Dyne.org, Freaknet.org and the Poetry Hacklab present:

2nd, 3rd, 4th (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) October 2009, Palazzolo Acreide, at the misterious center “Lisbeth Salander” in the Palazzolo Acreide countryside

It’s Poetry! It’s Art, IT’S DELIRIUM!
IT’S ALL AND NOTHING, YIN AND YANG,
GOPHER and ARCHIE!

http://dyne.org/tcpc
http://poetry.freaknet.org/static/tcpc9

Now at the 9th edition, the “Troppo Caffe’ Poco Cervello” (too much coffee, too little brain) it’s a cultural and scientific happening that lasts three days where people from all over the world (and beyond) are meeting in Palazzolo Acreide and via the internet to share experiences, research, culture, poetry, art and science with the intention to create new and beautiful things to donate to the community.

This edition will have people from all Sicily and also foreign guests committed in advanced programming sessions, dissertations for beginners, scientific experiments, sumptuous lunches, enormous dinners and sleepless nights dedicated to the passion for computer science.

Poems will be read, poems will be written, everything and nothing will be discussed, weeds will be weeded, new weeds will be planted, debates will happen, decisions will be taken, all and nothing will be done!

Everyone can join, the important thing is to leave the brain at home and bring a lot of coffee!

For further details check the link above!

So hopefully some of you remember that epic adventure that was HoaP in 2007 which in turned spun up and inspired many a hacker/maker/knitter/chemical mix masters into what is now known as the hackerspace movement threading itself into the North American and now Earth culture.

A lot of people including me were disappointed that we were not able to make it on what is know known as a auspicous trip. Now with a turn of events and where fortune favors the bold, it seems that HoaP is now reborn!

As a phoenix from the ashes, Nick Farr and a few individuals have pulled some strings, made calls, kicked down doors, and overall kicked ass in pulling together HoaP 2 or as I like to call it.

“Hackers On A Plane: Deuce – Euro/Merican Boogaloo”

So here’s the skinny.

Read more…

From their secret bunker location in Vienna, Monochrom peeks out again with North America in their sights.

From their blog post.

monochrom’s USA tour dates / Vorsprung durch Kulturtechnik

Fellow RSS users! Email afficionados! Twitterists! It is time! Vorsprung durch Kulturtechnik! monochrom’s USA tour dates! Fresh!

March 7: San Francisco (8 PM @ Soviet Special, Chez Poulet, 3359 Cesar Chavez)

March 11: San Jose (9:30 @ Etech/LateTech, Fairmont Hotel)

March 14: Seattle (8 PM @ Theatre4, 305 Harrison, 4th Floor)

March 18: Chicago (7:30 PM @ Mercury Cafe, 1505 W Chicago Ave)

March 19: St. Louis (3 PM @ Webster University, Dept. of Arts)

March 19: St. Louis (9 PM @ to be announced)

March 21: Brooklyn/NY (8 PM @ NYCResistor, 397 Bridge Street, 5th Floor)

March 24: Boston (8 PM @ to be announced)

As you can see quite a few hackerspaces fell under their wrath, and we can’t wait to see what they bring to the table. Show up and be amazed. If your still wondering what to expect they have a press release.

###

Monochrom from Vienna is a worldwide operating collective dealing with technology, art, context hacking and philosophy and was founded in 1993. So to sum up, monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science and political activism. Their mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment.

monochrom released a leftist retro-gaming project, established a 1 baud semaphore line through the streets of San Francisco, started an illegal space race through Los Angeles, buried people alive in Vancouver, and cracked the hierarchies of the art system with The
Thomann Project.

In Austria they ate blood sausages made from their own blood in order to criticize the grotesque neoliberal formation of the world economy. Sometimes they compose melancholic pop songs about dying media and host the first annual and inevitably leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics. At the moment they’re creating a conference series about sex and technology. Also they do international soul trade, propaganda camps, epic puppet theatre, aesthetic pregnancy counseling, food catering and — sorry to mention –modern dance.

monochrom’s gigs will be a medley, a little tour-de-farce, a presentation of their projects and political motivation. A joyful bucket full of good clean fanaticism, crisis, language, culture, self-content, identity, utopia, mania and despair, condensed into the well known cultural technique of a gala show. Powernapping highly welcome.

