This strip was inspired by my recent trip to the South by Southwest (SxSW) conference in Austin, TX. They had these stations set up to plug into power and recharge your laptops and phones, which always had a group of people huddled around them. Struck me funny and I wondered what such a group might be called.

I knew the actual name was key to this strip’s success, but I had zero idea what it should be. I wrote several things down but wasn’t happy with anything. I tried crowdsourcing via Twitter. I got some good suggestions, but nothing that felt right.

Then I was on Otis Frampton’s Ustream watching him draw and asked if I could poll his audience. Immediately, Otis suggested a “Google of Geeks”, which I thought was brilliant. And frankly, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.

Here are some of the other contenders:

My ideas:

• Clusterhub
• Nerdmob
• Spazpod
• Nerdswarm

Follower suggestions:

• Nerdpod
• Herd of nerds
• Quaffle
• Gang
• Forum
• LAN
• Package
• Deployment
• Pod
• Swarm

The strip seemed to take forever and by now, I’m kind of sick of it. So I have no idea if it works anymore. But let me know if you like it.

Watch this strip being created!