The Fifth HOPE

About a month ago I got a call from a friend of mine.

Paddy: Want to go to HOPE?
Bob: I don’t know, it’s kind of far...
Paddy: Woz is speaking.
Bob: I’m there.

And that’s how, two days ago, I came to be leaving Lethbridge Alberta, headed for New York. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what HOPE is, it stands for “Hackers on Planet Earth�, and is a conference put on more or less every two years. Starting in 1994, and continuing to this fifth time, HOPE is a gathering for everyone who calls themselves a hacker, from the classical MIT definition (ie Woz) to the usage that we hear every day (ie Kevin Mitnick). There are going to be 65 planned panels, three keynote speeches, a third string for folks who just have something to say, and a 24 hour movie room. The keynote on Friday is being presented by Kevin Mitnick, a famous phone phreak, social engineer and computer hacker. Saturday night brings Steve Wozniak, the co founder of Apple computer, and possibly one of the coolest guys on earth. Wrapping up the keynotes on Sunday, is Jello Bafra, a free speech activist. If you want to find out more, complete information is available on the conference web site. For a complete speaker list, along with quick bio’s, check out www.hope.net.

Driving through Canada is an interesting thing, until you get to the actual driving part. Uneventfully, we took the Trans-Canada (main highway) from Lethbridge until we hit Sault Ste. Marie where we crossed into the United States. After a short visit/complete search of our car by the friendly people from the Department of Homeland Security, we made our way down Michigan, through the Ohio Turnpike, and onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike. We got lost in Harrisburg, eventually getting on the right highway and almost following the directions to Mt. Wolf, Penn.

After finding the right way, we came upon a nice sized house with way too many chickens near the yard. This is mildly important, as Tom Owad lives here, and after 42 hours of nonstop driving, we were going to get a few hours sleep before heading to the conference.

I’m sure this is the point where the story gets interesting, because at this moment, I’m in a car speeding towards Trenton, New Jersey where we want to catch the train in to Penn Station. This will leave us right across the street from the Hotel Pennsylvania, where HOPE is held.

We’re going to try to get some good audio streams, possibly a bit of video, and definitely some blogging going on about what’s happening at the conference. Keep watching folks, this ought to be good.

(Several hours later)

Okay, two panels down and I’m taking a quick break for lunch. HOPE is awesome so far. This afternoon at four we’re listening to Kevin Mitnick speak about his experiences with his activities over the past few years. With any luck, we’ll have an audio file of the talk you can download.

Verizons been having issues with the T1 connection all day, so my iBook can’t get online and download any photos. This is starting to get annoying.

(10 P.M. EST)

We just got out of listening to a two hour broadcast of “Off The Hook�, the 2600 radio show. To check out more about that, see 2600.com. It should be up for download later this evening if it’s not up already.

The hall was packed during Kevin Mitnicks keynote. The audio stream is available to download from a seperate page that I’ll post a few minutes after I post this. He’s also agreed to having an interview with us sometime by the end of the convention. Watch out for that. Tommorrow, we’ve got Woz doing a keynote, and we should be able to get audio for that as well.

Keep an eye on the main page folks. Also, we’re trying to get an interview with Woz tommorrow, so if we can, it’s be great to know if you’ve got any questions for him. Throw them in the comments thread below, if you haven’t put them into the forum thread about “What Would You Ask Woz�.