Kam
Fernanduo 'Kam' Kuo is a pen spinning pioneer who started spinning in 1993. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential people in pen spinning history, having contributed massively to its early development and preceded only by Hideaki Kondo.
History
Early pen spinning
Kam started pen spinning in 1993 at school in Brazil, and by 1997 had learnt enough tricks among himself and his friends to form a pen spinning club at school, which became known as "Pen Tics" and later "Pentix" after a teacher had asked him if he had tics when watching him spin the pen. The club was small, only half a dozen members, and the weekly meetings weren't popular. This led to the dissolution of the club a month later, not officially but rather because it was forgotten.
A year later in 1998 Kam had stumbled across Hideaki Kondo's website and had begun learning the additional tricks that were on that site. It had come to a shock to him that pen spinning had been developed that far, and that there had been that many tricks in the hobby. A few members from the Pentix club were still present, notably Eiji who had just started to make websites, and they decided to work together to make a website for teaching pen spinning.
Websites
- See also: Pentix
Kam had moved to the United States in January 1999, and this affected the development of Pentix. Eiji could be reached via e-mail, but soon after they had decided to go their separate ways and Pentix became a one-person project. In January of 2000 the first iteration of Pentix went online, and by 2002 it had gone through two additional iterations becoming Pentix v3, with a messaging board and revamped site layout. Soon after it was replaced by Pentrix as it continued to regularly exceed bandwidth limits, and Kam began to pursue the idea of a universal forum for pen spinning.
This would arrive as UPSB on the 11th January 2004, after beginning work on 7th October, 2003. It replaced the Pentix forum as the main discussion board for the international pen spinning community, and continued in various fashions until 2018, with Kam taking a backseat to Zombo soon after the release of UPSB V3 in 2007.
Collaboration with Superhandz
In early 2003 Kam collaborated with Superhandz, a small group of object manipulators led by De'vo, a video editor and pioneer of card manipulation, which he then called 'XCM'. Clips of Kam spinning were filmed and edited into a famous presentation known as Kam's Superhandz Video. It had become extremely popular, and was one of the main contributors to the idea that Kam was the strongest pen spinner in the world back then. Kam however was not interested in competing or being the best pen spinner, only in furthering the hobby that he was key in spreading.
Spinz
In 2008 Kam collaborated with large toy company JAKKS Pacific, Inc. to make a series of commercial mods that would be marketed towards children. The resulting pens were known as Spinz and were released in May 2008[1], with JAKKS Pacific sponsoring the Pen Spinning World Cup 2008. The designs copied key aspects of popular pen mods at the time, but turned out to be too clunky and poorly-built to be used by pen spinning hobbyists. Despite widespread marketing across the United States[2] to promote pen spinning to a young audience, Spinz pens were discontinued by 2010.
In the media
Kam appeared in commercials for Nokia in the mid 2000s[3], as well as interviewing on Fox 11 News Los Angeles for the 7th UPSB SoCal gathering in August 2009[4].
He also appeared in a segment for NPR News on The Bryant Park Project.[5]