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!
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!
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.
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.
Wait – you are walking around with a lead acid battery on your head?
next time in Philly!
Brian would like that, he lives in south-central PA
Mike and Madison too!
Next time in south-central LA!
That or Baltimore.
We could party on a Liberty Ship, you know…
Oh man, wish I could attend! Maybe Eliot will be there!
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!
pity i cant, im in the wrong country :(
Yep, I’m in. It’ll be good to have the Null Space Labs crew out as well.
Great news Eliot! I’m planning on stopping by NSL too while I’m in town.
yep we’ll be by.
Figures Boston, MA, is gonna be second to LA. ;)
+1. I wanna see the taser scar. But seriously, I’m loving the play on words for the title. Arthur C. Clarke anyone?
Oh man, when does the central Europe get to have such things? By the way, there should be a “new in forums” column on the right to get people there and make them interact more. Then it could be a virtual hackerspace.
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.
Europe has a lot of demoparties. There’s plenty of hackery there, it just tends to be very graphics oriented.
LA is good, but next time make it Lower Allston
ALLELUIA… The City of the Angel’s +1
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!
see you there!. . finally something that happens right next to us
florida just keeps sucking! *packs bags*
Have one in Hawaii and I’ll be there.
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.
I wouldn’t mind one in Chicago either, I’m up in Madison.
I drive through Madison a couple times a year…
One in Chicago would be great!
this needs to happen!!!
Would like to be there. When there is one in Seattle, I’ll be all over it!!!
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.
seattle has a 2600 group..i havent been in years but im pretty sure its still around. i’d go to hackaday in seattle :D
Thank you HaD team for coming to the West Coast! I look forward to meeting like-minded folk and sharing hack lore.
Chicago, dammit! :P
Any Sponsors for a flight from germay??..
..So sad. Have fun, though
Germay? What part of France is that in?
Elsaß-Lothringen :D
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. :(
What, no NYC love here? Next one should be in the big Apple :-D
Isn’t the big Apple (inc) Cupertino, CA not NYC anymore. Haha flame me
I add another vote for New York City.
Ohh come on Kansas City it’s in the middle and kind of convenient for me.
Hays and Salina are closer to the actual center of the US https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39.828175,-98.5795&q=loc:39.828175,-98.5795&hl=en&t=m&z=15 Time for the city slickers to do all the driving and give us hicks break :)
As of 3:03pm 01-06-2014… 97 tickets left… their going fast…
I’m 15 and too poor/far away to buy Airplane tickets… How close are we to holographic technology again? xD
CNN is pioneering that technology, remember?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thOxW19vsTg
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?
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,
“it’s a bleedin’ lil’ bunny!”
“Yeah, but ‘e’s got a mean streak a mile wide!”
I ask newbie questions all the time, sometimes the resident flamebaiters will reply, but mostly the responses are good or (crickets)…
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.
So you mentioned beer, is the event suitable for an 18 year old hacker?
Yes! It’s all ages!
Besides, what 18 year old doesn’t have a fake ID… B^)
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!
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.
What if the bracelet has an MCU, USB, OLED, AND a bottle top opener like the HaDuino? (just speculating, not saying that’s what you’ll get…)
No problem, just stick to soft drinks and you won’t need to wear this particular “jewelry” you revile so much.
Mike, how many kegs of New Glarus will you be bringing?
If I were schlepping beer from Wisconsin I’d get a few kegs from the Great Dane (or from Lakefront Brewery… yum!).
How about live streaming it?
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?
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…
Hell yeah. If the stream was just some dude walking around the event with a camera, I’d stream it on a secondary screen while I did my usual stuff.
I would need a ride to the event and back, is anyone driving through Santa Barbara(US 101)? Help would be much appriciated, and of course I can help with the gas :)
Hmmm, anything a bit less than 5300miles away, let me know, I’ll be there.
Damn you Earth.
Next time go for Vegas – who wants to fly to, visit, wander around LA?
Hey, maybe we’ll do BlackHat or Defcon one of these years and saddle up a Meetup for anyone else in the area. Sounds like fun to me.
Dammit had to be right after I moved to Silicon Valley that this happens.
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
The one day I dont check Hackaday I miss out on the tickets!!! :(
I had no idea this was going to happen here in LA. I hope I get one, I’m on the waiting list
Scalpers will be outside the venue, just show up with plenty of cash in hand.
Hmm, didn’t think about that. I will give it a shot!
there is’t any chance for an italian fan to get some of the goodies?
Costumes are optional, clothing is not!
Might I propose something in the Detroit Metro or Ann Arbor areas?
Ann Arbor over Deadtroit…
Or Rotterdam in the Netherlands :-)
Why not integrate biometric sensor?
9 days to go.
shouldn’t those who can’t make it have some way to get the stckers atleast?? :-|