[00:30.800 --> 00:48.820]  And you're tuned to listener-sponsored, non-commercial, WBAI in New York, 99.5 FM, streaming around the world at WBAI.org, and we are going to attempt to bring you most, if not all, of Off the Hook.
[01:05.340 --> 01:10.060]  We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
[01:10.380 --> 01:12.980]  But the best is back, the worst.
[01:13.580 --> 01:15.480]  I hope that's understood.
[02:06.900 --> 02:08.520]  Very good evening to you.
[02:08.760 --> 02:11.200]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:11.900 --> 02:12.760]  Rob T.
[02:12.940 --> 02:16.040]  Firefly here with you on this Wednesday evening.
[02:17.740 --> 02:27.480]  And this is a special post-hope episode, and we are lashing things together the best we can to get everyone in on here.
[02:27.700 --> 02:30.140]  So I am joined by...
[02:32.340 --> 02:33.420]  Who am I joined by?
[02:34.040 --> 02:35.200]  I'm joined by Alex.
[02:36.580 --> 02:37.480]  Hello, everybody.
[02:37.580 --> 02:37.940]  Good evening.
[02:39.760 --> 02:41.020]  I'm joined by Gila.
[02:41.220 --> 02:41.460]  Hello!
[02:42.960 --> 02:46.240]  And from Parts Unknown, we are joined by Emmanuel and Kyle.
[02:46.640 --> 02:47.280]  Can you guys hear us?
[02:48.420 --> 02:49.860]  Yeah, can you hear us?
[02:50.440 --> 02:51.000]  Yes, indeed.
[02:51.180 --> 02:51.800]  We can hear you.
[02:52.700 --> 02:54.600]  Okay, well, there's a couple of things here.
[02:54.700 --> 02:58.900]  First off, we should be sounding much better, but we can't get the station to push the right buttons.
[02:58.960 --> 03:03.320]  And if they would do that, we'd come across the normal sound, and we would sound better.
[03:03.420 --> 03:04.940]  But until then, we're on the telephone.
[03:05.180 --> 03:05.940]  And that's okay.
[03:05.940 --> 03:08.040]  We're using our massive Zoom connection.
[03:09.140 --> 03:19.580]  And the reason we're doing that, and not using our usual bunker remote studio, is because we got hit by a tropical storm yesterday, and there's no power for miles around.
[03:19.580 --> 03:31.880]  So the only way we could do this would be to actually convert our car into a stereo studio, and try to do it that way.
[03:31.980 --> 03:33.480]  Because this is a very special program.
[03:33.660 --> 03:41.340]  This is the traditional post-HOPE special that we do after living through a HOPE conference, which we just did.
[03:41.340 --> 03:42.900]  And boy, did we live through one.
[03:43.640 --> 03:45.780]  But let's continue introducing people.
[03:45.900 --> 03:50.820]  I know we invited a bunch of people on, and hi to you, Alex, and Gila, and Rob.
[03:51.340 --> 03:52.200]  Good to hear from you.
[03:52.360 --> 03:53.460]  Is anyone else joining us?
[03:54.080 --> 03:56.800]  Yes, we are joined by Johnny Xmas.
[03:57.240 --> 03:58.800]  Hey, thanks for having me.
[03:59.460 --> 04:00.780]  Good to see you here.
[04:01.480 --> 04:03.140]  Beaches from Radio Statler is here.
[04:04.960 --> 04:05.980]  And you're still muted.
[04:06.220 --> 04:08.840]  It would help if the window had focus.
[04:09.080 --> 04:09.760]  Hi, everybody.
[04:10.400 --> 04:12.120]  Not like we've all been doing this for a while.
[04:12.480 --> 04:14.620]  And Nick Godd from Radio Statler is also here.
[04:15.200 --> 04:15.600]  Greetings.
[04:16.980 --> 04:27.820]  You know, it's amazing because Radio Statler was going for as long as the conference with a completely different feed and active pretty much the whole time.
