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Episode: 2890
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Title: HPR2890: Penguicon 2019 Report
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2890/hpr2890.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-24 12:48:49
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---
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This is HBR episode 2890 entitled, Ben Wicken 2019 Report, and in part of the series, Ben Wicken
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it is hosted by Auken, and in about 14 minutes long, and Karim a clean flag.
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The summary is, Ben Wicken 2019 took place on May 3, 2005, 2018 in Southfield, Michigan.
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This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honest host.com.
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Hello, this is Auken, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio in another exciting episode.
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And here I'm going to give my report on Pengacon 2019, which happened a little over a month ago.
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May 3 to May 5th, but I want to get my report in while everything is still fresh in my mind.
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This is the latest in my annual recollection, and if you check you will see that I've been doing
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these every year for a while now. As always I have to emphasize that this represents just my own
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experience of a massive event. We have 1,466 people attending. That was the number I heard at the
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closing ceremonies. Over 400 different sessions, each of which lasted at least one hour.
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In fact, if you add it up, there's probably more like 500 hours of programming going on,
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or maybe even more. Clearly, I could only attend a handful of these sessions.
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And I had a great time, but by way of example, my friend 5150 was here, and at no time were we both
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in the same session. So if you were to come, you would probably have a somewhat different experience.
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So the first day of the conference Friday May 3rd, as usual, I grabbed a dinner after my work
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on Friday, I was at work all day, and then went to the Weston and Southfield, Michigan,
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to attend the con, and I picked up my badge. Now we've been at this hotel for six years now,
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and it is a fantastic venue for us. I usually purchased my badge a year in advance at the previous
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con, so I had bought this on the last day of Penguin Con 2018, and it was waiting for me when I arrived.
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I made a brief tour of the makerspace, then it was off to the opening ceremonies.
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This is where you get an introduction to the various guests of honor, as well as here from the
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Convention Committee about what to expect over the course of the weekend. Among the guests of honor
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were Saladin Ahmed, who is an award-winning author, and is now doing some writing for Marvel.
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Then Mikey Mason, who is a stand-up comedian with appearances on Nerdist.com,
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sci-fi, and MTV Geek News, so he's a Geek comedian. Then there's Zed Shaw, who's a programmer and
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artist who teaches programming and has a series of books. Learn Python the Hardway. Learn Ruby the
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Hardway. Learn JavaScript the Hardway. Kind of sensing a theme here. He's most commonly known for
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creating the Mongrel web server for Ruby web applications. Then Daniel Hanson, he created a
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business called Crafty Keltz to sell his jewelry that he makes, and wound up creating jewelry for
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TV show The Vikings. He is also active in reenactment and taught swordplay over the weekend.
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Sophia Brookner is a professor at the University of Michigan who started her career as a developer
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at Google before moving into becoming a designer and looks at that intersection of design and coding.
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Finally, Karen Corbiel is a maker who loves to teach. After two years as a co-host on the Ben
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Heck show, she is now on YouTube as part of Element 14's The Learning Circuit.
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Now one thing you might notice is that a lot of these people do more than one interesting thing.
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That is not accidental, as I learned when I talked to the con chair Jessica Roland.
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She was deliberately looking for these people who could tick off several different boxes,
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and I think she did a great job. And if there's anyone you want to know more about,
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check the show notes. I have links to information on all of these people.
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Now, after the opening ceremonies, I went to an anime panel on anime fantasy romance.
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Now, there was a lot of anime programming this weekend provided by people who frequently do that
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around here. Paul Chemner, Star Strammell, and a Karina Spears. So I did manage to catch a few of
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their things. After this panel, I went to the Ubuntu release party, which is an annual event at
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Penguin Con, because Ubuntu's .04 releases are usually within a few days of Penguin Con.
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Now, at one time, it was a place to pick up a CD, but no one does that any longer, so now it is
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mostly a place to catch up with your friends. All the members of Sunday Morning Linux review were
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there. I got to meet Jay LaCroix for the first time in person after hearing him on the podcast for a
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while now. I also got to thank Tom Lawrence because his company Lawrence Technology was one of the
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sponsors for Penguin Con 2019. After this, I decided to leave since it was the end of a whole week
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at work, and you know, I'm getting older. I need my rest. So that was all I did for Friday.
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Now, for Saturday, I went back to the Weston, had breakfast at their breakfast buffet.
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The first event of my morning was Tony Beamus from Sunday Morning Linux review,
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doing a presentation on DDoSes and what the average person can do about it. Now,
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Tony recently changed jobs, and is working for a local company on their cloud team,
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helping to mitigate DDoS attacks for their clients. So he definitely has the skills for a good
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talk, and he did not disappoint. Then it was off to Truths, Half Truths, and Sweet Sweet Lies,
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which was a panel discussion by Erica Collar, Doug Johnson, and Mark Haynes, about the pitfalls of
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being a consultant slash contractor in the IT industry. I spent quite a few years doing that,
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so I wanted to see what they had to say. Then it was off to another anime panel,
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Supernatural anime, by the same group of people I mentioned previously.
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Here, the emphasis was more on creepy scary types of anime.
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I next went to a screening of The Ghost in the Shell, which in the program was supposed to be
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the anime film from 1995, but a mix-up resulted in the showing of the Scarlett Johansson film
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from 2017, which I was not really interested in, so I left. And decided this was a good time for
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the hallway track. I've been going to Pengwakan for many years now, and I have a lot of friends I
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see there, so a little socializing is always good. I decided to get little hands-on next.
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A local makerspace from Ann Arbor, called All Hands Active, was on hand throughout the con
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for people to drop in and do a little soldering. Or, as they say, on the other side of the Atlantic
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soldering. I think that's how they say it. Not really British. They offered a simple,
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basic, blinking LED badge for free, or you could purchase a more complex one that had a micro-controller
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and displayed text. Since hardware and particularly electronics and soldering are not my strong suit,
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I went with a simple one this time, but I may try to step up next year. We'll see.
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Then I went to a presentation by one of our guests of honor, Sophia Brookner, called Critical
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Optimism, and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. Sophia looked at how technology is
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posse is powerful, but won't necessarily solve all problems. She looks for a path between the
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extremes of techno-solutionalism, which is that technology will solve all of our problems,
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and the opposite, which would be a Luddite rejection of technology as evil.
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This was one of the better things I experienced this weekend.
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A following this, I was on a panel myself, called Unconditional Basic Income,
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along with Matt Arnold and Zachary Black. We had a pretty decent turnout for this and a lot
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of good discussion, which continued out in the hallway. We may do something next year,
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and I suggested maybe health care would be a fruitful topic to get the discussion going,
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and if you listen to the stuff I do on Hacker Public Radio, you might have some sense of my
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background with all of that. After that, I went to the Con Suite, grab a little bit of food,
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and if you've never been to a science fiction convention, the Con Suite is a wonderful thing.
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Unlike some of the tech conventions where with Ohio Linux Vest, admission is free,
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but you have to fend for yourself about food. At science fiction conventions,
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the admission costs money, but the food comes with it. The Con Suite is a place you can go,
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and usually there's some good food there, and I did indeed find some.
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To constitute my dinner, and then I came back for a panel on the Fediverse decentralized
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social networking, with Michael W. Lucas, Ed Platt, Matt Arnold, Craig Maloney, and Mark Felder.
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I was really interested in this one, because last year, Ed Platt did a presentation that I
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thought was excellent, and I asked him if he might do something for Hacker Public Radio.
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He declined as he was busy, but told me I was welcome to use any of his material,
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so I am in fact working on a series for Hacker Public Radio that will probably go up in autumn of
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2019, where I look at some of the alternative social media. What got me off of my butt on this was
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the closing of the Google Plus, which told me it was time to look around. After this, I again was
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tired after a full day at the Con, so it was time to go home and rest up for day three.
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So on Sunday, May 5th, back to the hotel, another breakfast buffet, where I met up with Craig Maloney.
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Craig is the leader of the Ubuntu logo that put on the release party Friday night,
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and is also active in the Fediverse. So I continued our discussion from last night,
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and got some additional leads and information. And as he is a good friend, I have someone I can go
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to with questions, which is always helpful. After breakfast, it was time for e-learning design,
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the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly, by Erica Collar and Cliff Flint. Cliff is an old friend
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of mine, and when I was teaching, I actually had to do e-learning design, so I had a strong interest
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in the topic. There were many lessons learned here. And then from here, it was off to a
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presentation on solar panels by my friend Gibson Nichols. I had a strong interest here as well,
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since my wife and I have been planning to get a recreational vehicle and become what we call
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snow birds. In other words, people who go away for the winter, some place warmer. And solar
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power is very useful when your mobile and don't always have utility power available.
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My last panel of the day was understanding USB, why this cable works, and that one doesn't,
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by Henry Marshall. This was a great technical discussion of all of the different flavors of USB,
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and I think I learned a few things. After this, I had a few minutes free, so I bought my badge
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for next year, as I always do. It is a little cheaper if you do this, but even if the price was
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the same, I would do it just because I think it helps the con to have a little working capital as
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they prepare for the next year. And then it was off to the closing ceremonies. At this point,
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the guests of honor get to say a few words about their experience, and the staff gets to thank all
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of their helpers, awards are given for the best room parties, and then everyone winds down.
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So, I went home and collapsed in my chair because I was really tired.
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I think this year's event was wonderful, and as always, slightly different from any other year.
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Penguin Con has a permanent board of directors, but they pick a new con chair every year,
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and that con chair really puts an individual stamp on the event. I thought Jessica did a great job
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with this year's event, but then I usually think that about the people who are con chairs.
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And I am now looking forward to next year. I don't know who the con chair is going to be. I don't
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know if they've picked anyone yet, but it should be interesting as always. And so with that, this is
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Ahoca signing off for Hacker Public Radio, and reminding you as always to support free software.
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Bye-bye!
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You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio.org.
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We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday, Monday through Friday.
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Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by an HPR listener like yourself.
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If you ever thought of recording a podcast and click on our contributing,
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to find out how easy it really is. Hacker Public Radio was founded by the Digital Dove
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If you have comments on today's show, please email the host directly, leave a comment on the website
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or record a follow-up episode yourself. Unless otherwise status, today's show is released on the
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