The world’s most excellent conference on hardware creation, the Hackaday SuperConference, is back. Get your tickets now for two magical days in Pasadena this November.
This exclusive gathering of hackers, designers, and engineers is where brilliant people geek out with their peers. Talks tell the story of research, prototyping, product design, manufacturing, and getting that new hardware out into the world. Nowhere else can you get such a concentrated dose of Sistine-Chapel-like details about what is being built in businesses small and large, basements, University labs, and everywhere else.
Early tickets are $128, get your pass to the conference now! This ticket gets you in the door for talks, breakfast and lunch on both days, a conference badge, and the party on Saturday night. SuperCon also includes hands-on workshops — these have limited capacity and some have material costs, more about this next week.
What You’ll Find at SuperCon
First and foremost, SuperCon is packed with amazing people. Who will be there? It’s easiest to mention some of the speakers — but the point is that everyone on hand is the type of person who wants to celebrate that circuit you designed, the enclosure you milled, the product you sprung into existence, and the unexplained behavior you’ve been hitting your head against with a prototype or research project.
- Alan Yates is an engineer of many disciplines. He got his start in software and telecommunications running his own ISP in the late 90s, then spent many years in web and enterprise application development, only to return to his electrical engineering roots with wireless networking hardware and most recently precision indoor positioning. Alan, originally from Sydney, currently resides in Seattle and works for Valve Corporation on virtual reality technology.
- Dr. Christal Gordon is an engineer and educator. She has designed bio-inspired and bio-interfacing systems, high-speed electronics, and models of complex systems. Applications of these systems include low-power consumer electronics and neural prosthesis. She’s passionate about bringing science to the general public..
- Ben Krasnow works at Google[x], creating advanced prototypes, and previously developed virtual reality hardware at Valve. He is well-known for interesting applications of science and technology on his YouTube channel: Applied Science.
- Luz Rivas is an engineer, educator and social entrepreneur passionate about getting kids to explore and innovate with technology. She is the founder of DIYgirls.
- Ken Shirriff writes a popular blog (righto.com) on reverse engineering everything from chargers to microprocessors. He created the IRremote library for Arduino. Ken was formerly a programmer at Google and has a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley.
There’s still a spot for you on this stage. Submit your talk proposal now!
Building a Hacker Village
What I’m most excited about this year is the concept of building a Hacker Village. Conferences are usually held in hotels — everything’s under one roof: drab ballrooms for the talks, mediocre restaurants, and unimpressive hallways where “lobby con” happens.
SuperCon is in Old Town Pasadena this year and this is where our Hacker Village takes shape. We have a workshop space that has never been equaled at any conference: the Supplyframe Design Lab. Right next door, the Los Angeles College of Music houses the SuperCon Talks. And all around these venues, excellent food, drink, and entertainment are no more than a few blocks walk. The Hacker Village concept weighs the best parts of the conference equally: your interactions with everyone attending are just as important as the organized events themselves.
Pasadena is a great area for technology, companies like SpaceX, iRobot, JPL, and institutions like the ArtCenter College of Design mean the area is packed with interesting people. It’s 15 minutes from Burbank airport, and LAX is an easy destination for international flights. We anticipate attendees and presenters from every part of the globe, and November spells great weather just when a lot of other areas are stepping into the cold and dreary.
Looking Back on the 2015 Hackaday SuperConference
This year’s SuperCon will far surpass last year’s; the speakers, program, and venue already back up this claim. Check out all 23 talks from last year, then help us secure the final piece for this year’s event: we need you there.
I’m really excited that we’re doing SuperCon again this year. Please help the word out by sharing this article on social media and telling your friends. This means telling people about tickets, but also about speaking — you should submit a proposal, or pester that awesome hardware hacker you know to do so.
SuperCon is put on by a small group of really awesome people. The includes the ~30 presenters who give great talks and workshops, a small number of volunteers, and the Hackaday crew. For instance, Embedded.fm interviewed some of us last year, including the guy changing garbage cans and keeping the coffee going. That’s Dan Hienzsch who was #2 at parts.io at the time and is now the resident engineer at the Supplyframe Design Lab. I really do think that literally everyone at this con is a fascinating person to spend the weekend with, and these venues will be even better than last year with different spaces to get away and visit with the people you run into.
The supercon was indeed awesome last year. Too bad it moved.
I think it’s good to hold conferences in different places. There is a lot of hardware going on outside of San Francisco. Granted we’re not too far away on this one. I do think the venues will be a step up. Last year it was fun at Dog patch, but there was a definite lack of casual area and nothing really withing walking distance. Pasadena’s a great walking city with tons of stuff in a few blocks of SuperCon.
Hopefully it’ll visit the Midwest some day :) California is so faaaar away.
Chicago!
As a resident of one of the suburbs where people claim to be from Chicago, I second.
Even inside California, California is so faaaar away… I feel your pain!
Yeah I can’t blame you for moving, last year was just so convenient!
Such a great event last year. Can’t wait for November, just bought my ticket!
One of the best events! Great to see it happening again.
Radu, are you making the journey this year?
It’s to far far far away :(
Got my ticket.
Yay! Looking forward to seeing you in Pasadena, Paul. Same goes for Zach and (hopefully) Radu.
$128?
Screw you bougie overprivileged hipsters and your fake ass “hacker” con.
lol
I forget how much it was last year… but with all the swag, the free food, and the quality of many of the talks I found it one of the best bang4buck conferences I’ve been to.
Ah, but the secret is that they are giving out gold-plated Commodore 128s.
That was last year. This year they’re plated with unobtanium.
$128 is cheap as conference tickets go. You’re just a tightwad.
Got my tickets. Welcome everyone to Pasadena. :-)
Got my tickets! How will workshops work this year? Same as last year?
Workshop tickets will be separate. I’m not certain about availability and cost of those tickets (cost will be a function of material cost for what you do in the workshop, etc.). We’ll get more info out as soon as it is nailed down. See you in a few weeks!
Sorry fo double post, Slow internet.