[04:27.920 --> 04:32.480]  I tuned in a couple of times, and you guys sounded really enthusiastic and into what was going on.
[04:32.600 --> 04:38.720]  It just made you realize how big this was, how many people were super enthused by what was going on.
[04:39.380 --> 04:42.240]  Yeah, we've been massive HOPE fans for a long time.
[04:43.240 --> 04:44.720]  Forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn.
[04:44.780 --> 04:47.520]  I believe I've been attending the longest since H2K.
[04:48.340 --> 04:55.560]  And when I saw Radio Statler turn up and say, hey, we're going to host a radio station out of HOPE to just broadcast more content.
[04:55.560 --> 04:58.440]  I said, that sounds directly up my alley.
[04:58.620 --> 05:02.820]  And I got on board, I think, HOPE number five that started Radio Statler.
[05:04.500 --> 05:06.560]  And I've been doing that ever since.
[05:06.660 --> 05:15.980]  And it's an absolute blast because it, like I said, it provides that alternative content, that kind of B-storyline, the deep cuts.
[05:15.980 --> 05:20.120]  It allows the attendees to have another platform to talk.
[05:20.120 --> 05:31.220]  We have the speakers come on and give them, say, another hour or so of time or even more sometimes to discuss their topic at length or completely other topics.
[05:31.220 --> 05:37.520]  We have some great organizations come in that perhaps aren't presenting at HOPE at all.
[05:38.120 --> 05:47.380]  We have some of my favorites, like the Pirate Party, come in and talk for hours and hours about their political situation, which is always great.
[05:47.380 --> 05:57.420]  And it's really cool to be able to provide that, like, kind of backroom, dark closet, almost pirate radio feel of content that I feel is just so appropriate for HOPE.
[05:58.180 --> 06:02.340]  So now, is there an archive of all the material you guys did?
[06:03.700 --> 06:04.220]  Yes.
[06:04.520 --> 06:07.260]  So let me speak to that.
[06:08.700 --> 06:09.980]  So it's Beaches.
[06:10.220 --> 06:10.380]  Hi.
[06:10.760 --> 06:15.240]  So we got as much as we could, as best as we could.
[06:15.820 --> 06:21.200]  And now we just need to cut it up into discreet shows, and we're going to throw it up on archive.org and YouTube.
[06:22.200 --> 06:23.860]  So it should be out as soon as possible.
[06:24.100 --> 06:25.480]  What about content for past years?
[06:26.480 --> 06:32.520]  That is actually, if you go to radio.hope.net, there should be a link off the MAID page that says Archive.
[06:32.520 --> 06:40.120]  You should be able to get any of the audio from there if you're interested in getting the best out.
[06:41.000 --> 06:41.880]  That's really awesome.
[06:42.000 --> 06:47.540]  Also, we should point out that all the talks are also available on archive.org.
[06:48.260 --> 06:50.580]  And boy, we had so many good talks.
[06:51.020 --> 07:00.620]  They started on Saturday the 25th at 9 in the morning and didn't end until, I think, 10 o'clock at night on Sunday, the 2nd of August.
[07:00.620 --> 07:04.660]  So every hour was filled with something.
[07:05.220 --> 07:09.980]  And we could have gone even longer, but wow, we were just so exhausted.
[07:10.100 --> 07:20.600]  I was so impressed by the level of enthusiasm, not only from the speakers, but from the attendees and everybody who was just a part of this, well beyond my wildest expectations.
[07:20.940 --> 07:27.260]  Who I really want to talk about the preparations and the operation is Greg Newby.
[07:27.300 --> 07:28.260]  I don't think he's with us yet.
[07:28.260 --> 07:28.700]  Is he, Rob?
[07:28.700 --> 07:30.520]  He is not with us.
[07:30.680 --> 07:33.280]  And he may or may not be able to join us.
[07:33.380 --> 07:37.060]  He's had a bit of an occasion where he is.
[07:37.300 --> 07:38.220]  Well, yes.
