Notacon 6

Notacon 6
Notacon 6
Type of	Conference
Start	April 16 2009 (iCal)
End	April 19 2009
Homepage:	Homepage
Location
Venue:	Wyndham Cleveland Hotel
City:	Cleveland
State:	Ohio
Country:	United States of America
Costs
Min Cost:	75 USD61.5 EUR <br />53.25 GBP <br />0.00195 BTC <br />5,472.75 INR <br />
Max Cost:	100 USD82 EUR <br />71 GBP <br />0.0026 BTC <br />7,297 INR <br />
Important dates
Submissions due:	January 31 2009
Event in series Notacon

Notacon Hackerspace

This was a complete success.

Members of NYCResistor, HacDC, HackLabTO are coming together to build a Temporary Hacker Space at Notacon 6

Critical Deadlines

• CFP Closes January 31 - We should submit a complete proposal before then.

• CFP Submitted 01/08

• Approval Granted ( However the nature of the space remains undefined ) 01/09
• April 16 2009 - Conference Starts
• April 19 2009 - Conference Ends

Conference Space

The white sections will be available to notacon.

We're likely going to have the Embassy room.

"room itself is 36x16 with 9 foot ceilings" - Froggy

Overall table space available to the con:

• Cocktail tables 8
• 6x30 Tables 20
• 8x30 Tables 10 Risers 7
• 72" Round Table 15
• 60" Round Table 28
• 6x18 Tables 24
• 8x18 Tables 100

However, I'm suggesting we build our own tables with saw horses and plywood. It saves us from destroying their tables. But we'll have to make those tables go away once we're done. Chucking plywood is easy (albeit a loss =( ) and the saw horses are great to have so we can keep those after the fact. Just a thought.

Large Equipment

• 4 30" Saw Horses - User:Openfly
• Make:NYC Tool bin - User:Openfly
• Model 15 Teletype - User:Openfly

Three Phase Approach

• The Gallery:
  • Register of Completed Projects to be Exhibited:
    • Stribe - User:Openfly
    • LED Jacket - User:Openfly
    • MP3 Grenade - User:Openfly
    • Mooninites - User:Openfly
    • Model 15 Teletype - User:Openfly

• Workshops:
  • Register of Workshops and Points of Contact
    • shardy+ certification [friday evening?] - bring booze - shardy
    • intro to reverse engineering [whenever] - bring laptop - shardy
    • gigapixel rigs - demo design discussion - User:Openfly

• Hackerspace Index
  • Register of Hackerspace's with photos and blurbs about them for display
    • NYCResistor
    • HACDC
    • Hacklab.to
    • Pumpingstation:One

Groups Involved

• HacDC
  • Nick Farr
• NYCResistor
  • Matt Joyce
• HackLabTO
  • Shardy
• Pumpingstation:One
  • Eric Michaud
• Noisebridge
  • Mitch Altman

Coordinators

• User:Openfly
• User:Nickfarr
• User:Myself - Liason to Notacon org

Financing

"Personally I think we should avoid discussing recouping costs. Maybe toss out a collective hacker spaces donation cup, and divide anything people chuck in at the end...Free and open is a great way to get people in to work on stuff. And that's how you get them interested."

• HacDC (and/or the Nick Farr Charitable Trust if the motion fails) is willing to cover the cost of an additional room if necessary.

Transport

• Need to arrange transport for equipment from NYCR and HACDC to cleveland ohio.
• Nick Farr has arranged for the rental of a truck

Project Display Coordination

• User:Openfly aka Matt is willing to handle acceptance of delivery and shipping back projects that spaces would like to put on display at notacon.

Original Brainstorming Ideas

• Need room for another Microcontroller Workshop, hopefully run by Mitch Altman if we can get him out there.

• Should have a Wii, DDR, and couches. Make it "lived in", like a lounge.

Space Purposes

"If every hacker space has a person show up with something, we have both the manpower and equipment to provide not only an awesome hack lab, but the people and equipment for some great workshops on hacking. I agree, screw talks. Get people into a room with a soldering iron in hand, or an IDE open in front of them, and then let them get a taste for it. And don't be afraid to direct them to docs / contact info for opening a hackerspace near them if they get really enthused."

"Taking total electronics noobs through the basics of soldering, getting their feet wet and showing them that this stuff isn't rocket surgery, is an immense good."

• Each space should charge their electronics geeks with designing a simple project kit
  • Asssembling a handful of them for a workshop at Notacon?
  • User:Myself has run the kitbuilding-area idea past, has buy-in from NAC orga.

Space Equipment

"We should try to hook up with local resources to see if they would be willing to help us with any heavier items, but shipping in a box of supplies each isn't too much of a hit in resources if need be."

• Large Tables
• Plenty of power strips
• Projector
  • User:Openfly has one if need be
  • HacDC can bring theirs, why not have multiple projectors?
• Soldering Irons
  • HacDC has a traveling set of 20 to bring
  • NYCResistor has many as well.
• Some form of software repository with necessary soft tools
• Components / materials classes require.
• Debugging / toolsets that people are willing to haul in

Activities

• Hackerspaces are encouraged to submit an entry in the Anything But Ethernet contest. This is only the method for scoring hackerspace bragging rights at NAC. We don't care how much money, how many members or how many blinky LED devices you can put together, all we care about is your ability to send packets back and forth to Canada over a cascading network of weather balloons strategically deployed over Lake Erie (or something equally ridiculously cool...involving lasers or LEGOs).

Classes

"We do a lot of this stuff already at most spaces. We know how to do it already, we've probably got the materials already, and this is the best kind of advertising for hacking there is. People doing stuff on their own and coming away from it with a feeling of accomplishment, and an inspiration to move onto the next great success."

• Processing
• Arduino
• Simple circuits / soldering technique.
• And anything else someone wants to do.
• Maybe get one or two advanced classes in stuff people would really enjoy, like:
  • reverse engineering (ida, olly, etc.)

Should we do a talk?

• Some "A year in" perspective is all I can think of.
  • Can you fill an hour with this?
  • Is it worth talking about?
  • Is it worth bumping another worthy submission for?

A Party?

"Have a THEMED social event ("party") run by the hacker spaces, with less focus on getting pukingly drunk, and more focus on encouraging people to create and be creative, in the style of the many NYCR events...for example: no admission to the party unless you're wearing something that you built that lights up! here's a table of wires and LEDs and microcontrollers and batteries. there will be a prize for the most creative entry!"