Hackers On Planet Earth HOPE XV Conference
I’ve been going to biannual the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE) conference since 2002 (past writeups here), and this most recent—HOPE XV—was my 11th time attending, and I gave my eighth talk. The conference organizers were very public about slow early ticket sales for this year, and—from appearances—this seemed to be the smallest conference in many years. But it was still fun and it felt more intimate than past years.
And even though this conference is well established now, and—like so many things in the culture (as I’ve written here)—HOPE is kind of stable and somewhat repetitive at this point. However, that hacker spirit of exploration was still alive and well, and I learned a lot.
The facility at St. John’s University is pretty remote; even living in Queens it took me close to an hour to drive out there (and I drove because the public transit options from LIC are pretty limited). But while I miss the hubbub of the Hotel Pennsylvania (now a hold in the ground opposite Penn Station in Manhattan) the facilities worked pretty well. And even though this is a profoundly religious institution (which is out of alignment with many of my (lack of) beliefs), the university didn’t seem to interfere in any of the subject matter or lives or behaviors of the attendees.
Several of my friends and former students who had worked on A/V and lighting for past conferences are no longer involved, and this really showed. The live sound was really bad in many places—for my talk, no one could figure out how to turn the sound system on, and the previous talk ran so late that I didn’t have time to figure it out myself. So, I just had to talk really loud. Lighting was just whatever was in the room, and for a video screening in the little theater they had lights just blasting onto the screen, that really washed it out. But of course this is a volunteer effort, and if you complain too much you end up in charge. I was overwhelmed with personal stuff this year and was not able to help out or help steer anyone to the conference, but will see what’s going on in a couple years and perhaps get involved.
In any case, I had fun doing my talk Live Show Technology: Past, Present, and Future - Have We Reached a Maturity Point?, and had a surprisingly good turn out even though I was scheduled for 9pm on the first night of the conference. I have the video captured from the live stream of my talk posted here. Here’s some random photos; click any to enlarge, and I hope there will be another HOPE in two years; I hope to see you there.