[07:38.480 --> 07:39.480]  I have an update on that.
[07:39.500 --> 07:40.460]  He is on his way home.
[07:40.900 --> 07:45.680]  Just to let people know, Greg's okay, but he was bitten by a dog earlier today.
[07:46.380 --> 07:50.180]  And as you know, Greg owns 24 dogs.
[07:50.920 --> 07:53.020]  And it wasn't one of his, okay?
[07:53.780 --> 07:56.260]  It was a different dog.
[07:56.440 --> 07:57.480]  Against all odds.
[07:57.480 --> 07:58.780]  Emmanuel, speak of the devil.
[07:59.220 --> 08:01.200]  Greg has just joined us here in Zoom.
[08:01.480 --> 08:01.780]  All right.
[08:02.100 --> 08:02.640]  There you go.
[08:03.360 --> 08:07.800]  I was just making it clear that it was not one of your dogs that did this.
[08:08.320 --> 08:10.520]  My dogs would never do such a thing.
[08:10.720 --> 08:11.460]  They're so well behaved.
[08:12.740 --> 08:13.420]  Of course.
[08:13.460 --> 08:14.280]  We've met them.
[08:17.960 --> 08:19.140]  So, we were...
[08:19.140 --> 08:19.980]  So, everything's okay.
[08:20.260 --> 08:24.060]  You actually went to the same ER that Kyle went to when he broke his hand five years ago.
[08:24.200 --> 08:25.700]  So, how are they doing down there?
[08:26.880 --> 08:29.000]  It brought back fond memories, actually.
[08:29.180 --> 08:29.800]  I was in the same...
[08:29.800 --> 08:32.460]  Not quite the same bed, but in the same part of the hospital.
[08:32.640 --> 08:34.240]  This is a teeny, teeny hospital.
[08:34.240 --> 08:38.000]  And I've been there twice now.
[08:38.100 --> 08:40.380]  And the other time, I had a shoulder injury.
[08:40.420 --> 08:44.980]  And it was like one of these hour-long, two-hour-long waits, sort of typical of a city hospital.
[08:45.240 --> 08:51.420]  This time, I was in and out in less than an hour, including all the papers and a little triage and stuff like that.
[08:51.420 --> 08:52.120]  So, it was nice.
[08:52.260 --> 08:52.580]  It was pleasant.
[08:53.540 --> 08:55.700]  We should mention that Greg is in Ontario.
[08:56.380 --> 09:02.420]  That's in Canada, where they're known for their horrible health care, where they have to wait for weeks to get basic treatment.
[09:03.000 --> 09:05.200]  Thank you, Greg, for confirming that.
[09:06.540 --> 09:08.320]  In and out in just a couple hours.
[09:08.480 --> 09:10.760]  And how much did you have to fork over for this?
[09:11.540 --> 09:14.200]  Today, I was in and out in less than an hour, including parking.
[09:14.460 --> 09:15.820]  So, it was no problem.
[09:16.020 --> 09:19.600]  And you have to fork over your provincial health card.
[09:19.760 --> 09:20.540]  And that's it.
[09:20.540 --> 09:22.340]  There's no bill, no money.
[09:22.560 --> 09:24.640]  And that's a one-time-use card, right?
[09:26.400 --> 09:28.500]  That card is good forever.
[09:28.800 --> 09:33.100]  Would you say the parking cost more than the medical care?
[09:33.940 --> 09:37.140]  No, the parking was free also in a small town.
[09:37.440 --> 09:38.360]  There you go, Greg.
[09:39.800 --> 09:44.660]  Greg, Greg, tell us something bad so that we feel good as Americans.
[09:45.020 --> 09:45.700]  Please, anything.
[09:46.060 --> 09:48.040]  Well, I had to put gas in the car, I guess.
[09:48.700 --> 09:50.400]  Oh, you're still in gasoline cars.
[09:50.540 --> 09:52.540]  Ah, primitive behind the times.
