Brazil’s geek carnival

Brazil may be the land of sunshine, sex and football – but it is also land of the rising nerd.

I’ve been in São Paulo this week giving a talk at what is billed as the largest nerd camp in the world.

It’s called Campus Party and is a week-long jamboree for gamers, hackers, bloggers and black T-shirt wearers of all shapes and sizes.

It has taken over the largest conference space in Brazil – a massive hangar in central São Paulo. Most of the attendees, called “campuseiros”, are staying in one of the 5,500 tents in the indoor camping area, pictured above.

We’re in the middle of a tropical Summer here, so you can imagine how fuggy and muggy it is in there. Nice.

Another 2,000 or so people are staying in local hotels.

So, what are the campuseiros here for? Next to the camping area is a huge open space that includes stages for talks, stalls, chill-out zones and most importantly thousands of cables each with a 200MB internet connection. This space is open 24 hours a day for the length of the seven day event.

It seemed to me that most campuseiros were taking advantage of the connection in order to play games, download files and hang out on Facebook.

Not that interesting, at first. But when you look around you realize that this is a really fascinating event.

For a start, look at the list of sponsors – almost every large company in Brazil. Not only are they hoping to advertise to the smartest geeks in the country, but they are also here in order to recruit. This is where the best young programmers and tech entrepreneurs are hanging out.

As a measure of the event’s financial clout, it has flown in several speakers from all over the world, not just me…

There are lots of competitions, debates and demonstrations. Fun!

Campus Party was originally a Spanish idea, and there are similar events in Mexico and Colombia.

But nowhere has taken to it quite like Brazil, whose event is apparently the largest.

Brazilian nerds may be nerds, but they are also Brazilians: naturally sociable and easygoing. I spoke to one of the organizers and he said that the campuseiros in Brazil mixed much more with each other than the Campus Parties in other countries.

In other words, Campus Party is where connections are being made, where friendships are being formed. It’s a gigantic incubator of ideas.

This year for the first time a Campus Party will be held in a non-Spanish or Portuguese-speaking country. One is planned for San Francisco and another for Berlin.

We tend to assume that all the big nerd or geek movements come from the United States, Northern Europe or Japan.

Yet here is something that feels new and exciting that’s coming from the south.