Foo Camp and Word Hacking

By Catherine Nolan

Okay - I've said before that one of the great perks of working on these books is all the really great people that I have the opportunity to meet and talk with including our readers, our fans, our authors, and the FOOs (Friends Of O'Reilly).

So this past year, I was the recipient of one of the greatest invites I've ever had in my life. I was invited to FOO Camp. Now there were a lot of sessions on learning and how the brain works (which I'll definitely be talking about in further posts), but there was also this one session titled Make Your Own Word (Hacking English) presented by Erin McKean.

In Erin's words from Dictionary Evangelist:
...You'd be surprised at the number of techie folks who won't hesitate to open a case clearly marked "DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE" but shy away from inventing a word. In my view, English is just another system, and systems are made to be explored, analyzed, and, yes, exploited and overclocked and hacked. Your language is just like your computer -- it's yours to use as you wish, and the only limit is whether or not, in the end, it works like you wanted it to...

It's no surprise that we at Head First think this is a great idea. Take something you think you might know, think about it differently, and then see ideas that you hadn't considered begin to bubble to the surface. We've even made up a few new words to describe our Head First Editorial process like: HeadFirst-ification of ideas, configurifications of designs, we call our frequent reviewers Boca Grandes, and our readers of our books learners*.

*yes I know the last two are a stretch, but its sometimes not just the word you create but the definitions and usages that you assign to the word. But to err on the side of caution I'll definitely check with my colleagues over at Make Magazine to see if they agree.

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