[09:54.460 --> 10:09.980]  Anyway, Greg is the person who really made this all happen because he was just on top of every technological aspect of the conference and drawing up the spreadsheet and just basically communicating with so many people.
[10:10.160 --> 10:11.280]  I don't know how he was able to do it.
[10:11.280 --> 10:17.980]  But, Greg, perhaps you could go over some of the technology we used for this nine-day event for a completely virtual conference.
[10:18.420 --> 10:19.180]  Sure, sure.
[10:19.180 --> 10:33.720]  And we had about two months to set it up, as I think you probably already mentioned before I joined, and tremendous input from such wonderfully diligent, qualified, creative people made this all happen.
[10:33.920 --> 10:47.460]  We made a decision early on that it was going to be a virtual conference where we had interaction among attendees because people had, face it, you know, people had bought tickets and they wanted to get something for that ticket that was not just a, you know,
[10:47.520 --> 10:50.340]  like a webinar, you know, TV show type of thing.
[10:50.340 --> 10:52.440]  So we wanted to design an interactivity.
[10:52.560 --> 11:03.840]  And at the same time, the other thing we really wanted to consider was that virtual conferences can often go wrong because of the technology.
[11:04.040 --> 11:13.920]  And that usually amounts to people having difficulty connecting with whatever technology you choose, you know, having a bad, you know, bad internet connection, all this stuff.
[11:14.100 --> 11:20.020]  So we did two things to address those two things, those two desires for the speakers.
[11:20.340 --> 11:35.060]  We encouraged all the speakers to pre-record their talk, and we said, you will join us in our virtual conference room, and we'll introduce your pre-recorded talk, and then we'll come back for about 10 minutes of live Q&A, questions and answers with the speaker.
[11:35.180 --> 11:46.520]  So we had an emcee who started right on time, just like the conference, but instead of having the speaker stand up with their, you know, laser pointer and PowerPoint or whatever, the speaker's video was played.
[11:46.660 --> 11:55.180]  And the majority of speakers chose to do this, and this worked out really well because it avoided the technology snafus that are inevitable in teleconferencing.
[11:55.400 --> 12:00.640]  And also, these productions, these presentations that people did were marvelous.
[12:00.860 --> 12:10.400]  Some of them were like movies, some of them were more like, you know, someone standing in front of a screen with PowerPoint slides, but some of them were just astounding.
[12:10.580 --> 12:21.620]  So this really was, I think, in a way better than what you would get in an in-person conference, because the creativity that the presenters were able to bring to their presentations was unbounded.
[12:21.700 --> 12:26.220]  Other than trying to fit it in within about 40 minutes, it was unbounded.
[12:26.660 --> 12:27.980]  So we addressed the...
[12:28.940 --> 12:31.980]  I'm not saying people were really good with the time limit, too.
[12:32.360 --> 12:33.780]  It worked like clockwork.
[12:33.920 --> 12:36.380]  Almost everything ended at 10 minutes, too.
[12:36.380 --> 12:38.340]  And it was really, very well-regimented.
[12:38.920 --> 12:43.360]  Yeah, you know, going to the ER for a dogfight is an excuse to be a little late for an event.
[12:43.500 --> 12:52.500]  But for the purposes of the conference, really, we didn't have any lateness because most of the time, we had the video in hand.
[12:52.620 --> 13:00.220]  So even if the speaker came in at the last minute, was a little frazzled, we got the MC up on the live stream that was going out to the attendees.
[13:00.220 --> 13:03.060]  The MC introduced the video, that we played the video.
[13:03.060 --> 13:12.660]  And then typically, we had around 40 minutes for the speaker to make sure their act was together and ready to engage in questions and answers.
[13:13.180 --> 13:15.040]  So yeah, really, the pacing really was...
[13:15.040 --> 13:16.080]  It wasn't...
[13:16.080 --> 13:20.280]  It was intentional, but I think it worked out even better than we had hoped.
