Episode: 596
Title: HPR0596: The Importance of Community
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0596/hpr0596.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 23:40:16

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This is Sporus of the Infanomicon Computer Club.
What I'd like to talk about on this episode of Hacker Public Radio is the importance of community.
Before I begin, let me go ahead and say that this is my first time podcasting,
and though I'm no stranger to recording, I'm normally not the one being recorded.
So bear with me as this is a brand new experience for me.
Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to say that I believe that in the hacker subculture,
community is just as important if not more important than anywhere else.
Here at Hacker Public Radio, you can see that plainly, because HPR is a community driven podcast
that without the community wouldn't be what it is and most likely wouldn't exist at all.
When I first became interested in hacking and hacker culture and started calling myself a hacker,
I was in middle school.
At the time, I felt that I was the stereotypical hacker who spent all their time locked away in their room on the computer
for the most part being anti-social.
And looking back now, I can see that from the start, I relied on and considered myself part of a community.
It was just a community that looked strange to the outside world.
Back then, all my community involvement was on forums in IRC and other various places on the internet.
And during that time, I didn't really think I was part of a community, but now looking back,
I realized that the community influenced who I am and how I think today.
Now, going forward to last year, I had just started college and I didn't know anyone when I got here.
One of the first people that I met went on as now, someone I consider a good friend and one of my mentors.
And last year, he invited me to go with him to Freaknik 13.
I had heard of Freaknik before and other conferences like Defcon and Black Hat and different conferences like that,
but I'd never had a chance to go to one or had I really seriously considered going to one.
And before going to Freaknik last year, I had started to lose interest in security and hacking in general,
I'd never really been able to meet with other like-minded people and learn new things by talking to them and hearing what they had to say.
I'd had all been online, but while I was there after seeing and hearing about what other people were working on
and just what all the different groups were doing and just everything going on there, I was inspired.
At the end of Freaknik, I was invited to become a member of the Phenomicon Computer Club and that really meant a lot to me.
From that point forward, I really felt that I was part of a community.
And since that time, I've gone to a couple more conferences, Outer Zone 6 and Freaknik 14,
and at each conference, I've met more people and I've become more inspired to start new projects and help with ongoing projects.
Without this community, I wouldn't have taken the jump to finally start podcasting, which is something I've wanted to do for years now,
but I just didn't know how to start. And, you know, getting to know groups and other people in it Phenomicon,
I found out about Hacker Public Radio, and Mayor Vinci has been telling me for a while that I needed to record some stuff for it.
Now I am.
Without the community, I wouldn't be working on something that I consider is a fairly ambitious project with someone who's a doctoral candidate,
and we intend to unveil that project at a future conference.
And most importantly, I wouldn't have met some of the great people in the security industry and in the hacking community that I now look up to for guidance and for inspiration.
These days, there's more offline venues to participate in the community than I knew about in the past.
I'd always dreamed of something like a hacker space, but I didn't know they existed, though every now and then I'd hear about one.
I didn't know about the extent to which they existed until I started going to these conferences.
I think a hacker space is probably the best forum of community in our culture that I can imagine.
Someday, I hope to have a local space to join or possibly start one so that others can share in it, and I can help teach other people about all the things I'm interested in.
The community is there to support you, to critique you, and to inspire you.
Just by listening to this podcast, you're a part of the community.
I'm proud to call myself a member of the hacker community, and I just wanted to share what the community's done for me and how much it means to me.
Thank you.
Thank you for listening to Hackers of the Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to C-A-R-O dot E-C for all of us here.
Thank you very much.
