With just a few days to go before the kickoff of the 2021 Hackaday Remoticon, we’re still working furiously behind the scenes to pack as much content as possible into the two day virtual event. In fact, there’s so much going on that we thought you’d appreciate getting a bit of a head start as far as planning your own personal course through the weekend goes. The event might be free, but that’s no reason not to squeeze as much out of it as you can.
Chat It Up on Discord
To begin with, you’re really going to want to join the official Hackaday Remoticon Discord server. We know some subset of the Hackaday readership would rather we used Matrix, or IRC, or maybe carefully modulated smoke signals; but at the end of the day, Discord has bubbled to the top as the defacto choice for this kind of thing. Give it a shot, you might actually like it.
The Discord server isn’t just a place for like-minded hackers to hang out and discuss the musical stylings of DJ Jackalope during the Saturday afterparty. It’s also how attendees can ask questions at the end of each presenter’s talk, as we’ll be turning off YouTube chat to keep things centralized. Even if you don’t plan on communicating with others (though you really should), the Discord server has an interactive schedule of events which will let you sign up to be notified when the talks you’ve selected are about to start, and we’ll be dropping important announcements and links in there as the event goes on.
Friday Bring-a-Hack on Gather Town
Friday night ends with a Bring-a-Hack where attendees can show off whatever they’ve been working on using Gather. It’s a video chat platform inside a virtual 2D world that looks a bit like Legend of Zelda.
Using this virtual environment, you can easily drop into an ongoing video stream simply by walking up to the presenter. Once you’ve seen enough, just walk over to the next little cluster of users. The point is to recreate the experience of stopping by a crowded after party where everyone brought some hardware project along with them to get spark conversations. Space will be limited, with ticket holders and people in Discord getting the first dibs, so keep an eye on your inbox for information about how to join.
Of course this is not the only Friday evening activity. A few weeks ago we announced that Lewin Day will be hosting Hacker Trivia, giving our beloved commenters the chance to show off your unimpeachable knowledge of technology and Hackaday history. The Friday talk stream will dump immediately into trivia, but here’s the dedicated link if you want to set a reminder for yourself.
Try It, You’ll Like It!
It’s difficult, perhaps even impossible, to truly recreate the experience of going to an in-person hacker con. But with interactive events and the latest and greatest communication software, we’re hoping the 2021 Remoticon can get pretty close. All the pieces are in place, the only thing we need now is to have a whole bunch of excited hackers to join in and have a good time. Think you can help us out?
I looked at the Remoticon events, and all the event times are in US PDT time, leading me to think it’s really catering just to US attendees or is it ok / possible for non-US people to take a look. I’d feel it would have more of an international inclusion if GMT times could also be included on such listings?
Hard to believe this is a serious question, but if you really need to see the schedule in GMT, the one in Discord converts it for you automatically.
I’m not a Discord user so I suppose I would need to sign up there for these talks then. I suppose they will be turned into podcasts later, I’ll just look for those.
But you’ll miss all the excitement of participating in the Game Show!
You’ll also miss out on having to use Discord.
You win some, you lose some…
I’m a long time reader of Hackaday and active user of Hackaday.io, and I have my doubts about this myself quite often. The extreme usa-centrism of the platform is quite jarring.
The problem isn’t about “liking” or “disliking” Discord, it’s about the closed walled garden it presents. Once the remoticon is over, it will impossible for anyone without an account to view previous chat logs and discussion history. It’s bad enough an “account” is even required to join the discussion. Discord is the exact opposite of an open platform and Hackaday, of all places, should be the last to join that unfortunate creation. This makes me sad.
Yeh, I’ll go as far as to call it blatant hypocrisy.
This is only encouraging the continued use of closed ecosystems where the users are the products.
None of this is true. Why comment on something you clearly know nothing about?
What would your suggestion have been? IRC? Talk about permeance, by default you wouldn’t see any messages at all unless there was a logger set up.
Sad on the use of discord. Sure is the most popular on the bubble, but so is Facebook et al.
The remark ‘try it you’ll like it’ irked even worse. I’m sure its great and likeable, but some of this crowd prefers not to become the product, value our privacy etc and all that.
I figured hack-a-day was better than that.
So, is the Discord logo patterned after Mickie Mouse’s shorts?
Disdcord has been blocked in China since 2018 which cuts out at least half the people I chat with.
I think it was Oscar Wilde who said: “The only thing worse than not using Discord is talking to people who do use Discord.”
I for one applaud the decision to use Discord, mainly because I won’t have to hear any more from the previous crybaby commenters on it.