Nerd Nite Fort Collins

✨Spotlight on the Presenters✨

Our June 18th show is going to be fun and interesting! We have a few tickets left so grab them before they sell out through the link in the bio!

Joel Bacon is a distinguished Professor of Music, the Stewart and Sheron Golden Chair of Organ and Fr. Don Willette Chair of Catholic Studies at CSU, where he has taught for over 20 years.
He earned a Ph.D. in historical musicology through a joint degree program of Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts and the University of Vienna, with a dissertation on the use of the organ in orchestral music.

Evan has spent 15 years navigating the electric power sector from multiple angles: as a competitive supplier trying to win customers, a utility executive building demand management programs at scale, and now as a startup operator tackling load flexibility. His obsession with how individuals like you use energy has given him a rare, ground-level understanding of how supply and demand-side constraints actually affect real people. He’s here to demystify how it all works to give you a baseline of how the grid is built, what challenges we need to solve, and where we are headed in an ever-electrifying world.

We are stoked for our next show on June 18th ! Grab your tickets through the link in the bio!

Talk 1:
Let’s Build a Pipe Organ!
by: Joel Bacon
Pipe organs are the most complicated musical instruments on earth, with a history stretching back to Roman antiquity. In this talk, I’ll walk you through the basics of how pipe organs work: from the wind supply, to the keys, to the pipes. During the course of the talk, we’ll assemble hundreds of parts to form a fully functional, 2-octave, hand pumped, mechanical action pipe organ.

Talk 2:
The Grid’s Growing Pains: Meeting Capacity Demand in an Electrifying World
by: Evan Wilson 

Recent headlines will convince you that AI and datacenter demand will spark grid collapse and skyrocketing bills if left unchecked. Evan breaks down how generation, transmission, and distribution work together to meet demand, explores how the electric power utility sector is evolving to build and optimize capacity, and examines the demand drivers reshaping the equation: data centers, EVs, manufacturing, and home electrification.

We had a great Nite last week learning about land value tax () and the lunar science team of Artemis II. Thank you to our speakers, Matthew and Rachel and all who attended!
Stay tuned for more details on our June 18th show
(Sorry we missed Matthew in our group photo!)

We have reached the capacity of our venue for our May 21st show!

Click the link in the bio if you want to join the waitlist in case ticket holders are unable to make it

Join our newsletter if you want first access to tickets! Our next show is on June 18th with topics about building a pipe organ and data centers!

Hey hey, nerds of northern Colorado, we have two great talks coming up for our May 21st show ! Read on for details!

Talk 1:
Land Value Tax: How Taxing Dirt Could Solve Sprawl, Save the Climate, and Fix Inequality
by: Matthew Behunin

What if we taxed land instead of buildings and work? This Nerd Nite introduces the idea of the land value tax: a policy that rewards building homes and businesses while discouraging land speculation and rent-seeking. We’ll look at why economists across the political spectrum support it, how it can lower the cost of housing, improve development patterns, and reduce wealth inequality. Learn more at

Talk 2:
Moon joy: behind the scenes with the Artemis II Lunar Science Team
by: Rachel Barry

Rachel Barry spent Artemis II inside NASA’s Science Evaluation Room of Mission Control at Johnson Space Center, embedded with the lunar science team and helping tell the story of the mission as it unfolded. The internet called it “Moon Joy”: that burst of pure, contagious excitement as astronauts brought humanity along as they observed our planetary partner, but what you saw was just the surface. Come behind the scenes for the science, the chaos, and the very real humans chasing that feeling… and trying to keep it going.

Grab your tickets through the link in the bio!

The 3 yr Anniversary show was a lot to process! What did we cover? Time. From the perspective of computer science, time is a measure of the reducibility of a problem. That is, how long to tell what stuff and things are stuff and things of the stuff and things. Mic drop!... But wait! There is more! Rainbows! Ummm, spherical geometry, dielectric coefficient, wave theory = rainbows forever! Can we generalize? The solution is left to the audience. 🤓

Thank you to Anna and Senne for their insightful presentations and to all of those who came out! As always, thank you to for their hospitality and beautiful surroundings.

Stay tuned for more information about our May 21st show! It’s going to be a popular one! 🌕

Hey Nerds! We have reached capacity for our venue with the tickets that have been sold. There will only be tickets available at the door IF some ticket holders do not show up on April 16th!

This is the earliest a show has ever sold out! Thank you, FOCO! What a great way to celebrate our 3rd Year Anniversary!

✨SPOTLIGHT ON THE PRESENTERS✨

We are thrilled to have new speaker, Anna, and veteran speaker and our own Nerd Nite boss, Senne, join us on April 16th at Wolverine Farm Publick House to share fascinating facts about Time and Rainbows!

PLUS, it’s our 3rd year Anniversary! Come celebrate with us!

Anna is a high school English teacher, a fan of science fiction, and a person who struggles to meet due dates and deadlines and to not be late to nearly everything.

Senne got his PhD in theoretical quantum physics at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) in 2020. Leaving quantum physics behind, he got interested in atmospheric science. After a short career in weather prediction, he is now a climate scientist at Colorado State University investigating the flows of energy through the Earth system.

Grab your tickets here: https://events.humanitix.com/nerd-nite-fort-collins-s2026e04

April showers (we hope!) bring May flowers….and Rainbows! Let’s all learn about the Physics of rainbows as well as what Time really is; it may not be what we ‘think’ it is.
A fun April show is in store on April 16th

Talk 1:
Time: What even IS that?
by: Anna Bjornson
Time seems intuitive and obvious, but can we accurately define it? We go about our daily lives with certain assumptions and beliefs about the nature of time...but many of them are wrong. Time is not what we think it is.

Talk 2:
Rainbows all the way: Where is the third rainbow?
by: Senne Van Loon
Everyone loves rainbows. If you’re lucky, you might even have seen a double rainbow. But where is the third rainbow? In this talk, you will learn all about the physics of rainbows and how there are an infinite number of them.

Grab your tickets here: https://events.humanitix.com/nerd-nite-fort-collins-s2026e04

We’re grateful for another awesome Nerd Nite Fort Collins for the history books! Thanks to our speakers Tony ( ) and Matt, our musical guests who rocked it; EXTRA LIVES ( ), our amazing venue, The Lyric, and of course, our audience!

HUGE thanks to our friends for helping arrange the logistics for the band coming from LA! We couldn’t have done it without you! ❤️

Stay tuned for information on our next show at Wolverine Farm on April 16th!