rrc

Tim O'Reilly once famously claimed that by following the "alpha geeks" you can see what's going to be a significant technology down the road. Chad Fowler describes them as, "... those supernerds who are always on the bloodiest tip of the bleeding edge, at least in their hobby activities." This probably applies to quite a few HN readers.

So who are you following and why?

I'll go first: Rich Hickey, for his amazing work bringing a Lisp to the JVM and moving STM concepts deeper into practice. I especially enjoyed his talks on InfoQ about state and identity.

On a side note, if you agree with PG in his Great Hackers essay that, "Even hackers can't tell [who is a great hacker]," then the Alpha Geek concept becomes moot since you can't actually detect the true alpha geek. There is the possibility, of course, that perception becomes reality.