Hackaday: The Gathering

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1/21/14 – Downtown LA
Come one, come all to a party with [Brian], me, and the Hackaday readers who live in the Los Angeles area. Tickets are free, as is the beer, food, t-shirts, stickers, and other swag which you won’t find out about unless you show up in person.

This is the first official live Hackaday meetup and is open to all ages. During the summer we talked about making Hackaday a virtual hackerspace, and this event is one part of that initiative. We’ll let you in on some stuff we’ve been planning, but in return I expect you to tell us your thoughts on how the Hackaday community can get bigger and better. We’re also using the attendance at this event to judge if we should host more live events (possibly in other cities too). So if you’re in LA get your ticket now and make sure your friends do the same!

UPDATE 3: Get your name on the waiting list…

It took just over 24 hours to give away all 450 tickets. But never fear, you can still add your name to the waiting list by going to the link above. If anyone who already registered changes their mind they can release their ticket and it will be offered to whomever is on the top of the waiting list.

UPDATE 2: Holy cow, we blew through 300 tickets. But we’ve released more. Get yours now, then keep reading below.

What a wild ride! My original plan was to offer Early Bird Tickets for one week, then release more if we needed them after that. But we blew through all 300 in about ten hours. This is going to be awesome. We really do want to pack the house so I’ve released the addition 150 “hold” tickets. There’s no difference in the tickets, but this really is all we have left so get yours NOW!

UPDATE 1: Just over 3 hours and we’ve given away well over 100 tickets!

83 thoughts on “Hackaday: The Gathering

  1. I’ve been hard at work on a little piece of custom hardware to show off at the party. Prototype is done, as is the firmware. I just need to move it from breadboard to a hunk of acrylic and do the soldering. Unfortunately I have to ship it to LA as I don’t think TSA is going to let me through security with it (or at least I’m not going to try).

    I can’t wait to see all of you there!

    1. You may still be able to fly it there, they just recently let me through with an LED covered hat attached to an arduino with a lead-acid battery powering the contraption. Of course it was in my luggage and I did find a note saying it had been searched, but it was still there when I arrived.

      1. Yeah they’re not that bad. I took an entire suitcase full of pingpong balls 256 LEDs with custom wiring and a a dozen custom PCBs stuffed inside. We put a nice “Hello Mr Customs Man, this is Art please be careful” note inside and they seemed to take care with it as nothing was damaged the other end. Recommend you check it though, hand luggage is treated entirely differently I think.

    1. I invited him last night but haven’t heard back. But Jack Buffington already got a ticket so I’m excited to meet him in person!

      I would have sent you a personal invite — but figured since you don’t live anywhere close to LA you wouldn’t be able to make it. I might wear the wrap-around logo shirt you made for me though. So you’ll be there in spirit!

    1. We’re actually working on a project that I think is much better than forums. That’s one of the tidbits we’re going to spill at the meetup.

      But yes, I agree that we need a better way of presenting the community aspect of the site. It’s an arduous process but we’re starting to see some of the stuff we’ve been working on reach the testing stages. I’m giddy with excitement.

  2. Dammit! This is why not living in America sucks… You guys should sell hack a day t-shirts and stickers! I need them in my life. I’m stickering the rear end of my car, a hack a day sticker would finish it off perfectly!

  3. Neat idea sounds fun, I think the community is fine, just keep the quality content coming (I like yours and Brian’s the most). Try one in Chicago on the weekend (usually busy though) for those of us not on either coast!

    This is one of my favorite sites, don’t change it TOO much.

    1. if it was in seattle or portland i’d get a group together and carpool up there, also… it’d be cool if you could make it coincide with makerfair or openhardware summit type stuffs, because then commuters could go up for 2 weekends to see two things, rather than having to travel so far twice, or pick hackaday over make. because obviously hackaday would win.

  4. Just a note on the traffic, nowhere in LA is anywhere ‘just 20 minutes away’, so I’m hoping things don’t start promptly at 6. My commute from is 8 miles from Korea town to the west side. Time? Anywhere between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours. :(

  5. I dunno…

    Hackaday is a nest of negativity and immature sniping. It’s impossible to ask a newbie question, show off a project you’re really proud of, or get feedback.

    It’s probably because Hackaday doesn’t have a juried comment system (like, for example, the one at Slashdot). Look at the comments for this post for examples:

    http://hackaday.com/2014/01/06/geek-group-fire-upate/

    In that article, Adam even asked people to keep the comments positive, and you can see how much good that did. This isn’t at all unusual – the vast majority of articles get comments of “he’s stupid because that’s dangerous”, “it would have been better if he’d done *this*”, “It’s lame because he used an Arduino”, “I don’t see where the hack is”, and on and on.

    Mature, thoughtful readers either lurk or have been chased array, leaving only griefers.

    Do you really want to meet those people? Wouldn’t going to a local Hamfest, Makerfest, or robotics competition be more enjoyable?

    1. We’re working on a better comment system. It’s coming. Soon we’ll get that slashdot system where the first comment of every post is a Monty Python quote. Don’t worry.

      As for meeting these people, I have to point out there’s a difference between Hackaday commentors and Hackaday readers. I’ve hung out with readers at Makerfaires and through random encounters. There’s nothing wrong with Hackaday readers,

    2. The only real difference is meeting in person, vs internet. They’re the same groups and people, part of life is learning to deal with society at a whole, good and bad, and that exists in all groups. No one group or discipline is automatically better.

    1. Yes, open to all ages. For those that want to partake in free beer they’ll need to show ID and will get a bracelet to wear. Anyone one interested (or of age) in beer can partake of soda and of course there’s some food for all!

      1. I ain’t wearing no dam plastic “jewelry” till I am in a morgue. Cursed this insidious tagging of conscious beings to get in an event or participate. The dignity of Man is attacked by these actions. A generation ago this would not go over at all. I give a couple of venues a lot of …. over this tagging of people.
        Ticket please. Ok. Your welcome. Thanks.
        Bad enough to fly and deal with TSA, but most flight should be grounded because weather modification is caused by the current flight level. 9.11 taught us that.
        I will have to wait till a Chicago event. We saved our Amtrak local.

    1. We talked about that but there really isn’t going to be anything interesting on the stream. One of the points of attending is to meet other Hackaday readers in the area and to… well the other thing is a secret until the day of. But we will be encouraging attendees to tweet and post pictures/videos from the event.

      Anyone have a good suggestion for a hashtag for the event?

      1. Not a hashtag, but even if you’re not live-streaming, have a pro with a Hi-Def video steady-cam and a good mike man… (you know, because the quality complaints HaD commenters have made after other shows…) It will make a good impression of what the Evil Overlords are willing to do to gruntle their minions. Well, besides the free beer…

  6. I’m a mature thoughtful reader, I’m still here :). Then again I’m a mature enough to not to sweat the small shit, and understand most of it IS the small shit. We mature types don’t not let the jerks ruin our good time

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