[13:20.900 --> 13:42.660]  If I could just add, this is Johnny, as a speaker for Hope, and as someone who's spoken at previous conferences, I could not believe how well this worked, how easy it was even for me to jump on 20 minutes beforehand, get set up properly, get ready to chat with people who are watching the talk,
[13:42.780 --> 13:48.820]  and even right down to the concept of submitting a pre-recorded talk where I can still do a Q&A afterwards.
[13:49.100 --> 14:00.880]  You know, doing the pre-recorded talk allows you to create something that's exactly within the time limits, which clearly really benefited you, is making sure that nobody goes over and nobody steps on any other future speaker's toes.
[14:01.260 --> 14:05.700]  And then at the same time, make sure that my talk then only includes what I feel is really necessary.
[14:06.260 --> 14:16.260]  But then just like I said, the onboarding and getting rolling and getting ready and being there and the interaction from the people in chat was amazing.
[14:16.440 --> 14:19.660]  You know, I expect one or two people to possibly be participating.
[14:19.660 --> 14:26.220]  You know, when you're streaming or something like that, you usually, you know, get very low participation, even though you have a high viewer count.
[14:26.400 --> 14:33.100]  But here at Hope, the number of people talking and asking questions and conversing with each other over the topic was really amazing.
[14:33.100 --> 14:36.080]  So this was just a great idea and really well executed.
[14:36.840 --> 14:44.580]  Yeah, Johnny, I think you pointed out something really important here because the chat system we use is called Matrix.
[14:44.580 --> 14:44.660]  Matrix.
[14:45.080 --> 14:57.000]  I wasn't sure if this would work for us, but I think we really found something good because people almost universally are saying this really is something that felt different.
[14:57.880 --> 15:02.980]  We were worried about people possibly taking over or having trolls.
[15:03.460 --> 15:24.740]  And the way the system is set up, we were able to configure it so that only attendees were able to participate and and and they felt like they were in a real world environment where they could go into the hallway or go into the speaker room and ask them questions and everyone really seemed to to enjoy it and and get the most out of it.
[15:26.180 --> 15:26.620]  Yeah.
[15:26.800 --> 15:39.060]  So on Radio Statler, one of the things that we do every year is we try to at the very end of the conference, we sort of try to find people who have been who this was their first hope and bring them on the air and sort of interview them about what their experience was like.
[15:39.180 --> 15:52.980]  And the thing that stood out to me the most when we were doing that interview process was the things that everybody was describing as, you know, the awesomeness that they were experiencing and hope was all of that interactivity.
[15:53.240 --> 15:56.700]  But more than that, it was all of the things they were pointing out.
[15:56.700 --> 16:10.180]  But all of the things that I really enjoy about going to Hope when we're all getting together at the Hotel Pennsylvania or wherever it happens to be in Meatspace, it was all the same sort of aspects.
[16:10.520 --> 16:15.020]  So the way that that translated over into a virtual conference was phenomenal.
[16:16.820 --> 16:33.940]  There was actually one aspect that we could never do at a live event that we could do this time because we were using some pre-recorded talks was that the speaker, while their pre-recorded talk was playing, could hang out in the audience live Q&A channel and actually converse with the audience as their own talk was going on,
[16:34.260 --> 16:38.320]  which is really difficult to do if you're doing a talk live on a stage somewhere.
[16:38.520 --> 16:39.420]  That was very cool.
[16:39.480 --> 16:50.980]  And it did allow for answering of questions in real time as the talk is still going on, which as a presenter, if you do that IRL, you're interrupting your talk and you're sucking up your own time.
[16:50.980 --> 17:00.040]  So it was cool to like kind of be that spectator and also hang out with everybody while you're all watching the same thing and fill them in on things without having to interrupt the flow of the talk.
[17:01.340 --> 17:08.480]  Yeah, I think the mood of the attendees, I think, is what really defined the conference.
[17:09.240 --> 17:11.020]  People were into the talks.
