Geekspace for Women

Posted by ubergeeke on July 23rd, 2008 in blogpost

Yesterday, I mentioned the Last HOPE Conference that was held in New York City last weekend. Alas, I was unable to attend this year, but I got in touch with someone who did, and later today, you can read amberella’s take on this year’s conference.

The HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) Conference was first held in 1994 and was hosted/sponsored by 2600 magazine - “the Hacker Quarterly” - to celebrate its (then) 10 year anniversary. Over the years, the HOPE conference has featured speakers, presenters and attendees such as Kevin Mitnick, Jello Biafra, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), Richard Stallman, and Adam Savage, and was the scene of Steve Rambam’s infamous arrest in 2006.

This year’s conference, the Last HOPE, was so named because the hotel where the conference was annually held was rumored to be facing destruction. Steven Levy, who wrote “Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution” and was recently mentioned on .51 for his “10 Great Tech Books” list in a recent issue of the IEEE Spectrum, gave the keynote, and this year’s talks included everything from everyday anarchy - “Bagcam - How Did TSA and/or the Airlines Manage to Do That to Your Luggage?” and “Escaping High Security Handcuffs” - to advanced hacking - “Advanced Memory Forensics: Releasing the Cold Boot Utilities” - as well as the Limor Fried & Phillip Torrone “Citizen Engineer” presentation, which I mentioned yesterday.

All is not lost so fear not - the Next HOPE has already been suggested for 2010. (And if it happens, I’ll finally get to go!)

Be sure to read amberella’s guest post about her experiences at the Last HOPE.