Pacific Island Times PIT November 2018 Vol 3 No. 11 | Page 5

Brief Chat
Chovin Carlson and Sky Resendez
Nerd is the new cool
A
nyone want to argue the technol-
ogy isn’t a key to modernizing a
community? I thought not. Guam
may be far from the wonders of
Silicon Valley or enchantments of Tokyo, and
certainly an unlikely hub for technology.
But last month, the Code Fountain Institute
hosted its first Hacktober Fest to bring to-
gether the island’s techies. While these folks
are often stereotyped as nerdy introverts, the
group’s leader, Chovin Carlson, believes that
Guam’s coders just needed their own com-
munity in order to network and grow.
“When I returned to Guam from college, I
couldn’t really find an active programming
group, so we started our own organization,
Free Code Camp Guam and now we have the
Code Fountain Institute,” said Chovin. “We
thought there wasn’t much tech curiosity in
Guam, but a good amount of people were at
the fest. Guam has people who are passion-
ate and who just needed a way to connect.
Hacktober has brought people together and
we can share ideas and we’re all excited to
make happen here.”
Hacktober, held Oct. 13 at Westin Resort
Guam, had workshops to show the island’s
coders new programs and applications such
as Github and Raspberry Pi to better enhance
the coders’ repertoire.
After seeing the states and seeing how
computers support so much of society, Cho-
vin feels that Guam needs to keep up with the
rest of America. “[The] open source commu-
nity has been thriving and it’s getting bigger.
It’s how technologies create,” said Chovin.
“All these new processes and tools are com-
ing out of the open source community and
every year it’s being celebrated--this is the
fifth year Free Code Camp celebrated Hack-
tober worldwide. We think Guam has a lot of
potential. We want to bring that community
By Johanna Salina
here and help everyone teach and learn from
each other and make software together.”
Science and math are fundamental to
technology, but Chovin knows that technol-
ogy doesn’t have to be all about logic and
numbers. “Art and music are what got me
interested in programming,” he said. Chovin
does not necessarily see STEM (Science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics) as
an art, rather he believes STEM enhances art.
“For me I stumbled into programming. I
didn’t really like it at first. People like to use
the term STEM but I prefer STEAM. I like
throwing art in there. There’s a lot of cre-
ativity in STEM even if you’re not interested
in science, engineering or math. You can
express yourself a lot more than I thought
through STEM just as with traditional art me-
diums.” While STEM may be very practical
through health and engineering, it can be just
as valuable with art and even daily opera-
tions. On Guam today, schools and media
rely heavily on computers to be productive.
While organizations just recently are
promoting STEM to girls, Code Fountain’s
Sky Resendez found her passion for technol-
ogy through her family. “I actually started in
STEM because my stepdad was a network
administrator at the court back in the day,”
said Resendez. “I’ve always been around
computers and Internet. Then during high
school, at GW, GCC had a satellite program
for electronics and Intro to Computer Net-
working. It was that high school program
that pushed me into the STEM field and I just
continued from there.”
Resendez is proud of the outcome of Code
Fountain’s first event and the great turnout
for Hacktober. “We’re looking forward to
collaborate with all the people we’ve met
here, especially all the experienced people
so we can bridge the gap of what’s taught
Sky Resendez and Chovin Carlson
Photo by Johanna Salinas
at GCC and UOG, and see what’s needed in
the career field,” said Resendez. “The Code
Fountain Institution is what we started to host
these events. We’re looking forward to at
least host Hacktober Fest annually and other
workshops and hopefully face some challeng-
es, maybe even a capture the flag tournament
for hackers. Now that we’ve met some people
that we’re on the same page with, we hope to
achieve something cool with all our heads put
together.”
Though it may be farfetched for Guam’s
tech industry to be as robust as Silicon Valley,
Code Fountain Institution seeks to inspire
islanders to be curious and to challenge them-
selves with STEM.