Google Hosts New York City's First 'Geek Street Fair'

 By 
Dhiya Kuriakose
 on 
Google Hosts New York City's First 'Geek Street Fair'

A "geek street fair" hosted by Google took over New York City's 14th Street Park with Lego robots, experiments and animal skulls on Wednesday afternoon.

The idea behind the fair is to raise awareness about New York City’s tech community as well as promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics to young kids.

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Craig Nevill-Manning, an engineering director at Google's New York office, is one of the many people behind this geek street fair.

"If we want to continue to see technology change the world, it's important to inspire the tech entrepreneurs of tomorrow," he says.

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The fair was free and open to everyone, and kids from summer camps formed a big part of the curious brigade.

David Wells, the New York Hall of Science's manager of creative making and learning, says kids are open to everything when it comes to exploring the world around them.

"Kids are interested in things that are interesting," he says. "The more they know, the more they get empowered to make their own decisions and seek their own path."

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Jared Blaut and his wife brought their 2-year-old son, Wilder, to the fair. While they acknowledged that he was too young to really understand the science behind the attractions, it was important to them to expose him to fields involving technology and math.

"It's nice to have events where science is the focus," says Blaut.

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The fair had stalls from the New York Hall of Science, Maker Camp, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, FIRST Robotics, Liberty Science Center, the American Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of Mathematics and the What Is Missing Foundation.

Google hopes to make the geek street fair an annual event. But for now, happy campers who just learned how a Rubik's cube works aren't worried about next year.

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