The Iron Geek Triathlon at South by Southwest

Three races, 4 techies square off in an event we just created

By Keith Shaw on Mon, 03/15/10 - 1:11am.

I'm having a lot of fun at South by Southwest, finding new and cool technologies, but also spending some time on the exhibit floor looking for some good videos. I noticed that within a small area of the trade show floor, there were three different race-like offerings. At the Das Keyboard booth, they were holding the Ultimate Typing Challenge, letting attendees try their skills at typing speed with their keyboards. At The Planet booth, they were challenging attendees to see how fast they could assemble a PC server. And at the AOL Mapquest booth, they had a good old-fashioned video game auto racing game.

At the Das Keyboard event, fellow colleague Kyle Monson challenged me to a typing race, and through the collaborative nature that is South by Southwest, we quickly added the server building challenge and the video game race. With some help from Porter Novelli's Laura Beck, we created the Iron Geek Triathlon, which will take place today (Monday) at 12 noon. We'll start with the keyboard race, head to the PC server booth and then turn the corner and race video game cars.

It's not a big test of endurance like a regular triathlon, but the three "challenges" is something that geeks (and geek journalists) can get behind. We've also added Harry McCracken from Technologizer and a yet-to-be named 4th blogger to round out the field. If this is successful, we might have started a new tradition that can live on for years to come. We might even make some T-shirts.

If you're at the show, be sure to check us out and root on your favorite.

And in case you are wondering how good I am at two of the events, check out these videos: