Episode: 2085
Title: HPR2085: Penguicon 2016 Report
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2085/hpr2085.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 14:05:21

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This is HPR episode 2.85 entitled, Ben Wick and 2016 Report.
It is hosted by HUKA and in about 22 minutes long.
The summary is, Ben Wick and 2016 happened on April 29 through May 1, 2016 in Southfield, Michigan.
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Hello, this is HUKA, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode.
This is one where I want to give my own personal report on the 2016 version of Pangwakon.
Pangwakon is an interesting event.
It is partly a science fiction convention and partly a Linux and open source and computers convention.
And I happen to have the great honor of being given the responsibility for putting the Linux and open source and computer stuff together.
So I'm kind of the track head for all of that.
But what I want to do here is just talk about what it was like for me.
It was a very personal thing.
It's not a review of the entire event.
There was probably 400 hours worth of stuff going on and I was not at every single thing that happened.
I attended as many as I could.
And most of the ones I attended probably are tech related, so you shouldn't be surprised.
With the variety of things on offer at Pangwakon, you know, I managed to get in a few other things, including being on a panel.
So that was, it was all a lot of fun.
So this started the event kicked off Friday, April 29th, 2016.
And it was at the Weston Hotel in Southfield, Michigan.
As it turns out, that's not too far from where I work.
So, you know, I left work, got myself some dinner, then went to the hotel, and went through registration to pick up my badge and my participant materials, et cetera.
And I was just in time for the opening ceremonies at 6 p.m.
Now, when you've been working with a group of people all year to put on an event like this, it feels great to see it all come together.
All of the guests of honor were introduced, and this year my friend, Deb Nicholson, was one of them.
Then I attended a keynote presentation by George Gage, demonstrating the electrical activity of nerves using large cockroaches as experimental subjects.
Now, he removed a leg from one of these cockroaches.
He had been numbed and put the sleep by cold, and then he attached electrodes to it, and he stimulated the leg, and we could view the electrical activity of the nerves.
Now, this is not as bad as it sounds for the cockroach, because when they molt they can grow back the leg, at least that was what he said.
So, it was a very interesting presentation, and it was interesting to see the electrical activity and see how it responded to different sensory stimulus and things like that.
And then I wandered over to a new space we had this year, and what's called the Executive Meeting Center, which is adjacent to the hotel, and saw a presentation on pandemics and deliberately making diseases extinct.
Which kind of seems to me like a darn good idea.
So, the two things they focused on, polio and guinea worm.
Now, guinea worm is a parasite, and at last report, I think there were only two cases of guinea worm in the entire world.
So, thanks to the work of the Carter Foundation, we're very close to eliminating this particular pest.
Polio is a little tougher. It takes a real strong regime of vaccination to make that work, and unfortunately, in this country of all things, we're backsliding on vaccination, which I think is a demonstration of stupidity on a mammoth level.
Anyway, after that presentation, I went to see my friend Pat Baker, who did a presentation on the Dark Web Big Three, which are Tor, I2P, and Freenet.
Those are his big three.
I always look to schedule some good talks on ways people can protect themselves online, so I was very happy to get Pat's proposal, and he did a good job on this.
Then I went looking for the Ubuntu release party, but it was nowhere to be found.
And on Saturday, I cut up with Greg Maloney, who explained the party was earlier in the evening, but the program booklet had the wrong time on it.
So, you know, eventually, it's like after 10 p.m. end of a full week at work. I decided it was time to go home.
All right, day two, Saturday, April 30th, 2016, so I headed back to the hotel, and they have a very nice breakfast buffet there, so I got myself some fortification for a full day of con activities.
Started off with a presentation by Jair Lance and Don Kuchwara, and discussed running a technical team and the difference between a manager and a leader.
Now, I'm happened to be a project manager, my day job, so it's something I have to do a certain amount of, and I really enjoyed their discussion and great deal.
Then it was off to the Fedora Roadmap. Tom Callaway of the Fedora project has become a regular at Penguin Con, along with Ruth Sealy, and I had specifically requested that he do this to expand on our Linux offerings.
After all, we do have Penguin in our name, and we should have a solid group of Linux presentations.
Now, we have at least four canonical employees in Michigan that I know of, and because that Ubuntu has always been well covered, but I want to expand that.
And since I already have Tom available, that was a great place to go, and I've got Tom now working on preparing a Red Hat challenge for next year.
And the way that works is we have some computer set up, and they're running Red Hat, but they're running Red Hat that has deliberate problems inserted.
And so the challenge is to see who can diagnose and fix them the fastest.
So some of our very dedicated cis admins can get in there, and you know, either demonstrate that they do have what it takes, or maybe demonstrate they should do a little more homework.
Also, Tom and Ruth did their Raspberry Pi Hacks talk again this year. They co-wrote a book on Raspberry Pi Hacks.
And they're both very big on Maker stuff. In fact, you may remember Ruth did a keynote at Ohio Linux Fest a couple of years ago talking about open source hardware and being a Maker.
Well, after that, I went to a panel on the reality and fiction of artificial intelligence with Anne Lecky, Jason Mars, Linger Tang, and Jennifer Marsman.
Now, this whole thing's been in the news a lot. You probably have heard about people like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking who are saying, oh, danger danger, you know, this stuff could get out of hand and causes a bunch of trouble.
So, you know, how much of a danger is it? Well, you know, this panel didn't think we're anywhere near that. Now, Anne is a science fiction writer. She has a Hugo for her novel, Ancillary Justice.
Jason and Linger, who are a couple, they were there with one of their kids. In fact, they're computer scientists at the University of Michigan who are working in AI.
Jennifer Marsman is a Microsoft evangelist for the Azure Cloud, who also did graduate work in AI at the University of Michigan.
And in fact, it was very instrumental in helping us to find the people to contact to get them in there.
So, a very interesting panel. And, you know, an example of the breadth that Pengwakon is able to bring to these things, bring different people together to provide different views and insights.
So, then I went to the Pengwakon board meeting. Now, I'm not a board member. The meeting was open. And I just wanted to see what was going on.
So, the board is like the long term continuing management over a number of years. And each year they pick a con chair to put the event together and give that person the budget.
Then the con chair puts a team together and I'm part of that team. So this year the con chair with Scott Kennedy, who did a great job.
And for 2017, it's going to be Liffy Du Bois, who I am sure will also do a great job. I really love Liffy. And fond of Scott as well. They're great people.
Anyway, then I went to a presentation on the works of Miyazaki. Hayao Miyazaki is a legendary Japanese enemies, our anime artist and my wife and our big fans.
So, this presentation focused on his earlier works, which was nice because we're more familiar with the later ones.
And after seeing that, I went to a presentation from Jennifer Marsman, who did fun with mind reading.
This combined EEG recording with machine learning software that's available in Azure to essentially do a kind of lie detection.
The idea was to ask a series of questions to which the subject would give a truthful answer and then give them the same questions, but this time tell them to lie.
The Azure machine learning would learn the mental pattern of a truthful answer and the corresponding pattern of a lie. And then for future questions, it could offer a pretty accurate estimate of whether you were lying or not.
I found this absolutely fascinating. And Jennifer is a great presenter. So full of energy. And just every time I go to one of her presentations, I get a big kick out of it.
So then at around four o'clock, I went to, how will technology change society? So this panel had Deb Nicholson, who is a friend of mine, guest of honor from the Open Invention Network.
It had Jason Mars and Lingja Tang, the two AI scientists from the University of Michigan.
Tobias Bakell, who is a science fiction author and Edward Platt, who is one of our tech track presenters. And I think a grad student of my memory serves.
This panel got into a number of topics such as personal freedom and an age of surveillance and wound up in the area of automation taking away jobs.
This was a natural lead in to the panel that I was going to be on the next day called post capitalism. So I made sure to invite everyone to come to that.
After this, it was time for a break to grab something to eat and peruse the dealer tables. Everyone who's registered gets access to the consweet where there is food and drink available.
That is part of what your registration money buys. And it does, in fact, include beer for those who want something more adult as it happens. I don't drink, but I was more than happy to have a diet pop.
The dealer tables, you know, you want to take a look. You never know what you're going to find there. It's quite a collection of stuff.
Books, jewelry, and costumes are always in abundance at an event like this. But then there are different items that vary from year to year.
There was one table this year. There was just a variety of soaps, artisanal soaps that they had put together.
And there's, you know, Hannah and all kinds of good things.
After that, I went to see Krunal decide to a presentation called the Tech Behind Asteroid Mining. Now Krunal was in this area at one point. In fact, he ran the Tech Track back when I was just a presenter.
Then went on to work as a senior avionics engineer for planetary resources. Now, you may have heard of planetary resources. That's the group that Peter Diamandis and Larry Page and, you know, all of those Silicon Valley folks put together with the idea that, you know, let's go out and mine resources from asteroids and bring those resources back.
And maybe make up a ton of money. And so Krunal works for this outfit. So it really felt like a presentation from the front lines. Very interesting.
And we also paired him with Bob Trembley, whose Bob is an astronomy buff in the area. Does a lot of presentations about astronomy and is a regular at the Science Track on all the local area conventions.
So we got Krunal and Bob paired for a panel on asteroid science.
After that, I went to Web Comics 101 logistics with Erica Wagner and Laura Cascos. They have a web comic called Sidekick Girl, which I enjoy.
Sort of a little twist on the superhero genre, you know, most superheroes have a sidekick. And so the focus of this comic is the sidekick.
The presentation was about just the logistics and issues involved in producing a comic and getting it out every week. So it was very interesting.
Now, I was going to go to night sky observing after this, but the weather was not accommodating. So I decided, all right, let's call it a day and go home.
Day three, May 1, 2016. Another breakfast buffet at the hotel to get me started and then went to a presentation by Michael Romney, who did a look at Libra Office base.
You know, there are one or two people thought that I had a monopoly on Libra Office presentations far from that. Michael is a fascinating fellow.
He has a YouTube channel under the name of the frugal computer guy and has a series on Libra Office. And he has been doing one on Linux Mint.
And these are great videos. Each one is about 10 minutes long. And I recommend them very highly. I ran across them a few years ago and subscribe and watch them as they come out.
And in last year, I don't remember which presentation I was in, but I heard his voice and recognized it and introduced myself and said, OK, I want a talk.
I've learned how to do that from Ken Fowell. So he said, yeah, great. I'd love to talk. So, you know, this year was Libra Office base.
I would get something from him next year. Don't know what just yet, but you know, I am starting to work on the next year's lineup.
In fact, after Michael's presentation, I went to the first of our planning meetings for next year. Now, as I said before, the board chooses a con chair, the con chair puts a committee together.
Sometimes people stay on from year to year. Other times they decide to move on. And so, you know, there are new faces. And so it's important that we have some meetings, get everyone on the same page and pulling together to make the event as good as it has been.
After this, I went to a talk from Susan Sons on security principles for system administrations. Susan is just an absolute gem comes here year after year gives great presentations. She's a security professional.
And, you know, her talks are always security related and always worth attending. So she's one of those people. I always make it a point to contact when I'm planning the tech track and just chicken with her and say, hey, what do you got from me this year?
Now, in past years, she did things like the crypto party. And she did that for a few years and say, okay, I want to do something different. That's fine. We'll do something different. So this was one of them. She also did a couple of security principles for programmers. And she said, you know, when you get right down with the principles are pretty much the same, whether you're a programmer or assistant meant.
Then, after Susan's was the panel, I was on post-capitalism. Matt Arnold and Ed Platte joined me for this. And what we're trying to do is start speculating about how economies evolve, what might come next, and particularly the job market.
You know, it's becoming obvious to a lot of people that we're automating more and more stuff. And that creates a real interesting problem. Well, problem opportunity. Take your choice. But, you know, what happens if more and more jobs are automated, you know, how do people feed themselves? You got to think about that.
And I took a break for lunch. And then after that went to Ed Platte, did a presentation on free and open democracy. And what he was really looking at was some of the tools available, such as Lumio, liquid feedback, and intertwinkels.
These are tools that help you create an environment where decisions can be consensus-based and democratic, which is something that he's pretty big on. And Ed's another fellow who comes back year after year and gives us interesting presentations.
Well, finally, it was time for the closing ceremonies. Now, usually for the closing ceremonies, you have on the one hand a bunch of very tired people. You know, all those times where I said, I went home and went to bed. You know, some of those people just stay at the hotel and they're a party and all night long. I'm too old for that. So, I don't.
So, you've got a bunch of really tired people, but there's also a kind of a manic energy about the whole thing, which also often happens when you have a lot of tired people.
So, they are reward prizes for things like the best room party, the best costumes. They start thanking all of volunteers, the guests of honor, say a few final words about their experience and what a great time they had.
Now, PenguinCon 2016 was certainly a great event. We had really great guests. We had a record attendance. We know it was over 1600. We don't know how much over because sometime midday Sunday, registration just stopped registering people and taking their money.
It was like, you know, if you're here for the last couple hours, fine. I'm not quite sure why someone does that, but who knows.
But it was, it was a fabulous, fabulous time, great attendance. Some things we did for the first time this year. We had a computer lab.
We found someone who donated a bunch of their netbooks. They're not, you know, they're not gaming laptops or anything. So, they're not super high-powered. But, you know, with that lab, that gives us the opportunity to do some interesting things in terms of the presentations.
Next year, for instance, we're going to do that Red Hat Challenge. And that's where the computer lab is going to come in handy. And we want to make better use of the computers and use them even more next year.
But certainly everyone I talked to had a great time. And I think a lot of people are going to be coming back. I saw some of the, you know, among the people that the hacker public radio community would know 5150 was there for the second year in a row.
And I won't speak for him other than he sure looked like someone who was having a great time. And the Sunday morning Linux review people were here.
So, yeah, Tony, Mary and Tom Lawrence were all here. So, you know, it was a great event. And as I said, I am now getting ready to start planning everything for next year.
So, I think that's about it. I'm going to end this. And as I always do, I'm going to encourage you to support free software. So, with that, this is Huka saying bye-bye.
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