Geeks as the Media at Notacon

sinnergy writes "One of the Midwest's only remaining "hacker" cons, Notacon, will be happening April 8-10, 2005 in Cleveland. As an interesting subtext, an extraordinary amount of interest in independent media coverage for this event has been occurring. One project includes Jason Scott's Notacon Radio project. The Packet Sniffers are doing their own Notacon TV project. In addition, numerous other online media outlets, oline radio shows and bloggers have really picked up on the idea of events like these being truly valuable to the geek community. Even the local geek radio show is keen on the idea. Richard Thieme, one of the event's selected speakers, has promoted the hacker con as being one of the final bastions of open speech. Is this the birth of a new trend or is this simply geeks doing what they always do... spreading the word about something new and different going on in their world?"

Comments

latter

[Lord_Dweomer]

"Is this the birth of a new trend or is this simply geeks doing what they always do... spreading the word about something new and different going on in their world?"

The latter. Next!

Getting it right.

[kwoo]

Frankly, it doesn't surprise me that attendees are acting as media for such an event. The alternative is expecting the mainstream press to get it right.

I look forward to seeing what the "geek media" comes up with.

Since when...

[/dev/trash]

Is CLEVELAND the Midwest?

Hacker or Cracker?

[VoidWraith]

I can't tell what is meant by the quotated use of "hacker" in the summary. Do they mean "hacker" which they could have used without the quotes, or do they mean "cracker" which explains the quotes but doesn't explain why they didn't just use the word?

Re:What the hell are you talking about?

[Junior J. Junior III]

I expected, for the $50 or so I paid to get in:

- Competent, knowledgable speakers. There might have been a few, but most of what I saw was amateur. The self-professed "military technology history expert" who maybe was 14 years old and obviously had no actual military service record takes the boobie prize.
- Presentations that didn't suck. (Maybe you should test whether your laptop can talk to the projector BEFORE the presentation begins!)
- A published, printed schedule that was accurate. And if they had to change the schedule, quit disseminating the outdated schedule!

After about 5-6 hours of this lameness, I got fed up and walked out. I wish I knew the person who organized it so I could punch him. For $5, it might have been an OK time, but for $50 I felt like I got conned by NotACon.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Irrelevant. Did you know that Cleveland is the one large city that has yet to regain jobs since the 2001 recession? Moreover, we don't anticipate returning to pre-recession levels until 2009.

The city is in trouble. Not as much as Buffalo, but there's some big time job concerns here.

Re:What the hell are you talking about?

[Junior J. Junior III]

OK, I'll give you the one on the military technology. That one was pretty much sucked. However, wasn't that one of the few backup speakers?

That's the thing. I didn't go there to see that speaker. That's what I ended up seeing, because something else that I DID want to see wasn't happening when it was supposed to.

You were there 5 or 6 hours... huh... it sounds like you gave it a really fair shot.

At that point, I'd seen enough. I couldn't tell when anything was supposed to happen, and all indications were that whoever put this together had zero experience with organizing an event. Why should I continue to waste my time putting up with that kind of bullshit?

And the threats of physical abuse? Talk about unprofessional.

I don't like to mix business with pleasure, and punching the organizers would have definitely been pleasure. So OF COURSE I'm unprofessional. Charging people $50 for admission and then giving them SHIT is also unprofessional.

If you expect to be given then the world on a silver platter for FIVE BUCKS, you are sadly, sadly mistaken my friend. Heck, I don't know how I'd put on something like it for 5 bucks a head.

Well, you start by stripping your bedsheets and using them as projection screens for your presenters, most of whom were selected by walking down the hall of your dorm at college and saying, "Hey anyone want to give a talk on some kind of technology that they know something about?" Then you put up a web site that makes it look like you're professional, competent, maybe even cutting edge. Rent out a convention room at a Holiday Inn, and sell enough tickets to cover expenses. Seriously, I would have been disappointed if my ticket HAD cost $5, but I wouldn't have been pissed off. But for 10x that much, I feel robbed. Wanting to punch someone who robs you is understandable, isn't it?

But, the rest of it, I mean, come on. A/V problems are endemic to any event such as this.

Not if the people putting it together plan, prepare, and do some basic testing. If you go to a professionally produced presentation, it's fucking slick. If you go to some half-assed amateur bullshit hour, you get endemic problems. A/V tech is easy enough, if you're a supposed 1337 haxor you shouldn't be having problems getting a laptop to talk to a DLP.