[17:11.340 --> 17:12.380]  They participated.
[17:12.600 --> 17:13.680]  They asked a lot of questions.
[17:14.200 --> 17:20.200]  And I think it's setting that tone that really was so important to see if this would work.
[17:21.780 --> 17:27.840]  And people really seemed to enjoy hanging out in these circumstances that none of us wanted.
[17:27.840 --> 17:36.420]  But we felt it was the right thing to do to try to make the most out of this and triple the length of the conference to make it into something really special.
[17:36.880 --> 17:40.520]  But, boy, I got to tell you, that wore us out.
[17:41.480 --> 17:44.600]  Basically, it was like having another full-time job.
[17:45.060 --> 17:53.740]  We'd wake up early every morning to make sure things were getting started and broadcasting on time and then going all the way past midnight for nine straight days.
[17:54.580 --> 17:56.820]  That was something.
[17:57.140 --> 18:00.020]  I know, Greg, you put in more hours than I think anybody.
[18:00.340 --> 18:02.140]  And actually, you know what?
[18:02.200 --> 18:03.900]  There are so many people who put in so many hours.
[18:03.940 --> 18:04.800]  I'm not even sure that's true.
[18:04.800 --> 18:09.220]  I mean, what Jolie did from Internet Society is second to none.
[18:09.700 --> 18:18.540]  Just getting us to streams, getting us out there so that so many people all around the planet could see what was going on during this event.
[18:19.780 --> 18:22.160]  There were many long hours, that's for sure.
[18:22.460 --> 18:28.040]  And I think we just weren't sure, but we tried to be conscientious.
[18:28.040 --> 18:37.120]  And I think we made some pretty good choices about the technology, about the pacing of the event, about how attendees would interact with each other and with speakers.
[18:37.440 --> 18:39.600]  And as I said, we weren't sure this would all work.
[18:39.740 --> 18:41.320]  We knew we wanted some elements.
[18:41.520 --> 18:46.440]  We wanted to have an interactive element among attendees and an interactive element with the speakers.
[18:47.380 --> 18:48.900]  And it just worked out.
[18:48.980 --> 18:54.280]  And I think part of why it worked out is people were so hungry and enthusiastic for an event like this.
[18:54.280 --> 19:02.940]  I mean, let's face it, we've mostly been sitting at home and isolated and not having a lot of events and not having a lot of interaction.
[19:03.480 --> 19:18.060]  And the fact that this was mediated with the matrix technology and the live stream technology and all the other technologies we use didn't seem to take away from the fact that people really were hungry for interaction and a conference like this.
[19:18.060 --> 19:21.260]  So I think we, we were successful, we made good decisions.
[19:21.440 --> 19:27.520]  I think also the participants were very grateful and hungry and enthusiastic and that made all the difference.
[19:28.720 --> 19:33.760]  The word I would use to describe everything that went on is just there was a sense of exuberance in all of it.
[19:33.880 --> 19:37.860]  Like people were so excited to hear all of this amazing content.
[19:37.980 --> 19:39.800]  They were so excited to connect with each other.
[19:40.080 --> 19:42.780]  And I used to plan conferences like that was my job.
[19:42.780 --> 19:44.260]  I did that for a long time.
[19:44.460 --> 19:49.900]  And the way I've always described planning an event is like you're rolling a snowball up a hill.
[19:50.160 --> 19:54.020]  And then when the event starts, you start rolling that snowball down the hill.
[19:54.120 --> 19:55.400]  It will pick up its own momentum.
[19:55.400 --> 19:56.540]  It will do its own thing.
[19:56.640 --> 19:59.080]  And sometimes you just have to get out of the way and let it happen.
[19:59.080 --> 20:11.560]  And watching the snowball of hope 2020 rolling down the hill, picking up momentum, picking up speed, picking up energy and feeling it from this like worldwide cohort of people.
[20:11.780 --> 20:18.800]  Even just watching more and more and more hope bumps were coming in because people wanted to share something with this community.
