Checking in from The Last HOPE

Dual English-Korean keyboard from which this post is being written.

In true Schroedinger homage, I’m writing this post from a duality of locations.  In the one sense, I’m reporting from The Last HOPE - hacker conference.  In another sense (an albeit more physical one) I’m sitting in NetZone Internet Cafe in the middle of Korea town.

I’m not sure which location is more absurd.  The convention has a few thousand people and at least that many electronic devices.  There are hundreds of computers doing myriad tasks; it’s an unabashedly proud electronic war zone.  I’ve been live tweeting the entire thing from my BlackBerry to much success, but I would no more sit down at a machine and enter a password there than I would leave my car unlocked with my purse and keys inside in the middle of a bad neighborood.  It’s bad enough that the reception in some of the conference rooms requires that I connect to the open WiFi to get a data connection.  So…. in a somewhat ironic twist of fate, I’ve ventured into this room on the fifth floor of an anonymous building with roughly 20 computers of various shapes and configurations (all covered in the same layer of filth) to finally spit out a few words before the best details of my recent experiences escape me.  Thanks, mobile Google Maps.

It will take more than one post to cover my thoughts on what I’ve seen so far at HOPE.  There have been some exemplary talks - U. Penn’s presentation of their results from auditing the ES&S electronic voting machines (laughably insecure) to Prometheus Radio’s panel on “How to Share Your Love of Technology with Non-Technical People” that intermixed their stories of building low-power radios in depressed Kenyan neighorhoods with a decidedly Utah Phillips-ian discussion of growing up invisible to one’s own technological priviledge.  The people are, of course, a varied bunch.  There are your stereotypical coke bottle eyeglass geeks, your old (in technology years) ham radio operators, your young tatooed cyberpunks, etc etc etc… and a surprising number of women.  Both my experience as a woman participant and my views of the place of other women at HOPE will require a full post in and of itself.  In fact, you’ll be able to find it on .51 - Geekspace for Women blog.  It’s coming Maria, I promise!

In addition to the good quality photos that will be up on flickr soon, so far I’ve managed to upload two quick (not so good quality) videos while brushing my teeth and running out the door this morning.  They cover two projects using light and movement to create really neat artistic visualizations.  You can find the 3D Volume Visualizer (way cooler than the video shows) and Persistence of Vision clips on YouTube.

Sometimes you just wish there were more hours in the day!