Notacon 5

Notacon5

Back in Cleveland for another great time. This was more of a social time for me, and as I found from the people who run it, that was exactly their intentions. I met a lot of new people, got in touch with a few that I haven’t seen in a year. Got drunk and had a blast. I also got to see more of Cleveland this year, including the soapbox racetrack and the science center.

I only went to two talks this time, which was twice as many talks as last year. Mainly because I had to heckle Aestetix on his talk about art and programming. It was an interesting experiment really on what talks would get accepted, that turned into a halfway serious discussion on perception and code. I will definitely be interested in helping him expand this talk for the future.

Hypatia gave a more academic but completely enjoyable talk on how Internet has been treated by the social sciences, which has been quite poorly. As someone who’s evangelical about technology and cryptography, the presentation gave me some insights on who I need to target. It also reaffirmed my belief that the hype curve isn’t guided by those promoting their wares but by misinformed people with good intentions.

The social aspect is very important. Most of the year, at least for myself, we’re in our little isolated areas wondering half the time if other people share our love for art and technology. Notacon is where we can come together and share the fruits of our labor, bounce ideas of each other, and even combine them into a new beast. Or get drunk and take over Hard Rock Café.