread it to other people. It probably won’t surprise you that we at TOPdesk often hear that we’re a little geeky ourselves. In the spirit of Geek Pride Day, we’ve decided to share 10 things geeky about ourselves.

TOPdesk was founded in 1992. That means we’re old enough to remember the days when being called a geek was not a very good thing. Thankfully, the world has come a long way since then. Today, being geeky is considered a compliment and an acknowledgement that you know just about everything there is to know about a certain subject– whether it’s about movies, comics, video games or tech, or sports, the environment or arts & crafts. Everybody geeks out in their own way and about their own passion –  that’s the beauty of it! So, what makes our geek flag fly?

1. We’re proud of what we love, and eager to share our interests with others

It’s the cornerstone of geekiness. Whether it’s gaming (digital and analog), sports, movie nights, history, series or comics: at TOPdesk, we’re all geeking out about something.

But what’s more important: we’re proud of who we are and what we love. And, in the words of Simon Pegg, “being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something.”

At TOPdesk, we have groups for everyone about everything, from sports to plants, books, kickboxing and games. Oh, and we even blog about it.

2. We know at least two practical uses for a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle

Monkey Island isn’t the only game we’ve all played so much that we still remember every secret. We also know all about dodemodexter, prince.exe megahit and IDDQD and could punch in a perfect Konami Code in our sleep – of course we would never need to, but we could, obviously. As we speak, our alliance is counting the days until the WoW Classic server will be up and running. We’re also NetHack enthusiasts, have our own Minecraft server and we’ve started sponsoring an actual esports game arena. In fact, we are so into games, we even created two of our own!

3. Every night should be game night

It’s not just computer games that tickle our fancy. We organize as many game nights as possible, have an official UK table tennis ranking, and our own board game exchange where colleagues actively swap their ever-growing collection.

4. We can get lost in our passion – quite easily

Whether it’s bouldering, wargaming, technology, music or triathlons: we’re invested in our passions and are always willing to put in the extra effort to make sure we know about the latest trends first.

5. Got a difficult puzzle to solve? You’ve come to the right place!

We love helping our customers and our colleagues enjoy tackling hard problems. Even so much that we do everything we can to make sure that you have all the tools you need to solve the simple brainteasers yourself, and leave the juicy puzzles to us. Think self-service, or shift left. In every situation, we love to seek out the problem, and try our best to solve it.

6. Believe in yourself, that’s your superpower

It’s not just the hard problems we like to fix ourselves. We love to do practically everything ourselves. A lot of the technologies we are working with are homemade, like the Wheel of WIGO, a tool that manages what all our development teams are working on. We believe strongly that we can achieve anything we put our minds to. And that this is the best way to find out how something works: learn it by heart and improve on it continually.

7. Colour-coordinated coffee cups (alliteration is a hobby too!)

Opening the kitchen cabinet for your morning coffee is just more fun with a splash of colour! But you have your teacups in the right row. It’s just more satisfying that way…

8. We’re fascinated by everything powered by a processor

Being geeky used to mean you’re inordinately dedicated to and involved with technology. Today, you can geek out in almost anything. And we do. But as a tech company, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we hold everything powered by a processor in high regard. Some of us even start to count at 0 because Java does it that way.

9. If you can dress up for it, you can fancy dress for it

You know how casual Friday never ends up being all that casual because people just keep showing up in their best suit anyway?  At TOPdesk we try to keep Friday afternoons casual too, but we’ve got a different problem: we always end up dressed as cats and zebras, riding a mechanical bull, hiding (I mean, strategically taking cover) behind our desks during a game of laser tag or playing a life-size version of Duck Hunt and Mario Kart.

10. We named the rooms in our head office after some of our heroes

If you’re coming by our office, we might welcome you to the Ada Lovelace, Charles Darwin, Philip Glass, Johannes Vermeer or Severus Snape meeting rooms. It’s just a fun little way to honor those that have inspired us and still do to this day.

How do you celebrate Geek Pride Day?