iiNet - We like Geeks

Our resident creative type, John is a student of Fine Arts and Multimedia Design and an avid gamer, with a sharp eye for detail. When he's not getting up to all things geeky or tinkering with technology, he's donating his artistic skills to promote local events, films and productions, both online and in print. He combines geek, goth, punk, cosplay, anime, art and dance culture for laughs, and has even hosted a few LANs for good measure. These days resides within iiNet subtly spreading his custom flavour of mayhem, for the good of all.

By day, Matt works as a mild-mannered Content Administrator behind the iiNet Freezone, FetchTV, and 3FL gaming network. By night, he wields control pads, keyboards and mice to defend his family's honour across digital battlefields and maintain order on the 3FL game servers as El_Funko, the scourge of cheaters and griefers. In the TopGeek 2.0 gaming category, Matt says he is the hardest final boss the TopGeek hopefuls will face yet.

PRK is a sci-fi geek who entered the world of fandom via Usenet Newsgroups in the early 1990s. These fandom newsgroups were on anything from r.a.sf.w.rj through to X-Files and Buffy. There days PRK regularly attends or assists in the organising of Swancon (Perth's premier sci-fi convention) and is on the board of the Western Australian Science Fiction Foundation (WASFF). Outside of fandom, PRK has worked in the Internet industry for 15 years and in his rapidly dwindling spare time is currently researching Leadership in MMORPGs as a PhD topic (although if pressed, he claims it's just an excuse to play World of Warcraft).

You might have heard of the mysterious iiNet Labs where our BoB modems, wireless bridges and other gadgets are born. Simon is one of the guys who makes it all happen. When he's not holed up in the iiNet Labs tinkering with our secret new products, he's flying around the world to check out the latest in technology. Our Tech TopGeeks think they know gadgets… Simon will put them to the test.

Matt spent more than three years as iiNet's Social Media Manager. He set up the first of iiNet's social networking accounts and was the first member of iiNet's Social Media team. On an average working da he spends time interacting with customers on Whirlpool, Facebook, Twitter and the iiNet Blog; keeping up to date with tech journals and news articles; liaising with other departments in the business that are planning on launching things into the social media sphere; and looking for opportunities to share cool stuff with our readership. He's also studying gaming at university and hopes to create the next Minecraft.

You could say Jasmine is a little bit obsessed with Doctor Who. She has a huge pile of assorted Doctor Who paraphernalia including two life-sized cardboard cut-outs of the 10th and 11th Doctor. She follows Internet memes, she loves going to comedy shows and attends as many gigs and festivals as her bank balance will allow. Most conversations with Jasmine will usually find her obsessing or fan-girling over something. She also flies the flag for all things geek/nerd and feels it should be celebrated.

Matt's been brought up on computers since he was four years old, starting with a Commodore 64, which he still adores. He had his first online experience when he was 14, which involved TeLiX and a shell ac count. That was 18 years ago and he's been online ever since. As a coder geek by trade he comes up with some pretty wacky ideas while he's not doing important stuff for iiNet. The last thing he wrote was something that posts his FoFiX (Guitar Hero emulator) scores to Twitter so everyone can enjoy how awesome he is at playing FoFiX.

Stuart is a gamer at heart and can't say no to a good shooter role-playing game or Dota clone. He managed to clock more than 100 hours on Skyrim within its first two weeks of release while maintaining an Elo of 1650 + (if you don't get it don't worry). He's also got a soft spot for old classics and claims there's no limit to the number of times you can complete System Shick 2. In his younger days Stuart was a member of Western Australia's highest rated Halo 2 clan. He's retired now, but says he's still up to any gaming challenge - on console or PC – and if he doesn't win "it was probably lag".

Richard has been an avid gamer for the past 15 years. The first game he fell in love with was the Final Fantasy series before he eventually progressed onto PC gaming. Traditionally he's a hardcore first-person shooter player, though he admits to going through the obligatory World of Warcraft phase. Richard has a keen interest in technology and has always enjoyed building, upgrading and overclocking computers. His passion allowed him to turn his hobby into an online venture where he now writes and records reviews on the latest PC and media gear.

Sam's a bit of a geek of all trades, but for TopGeek 2.0 she'll be lending her artistic merits to the judging panel. From games to sci-fi, movies and anime – she's into it all. She says her special power is drawing and photoshopping pretty pictures, which is how she's ended up with a truly excessive amount of Pokémon drawings. Her Final Fantasy and Dragon Ball Z knowledge is unsurpassed, not to mention her expertise on Dr Who. Sam's TopGeek attributes include her collection of Shiny Pokémon and her custom-made Ramona bag from Scott Pilgrim vs The World. At iiNet she's known as Samus (Metroid).