[20:19.360 --> 20:21.580]  And I think it was exuberance.
[20:21.780 --> 20:23.040]  It's just the word that keeps coming to my mind.
[20:23.120 --> 20:23.680]  And I loved it.
[20:23.820 --> 20:24.860]  I absolutely loved it.
[20:29.580 --> 20:36.820]  And I think we're doing Greg a bit of a disservice by not also mentioning that he's like this every year.
[20:36.980 --> 20:39.780]  He puts in this much effort every, well, every hope.
[20:40.820 --> 20:52.220]  He is always not only the man behind the scenes, he's the man in front of the scenes, just constantly running around, keeping everything coordinated, greasing every wheel that needs to get greased and does so much work with every single hope.
[20:52.220 --> 21:00.480]  And it was really cool to see Greg operate in his usual capacity this time in a completely different type of environment.
[21:01.100 --> 21:02.380]  And for three times as long.
[21:02.440 --> 21:03.080]  And for three times as long.
[21:03.300 --> 21:03.380]  And for three times as long.
[21:03.380 --> 21:03.660]  And for three times as long.
[21:03.660 --> 21:04.680]  Mr. Blue Suit, a little bit.
[21:04.780 --> 21:05.740]  Well, thanks for that.
[21:06.180 --> 21:11.020]  It was, I mean, it was a marathon or an ultra marathon, not a sprint this time.
[21:11.120 --> 21:11.840]  That's for sure.
[21:12.060 --> 21:15.200]  I always strive to try to be ubiquitous at these events.
[21:15.360 --> 21:17.940]  Like I just try to try to sort of be there when necessary.
[21:17.940 --> 21:31.220]  And yet, I'm really personally enthused by giving everyone possible the chance to take that stage, you know, to be an MC, to run a technology, to be a team lead, something like that.
[21:31.300 --> 21:32.360]  And that's how I came up.
[21:32.460 --> 21:36.440]  My first hope was in the year 2000 in H2K.
[21:36.920 --> 21:45.400]  And I spent a little time volunteering, got a little bit involved with AV, might have ended up behind the camera, you know, as a camera operator.
[21:45.900 --> 21:51.240]  And, and I sort of came up through the ranks like that and got to learn a little more over time with how things worked.
[21:51.460 --> 22:00.960]  And my point is, is not to, not to say that, I mean, you do need a few people that really are ubiquitous and really know what's going on and are going to put in those long hours.
[22:00.960 --> 22:14.300]  At the same time, the most rewarding part for me is all the, all the people that step up and get energized and learn more and interact more and realize that the skill set that they bring is valued and unique.
[22:14.520 --> 22:20.320]  So there's a really positive feedback for me in being part of that, part of that event.
[22:21.040 --> 22:26.220]  Guys, I'm in a kind of awkward situation here because I'm in a parked car and this guy is behind me now.
[22:26.220 --> 22:29.040]  And he thinks that it's because I'm sitting here that I'm going to be leaving.
[22:29.340 --> 22:31.480]  And I try to communicate to him that I'm not leaving.
[22:31.620 --> 22:32.900]  That I'm going to be here for a while.
[22:33.360 --> 22:35.840]  I don't know what, what the protocol is to doing that.
[22:36.320 --> 22:41.100]  I've waived, but I think by waving that might've encouraged him thinking I was waving in a friendly way.
[22:41.320 --> 22:43.300]  I'm trying to waive, like, get out of here.
[22:43.700 --> 22:45.260]  Anybody know what I'm supposed to do at this point?
[22:45.340 --> 22:46.580]  Because I don't want to get out and leave.
[22:47.100 --> 22:51.320]  I think that the protocol is to, if you have a phone, hold up your phone.
[22:51.320 --> 22:56.380]  and make it clear that you're on the phone, and you might be on the phone for a while, and you can't drive because you're on the phone.
[22:56.460 --> 22:59.340]  Yeah, but he might think that means I'm going to leave soon.
