Get your geek on

There's a tired stereotype that says folks of a certain age and modern technology keep a polite distance from each other. Spend five minutes with the calendar and you'll watch that myth dissolve. The community has built an entire ecosystem of tech clubs - some practical, some delightfully obscure - and they are very much in the business of getting their geek on.

The tinkerers

The flagship of the whole fleet is Hands-On Tech, known affectionately as HOT, and its own pitch says it best: "Come explore the exciting world of small computers, 3D printing, electronics, and Meshtastic with fellow tinkerers... Get your geek on, 'cause this is the place for it." Beginners and experts side by side, soldering irons out, building things that beep. If you've ever wanted to run a 3D printer or wire up a mesh radio network, your people are already meeting.

The help desk

Not everyone wants to build a robot - some folks just want their phone to stop doing the thing it keeps doing. For them, the calendar is a gift. There's a Computer-iPhone-iPad Club at Colony Cottage, Computer-Apple groups and drop-in sessions scattered across several rec centers, a Computer & Tech Club, and even a WordPress group for the website-builders. It's a community-run help desk staffed entirely by patient neighbors who have already solved the exact problem you're having.

The curious and the obscure

Then there's the hobby wing, where things get gloriously specific. The Science & Tech Club is a homegrown lecture series, where, in its own words, "residents share their expertise and research in engaging presentations" - retired engineers and scientists teaching the rest of us something new. Nearby, the Amateur Radio club keeps the old art of ham radio alive, and the Village Drone club takes the hobby airborne. Add the digital-photography clubs and a Digital Artistry group, and the gadgets stretch from the workbench clear up into the sky.

The secret powerhouse: genealogy

Here's the surprise. The single biggest concentration of serious technologists in the community might be the genealogists. Tracing a family tree today means DNA matching, database wrangling, and detective work across the entire internet - and there's a whole constellation of groups for it: a dedicated Genealogy-Tech SIG, a RootsMagic software group, genetic-discovery sessions, and more than a dozen specialized branches from Irish to Italian to Eastern European. It is, in the nicest possible way, a room full of data scientists chasing their great-grandparents.

Never too late

Put it all together and the message is clear: the idea that you age out of curiosity is exactly backwards. These rooms are full of people learning to print in three dimensions, decode DNA, and finally tame the iPhone - not despite their years, but because a good mind never stops wanting a new puzzle. So if you've been waiting for permission, consider this it. Go on. Get your geek on.