###

/E.

So ShmooCon was a rousing success for many, and entertaining for quite a few others.

As seen here with Int 80 of Dual Core at the HacDC party tearing it up in the Sanctuary.

Next year I think we need to have a proper battle, maybe MC Frontalot? Just saying, it’s an idea. Anyway, I personally thank everyone that came on behalf of HacDC, ShmooCon, and ToorCamp for hosting such an amazing party. In the process of the night we helped raise a lot of money, somewhere North of $2000. I think someone is still counting the singles. That money will help HacDC furnish out their new FabLab they are building plus get some other goodies. I can’t wait to see what gets built next.

Also the hosts of the venue where we held the event, seemed to be happy with how everything turned out and it looks like we may get another shot next year.

Cheers,
-E.

How I Learned To Stop Fearing The Digital DIY Life and Love It!

Some friends of the blog who attended ShmooCon this weekend were tickled pink (literally) when they arrived to find out the badge to the conference was just made out of a single piece of laser cut acrylic.

This lead to rapid phone calls between friends at NYCR and people whipping out US dollar bills to size up the badge for proper scaling.

The end result!

Not 6 hours later they had been hand delivered to HacDC for a trial run as to the quality of the badges by passing it through some of the most stringent on site conference security available.

What rapidly became apparent to us and The Shmoo Group was that even if something that took large initial resources originally, now comes easily to a group of scrappy hackers that want more for themselves than to be beholden to a wealthy singular group.

A recent quote by Bre Pettis, “The future of manufacturing is going to happen in your living room.”, seems to impress the idea of having ability to produce what you want, when you want is rapidly becoming a reality.

What I’m trying to bring across here to you, the hackerspace fans and friends, is that we are in a very interesting time. Where we can in less than a few hours over a relatively large distance, with a device that is costing less than the Mini Cooper (think late 1970’s where a PC cost as much), we can produce something that normally requires machines that cost in the hundreds of thousands only a few years ago.

Let’s think of what beholds us in the next few years.

Groovy times await us,

-E.

Those of you that were on the conference call last Sunday were the first to be made aware that I’ve been working incognito for the last two months scheming, planning, plotting with fellow members of HacDC to pull off a really cool event.

For those that were not made aware, ShmooCon is an annual computer security hacker conference in DC that covers many topics, including 0-day exploits, Hack the Genome! The Age of Bimolecular Cryptology, or The Gentlemen’s Agreement: Pwning Friends Legally for Fun, ????, and Profit, how the Ohio voting machines were able to be compromised (a ‘08 favorite talk of mine), and – if you have an itchy trigger finger – Hack or Halo.

So how does HacDC play into this? Well, some short background:
HacDC didn’t exist when ShmooCon was around last year, it was only spoken about in hushed tones till after the conference. Now we’ve been around for almost a full year with lots of stories to speak of.

Now at this ShmooCon we’re very loud and very proud of how far we have come and we’d like to say thanks to everyone by hosting the official ShmooCon Friday night party.

The details are forth coming but the basics are:

Location: HacDC Sanctuary (4 meters from the Altar)

1525 Newton St NW, Washington DC 20010 USA
(near corner of 16th and Newton NW)
Google Map

Time: 10pm till past 3ish.

How/Who: If you’re a member of a hackerspace or an attendee of ShmooCon, just show up for the festivities.

Venue:

This is where the action happens.

What to expect:

Three DJ’s:
DJ HSO
DJ Just Joshin
DJ Keith Myers

Plus a number of fun projects that hackers from other hackerspaces are bringing in to show off.

Party Mode On!
-E.

*****

UPDATE: Bring your laser pointers!  Shuuush.