Penguicon 2015 : | Tek Syndicate

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Penguicon 2015 was an incredible experience. I met and chatted with so many interesting people, and so many kind fans of Teksyndicate!


Greetings to everyone! I also got to hang out with ESR again and meet all sorts of new and interesting folks with new and interesting projects.


Gaming and strange & wonderful geekery abound.


The Guests of Honor this year were:



  • E-Nabling the Future (Hack of Honor, represented by Jen Owen and Ivan Owen)

  • Albert Manero, creator of a $350 3D-printer myoelectric arm


  • Charlie Jane Anders, Editor-in-Chief of io9.com


  • Annalee Newitz, Editor-in-Chief of Gizmodo.com

  • Aral Balkan, founder and lead designer for ind.ie



And there was a great Keynote from Bruce Schneier covering the topics of security, privacy and where we're headed. Like a frog that doesn't realize it's already boiled alive, Data and Goliath points out that the inerta, the less amount of work, is for governments and corporations simply to continue their practices of vacuuming up all of our data and metadata.


I had a tremendous amount of fun, and I'll see you there in 2016! I'm really looking forward to it. In the mean time, I'll see if I can't get that flying arduino streaming sensor data into my local database.





This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://teksyndicate.com/videos/penguicon-2015
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This place looks AWESOME! I must go some year :0

Excellent Video @wendell. This seems like something I may need to get some friends together and check out since Michigan isn't too far out of my way to get to. I just wish there were other cool conventions like this in the Des Moines or Chicago area.

Speaking of ESR, I thought there was supposed to be more videos from their visit with him in like December...

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Does the masks vendor have an online store I could check?
Those masks look great!

I only live a half hour from southfield.... If I would have known about this I would have gone for sure. I will check this out in the future for sure.

Penguicon sounds fun, i wish there was something like that in the UK.. someone tell me there is..

I am assuming/hoping they are just sitting there waiting to be edited... :D

Chaos Communication Camp 2015
How's about following this up with a trip to Europe this summer for the Chaos Communication Camp https://events.ccc.de/2015/02/10/chaos-communication-camp-2015-save-the-date/

For some idea what Chaos is like have a look at an intro to the 2011 Hackers in Space https://vimeo.com/27643058 and 2007 camp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVNyL7xPrQQ (long version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycQIgUdmxBA (short version) Pretty much all the main lectures have been recorded and are available via archive.org or the main CCC site at https://media.ccc.de/

A key aspect to computing in field is the need for power and communications,generally speaking running air conditioning inside your tent from the power grid is frowned upon, but plenty of groups have community tents with full catering facilities, sofa's, tables etc. Meanwhile, typically their is the fastest net access anywhere in the planet. To get an idea of what happens have a look at this 2013 congress Infrastructure Review Presentation of MOC/NOC/VOC/SOC/*OC http://is.gd/th9gi9 (https://media.ccc.de)

The camp happens once every 4 years interleaved with a similar camp "Hacking @" in the Netherlands also on a 4 year cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_at_Random. The spread of hacker spaces across the globe was kicked off 8 years ago at chaos camp 2007 by the attendance of the Hackers on a Plane trip to Chaos Camp.

Personally its at these camps that I have seen the next big things in Geek culture years before it hits the mainstream for instance my first introduction into personal drones was at Chaos in 2007, with how to build yourself a UAV workshops (using parts from 3D printers) being held there. It was 2 years later in 2009 at Hacking At Random that the Dutch police discovered the power of 3D printers, when a key to there new super handcuffs was photographed and printed and then used to open their unhackable handcuffs. I was there watching it happen! Oh and Julian Assange was there talking about wikileaks https://vimeo.com/6460432

If you don't feel like having fun a field with thousands of other hackers this summer don't forget there is also the chaos congress between Christmas and New Year now in Hamburg every year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Communication_Congress

a good place to start is http://news.ansible.uk/ as for maker/hacker events their is of course every 2 years there is https://www.emfcamp.org/ though this is an off year because of chaos camp https://events.ccc.de/2015/02/10/chaos-communication-camp-2015-save-the-date/ hope that gives you a place to start

Eric S. Raymond's shirt was a glider spaceship from Conway's Game of Life. Look it up, it's pretty neat.

OpenTech is coming up next month: http://www.opentech.org.uk/2015/

Although you missed LinuxCon as that was in Edinburgh in 2013.

Also the IoT World Forum might interest you although it's in London: http://iotinternetofthingsconference.com/

I want more of this. Much, much more.