D.C. and Pittsburgh reunited once again during the Hackers on Planet Earth 6 conference. Myself, J, Elwing, Lyssa, Doc, Vlad, Genetik, and Nuke met up at the Hotel Pennsylvania very late Thursday (or early Friday). The D.C. crowd was delayed a few hours by a bomb threat in Union Station, but arrived without a hitch.
Mysteriously, several panels were cancelled, including two on which Kevin Mitnick was supposed to participate in (he had food poisoning?) and Steven Rambam who incidentley was arrested by the Feds. Otherwise there were some interesting panels, some technical and some social, and it was a generally good time.
A few of us also headed to Broadway to see Avenue Q — a play featuring puppets in a rated R fashion. It was probably one of the best plays I have seen, although I wouldn’t suggest taking your kids.
It is always interesting to go to these kinds of conferences as a design outsider. I had an interesting conversation with my two security enthusiast (and professional) friends about the difficulty of helping normal users understand security and privacy technologies enough to use them. Almost all of the literature out there is focused on helping people understand the technology, not necessarily the application and practice for every normal users. The only movement I have seen in this area is the Symposium on Usable Privacy from Carnegie Mellon, but it may be that I am still ignorant to this field of interest.
This was J’s first time in New York City, so we did the tourist thing. We found a nice bus tour which drove us all around the city with options to stop and get off (weather permitting, that day is was not). There was enough to see to be entertaining, but enough left to have something to visit next time we go to NYC.
Some pictures…
seele :: Jul.25.2006 ::
Geek, General, Technology, Usability ::
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