This past weekend I attended my first hacker conference. Notacon is a conference-style event that is for people who like to “build, make, break and hack stuff.” I was able to attend a part of the 3-day event showcases technologies, philosophy and creativity, and learned more about the hacker community.
I’m not a hacker, and it was my first time at a hacker conference. I was impressed with the openness and focus on sharing at the event. Speakers gave talks and shared information about technology in every day life, the creative arts, and social interaction.
I attended a Freeview event on Friday, where speakers gave a 5 minute pitch about their upcoming talks. This event provided a great overview and was a way to hear about new ideas which included topics such as music theory and algorithmic composition, video synthesizers and open source hardware, numbers that are so big you can not write them down, and how Occupy Cleveland is similar to doing agile project development.
One talk that sounded interesting was by Peter Fine, who talked about Telecomix, a volunteer group of activists who have been keeping the Internet running in the Middle East in the face of government censorship. His presentation was called “Hacking for Freedom.”
I attended a session about the upcoming role of the narrative and script writing for video games. This took place in a darkened conference room where 6 people were playing the game Artemis, a game in which players work together to play out a preset narrative that someone else wrote.
The pass for Notacon was unique – it was a circuit board and there was a soldering/make area room where you could work to make your circuit board into a working LED message board, and also add a USB and audio port to your badge.
Chris Sanyk gave a GameMaker software demo that I could not attend, but I was able to visit the A Game – Any Game area that he and some collaborators had setup where people were encouraged to develop a game over the weekend.
I met lots of hackers, makers (people who make electronics and make stuff), and individuals who worked in IT and security. I had a great time – and enjoyed what I found to be a unique atmosphere that focused on sharing and cooperation rather than competition, publishing, and ownership.
Image Source:
www.notacon.org/
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