i have a friend named jonathan nelson. we were skiing one weekend. i told him about my fantasy.e said that i should do it. dawn holliday and sherry sternberg. the four of us had lunch. he said we would start a festival. that was the genesis. it was not anything more complicated than that. in my own defense, and was not yet playing the banjo -- i was not yet played the banjo. the ulterior motive i was accused of did not exist yet. >> i would have thought it was because of your interest in the music and the instrument of the banjo that you play with a lot of love and enthusiasm. i would have thought that would lead to the founding of the festival. >> i have loved the music. much of my life. i really love the old time music. >> you mentioned dawn holliday. she works with you collecting the older music. >> she basically organizes the whole thing'. she decides who is going to be on. they have incredibly great bands opposite each other. i always worry about that, but she tells me not to. >> this has really grown in the number of participants. >> she kept asking what i would do about i

. >> reporter: organizer jonathan nelson is a proud nerd. >> a lot of us grew up as nerds and it was pretty bad when we were growing up. we are nerds but we can change the world. >> reporter: nobody can argue that the first egg head, albert einstein changed science, steve jobs and bill gates changed the world and made high tech cool. doctor suess first coined the word 61 years ago, news week used it 60 years ago. fiction has spiderman and harry potter. cbs has a hit with the nutty nerd filled big bang theory but a successful movie series revenge of the nerds made it really cool. >> silicon valley is a pretty unique area where the nerds kind of won. that's something that the whole area kind of treasures and it savors it and let's celebrate it. >> reporter: and charities will benefit from all this nerd pride. pride even for this aging reporter who was pretty nerdy at a science fair 45 years ago. reporting live. ktvu channel 2news. >> we are live in the newsroom with the storey was he are working on for the news at six. >> bay area businesses are reaching out to veterans who knead a job