How good/bad is QWERTY? Seriously.
So in my previous write-up, while highlighting the benefits of alternative and custom layouts, I declared without much evidence that QWERTY is not that bad at all, and also that it is in the top 2% of all the possible layouts. Well, like so many times in life: it depends. I did my original research many years ago - the exact value was in fact 1.82% -, but I forgot to mention that this is only valid in a special case: using my personal corpus and ruleset. It makes sense since back in the day I did this to support the design process of my own custom keymaps. Anyway, it was high time to redo my original experiment, dive in this topic a bit deeper, and reveal the logic and method behind my calculations. Spoiler alert: I was wrong! Or was I? ;) QWERTY Everyone knows QWERTY I guess. Christopher Sholes, Remington 2 typewriter, preventing jamming of type bars, path dependence, whatever. I'm not going to cover it here, check this previous write-up of mine if you are interested...
Jul 1, 2024
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▶ TALKS The talks were really interesting, especially for me not knowing a lot about mechanical keyboards (yet). I'm learning pretty fast working at Massdrop, but having heard the stories and everything else that the speakers had to say was immensely helpful. Here's a list of the speakers and what they spoke about:
▶ BOARDS & CAPS The event organizers said that there were around 300 boards, but even that was being conservative. I made sure to check out as much as possible, but between that and talking to everyone I could, it was difficult to take a close look at everything that was there. The picture below doesn't do the meetup justice!
▶ GIVEAWAYS All the sponsors of the event, including us of course, brought loads of stuff to give out to attendees. The majority of all who attended were able to walk away with something which was really great. We gave out a pair of Massdrop x AKG K7XX Audiophile Headphones, a GMK Plum keycap set, some Massdrop x NuForce IEMS, a couple gem artisan keycaps, a bunch of wooden wrist rests, and MORE keycaps! Here are some of the winners below:
▶ FUN EVENT FACTS · Attendees: 222 · Giveaway Items: 177 · Photo Booth Pics: 313 · Keyboards: +300 · Keycaps: Probably a billion, let's be honest.
▶ Check out this video of the meetup by Manofinterests:
▶ ALL THE PHOTO BOOTH PICS: http://imgur.com/a/WVZtY
▶ MORE MEETUP PICS: http://imgur.com/a/zI6k0
Lastly (but certainly not leastly), a BIG shoutout to the event organizers and volunteers who put this event together. You could see the hard work they put in leading up to and during this meetup and we all had a blast as a result. Cannot wait until the next one, and the ones after that.
▶ Follow SMKMeetup to stay tuned for future Seattle events: · Twitter: https://twitter.com/smkmeetup · Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smkmeetup/
▶ Follow our official Massdrop channels to stay tuned for everything else: · Facebook: https://facebook.com/massdrop · Twitter: https://twitter.com/massdrop · Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/massdrop