Nerd Night East Bay 54: eSports, Insects, Early Baseball

How eSports Powered Up

Get UP UP, not DOWN DOWN for Nerd Nite this month and don’t be LEFT out as we learn what’s gone so RIGHT to make eSports a billion dollar industry, and what’s LEFT to take this sport RIGHT into the mainstream. While Twitch and Blizzard have led to suddenly famous teenagers playing for millions of dollars in sold out arenas, there is also a dark side as the maturing industry struggles with stability, diversity and the ten hour practice days needed to B A success. Think you’re ready for huge money from your own pentakill on Summoner’s Rift with the eSports arena opening in Jack London Square? Come to the show to get your START!

Speaker: Roland Li

Argentine Ants, the Gateway Bug

A single ant colony from Argentina has now filled almost six hundred miles of California’s coastline, and brought with it an equally huge opportunity for education outreach. Learn about the surprisingly similarities in social behavior between this and other insect groups when compared to human populations, and what this can teach us about the future of humans’ own worldwide supercolony. Also discover the unseen world of insects right below your feet using ongoing citizen science projects and learn why ants are the perfect “gateway bug” to get the public interested in science.

Speaker: Jenna Florio is a Research Assistant at the California Academy of Sciences

East Bay Baseball Before MLB

The Oakland A’s are now #RootedInOakland, but the roots of professional baseball in the Bay Area stretch back over 150 years. Starting with the Live Oaks Base Ball Club in 1866, Oakland became a hub for professional baseball outside of the Major Leagues. Oakland was also one of the pioneering locations for racial integration with the first African-American to play in organized white baseball a half century before Jackie Robinson, and the East Bay also featured an early integrated league. Discover the locations of long lost stadiums scattered throughout the Bay Area, get an old timey base ball demonstration by Bay Area Vintage Base Ball and learn about the significant history of baseball in the East Bay before the arrival of the A’s and Giants.

Speaker: Cyrus [suh-ROOS] Farivar is the Senior Business Editor at Ars Technica