[22:59.600 --> 23:03.660]  Can you throw your hazards on, and he'll assume your car is disabled, perhaps?
[23:04.180 --> 23:11.940]  Well, see, the car is running, because if I wasn't running the car, I wouldn't be able to talk on the speakers, because that's how this thing was engineered.
[23:12.940 --> 23:17.040]  So if I turn the car off, I might lose the connection, and then he might still be confused.
[23:17.340 --> 23:17.920]  Leave it on, throw on the hazards.
[23:17.920 --> 23:21.200]  Or I can just let him sit there for 40 minutes.
[23:21.320 --> 23:25.760]  I just think he's going to get very contentious very soon, because I'm wasting his time right now.
[23:25.880 --> 23:30.480]  I don't want to waste his time, but he's sitting there not getting anything done, and I don't know.
[23:30.940 --> 23:34.220]  Have you tried catching his eye in the rear view and shaking your head?
[23:35.320 --> 23:35.980]  Yeah, he's not.
[23:36.140 --> 23:38.280]  He's almost... I can't get him in the rear view.
[23:38.300 --> 23:41.680]  I get him in the side view, but it's kind of tinted, so it's hard to do that.
[23:42.340 --> 23:46.880]  You know, I'm going to open the window and just wave him on, and hopefully he'll understand.
[23:47.640 --> 23:51.700]  Yeah, I just gave him a very obvious wave.
[23:52.160 --> 23:53.820]  Or get out and give him a big shrug.
[23:55.600 --> 23:58.020]  He's rolled down his window, but he's behind me, so I don't know.
[23:58.080 --> 23:58.800]  Okay, you know what?
[23:58.840 --> 23:59.860]  This has nothing to do with hope.
[24:00.380 --> 24:03.860]  It has to do with New York and what we're living with right now.
[24:04.900 --> 24:10.440]  Going back to Matrix, though, going back to Matrix, why did we choose Matrix and not something like Discord?
[24:10.440 --> 24:18.460]  Well, so we did... we worked through a number of different possibilities, and really, there are a lot of things, a lot of technology that could work.
[24:18.740 --> 24:24.520]  The main reason we chose Matrix was because we would run it ourselves, and that energized us.
[24:24.700 --> 24:28.200]  It's obviously free software, and that was important.
[24:28.360 --> 24:29.540]  It wasn't the only criterion.
[24:29.540 --> 24:31.560]  It was a very important one.
[24:31.820 --> 24:39.020]  And also, we were very confident in the ability of giving essentially special treatment to people that bought those tickets.
[24:39.020 --> 24:42.780]  We wanted to... we ended up writing... I shouldn't say we.
[24:42.960 --> 24:54.280]  The team ended up writing a bot, a little automated responder, that handled people's ticket codes to say, okay, you're an attendee, you get into these hope rooms in Matrix.
[24:54.660 --> 25:02.220]  You're a presenter, you get some extra rooms, because we had a special text report line for presenters and a couple of other rooms for them.
[25:02.380 --> 25:05.440]  And if you're a volunteer, well, there's some volunteer rooms as well.
[25:05.440 --> 25:16.220]  So we were just very pleased with the way that the Matrix feature set aligned with what we wanted to do in terms of making sure that the attendees had a special experience.
[25:16.920 --> 25:23.240]  But we did look at a lot of different possibilities, and we actually deployed a few other different systems.
[25:23.240 --> 25:29.140]  We did some testing, and Matrix just won the evaluation.
[25:29.860 --> 25:41.380]  Of course, this is all done within a period of about three weeks, so you never know if we were doing a big, you know, bigger process with formal requirements, who knows what would have occurred, but I certainly think that Matrix was a very solid choice.
[25:42.140 --> 25:47.580]  I think one of the reasons why Matrix stood out to us was because it didn't require things like a phone number.
[25:48.560 --> 25:53.860]  Yeah, this is something that is a problem for some of our attendees.
[25:54.100 --> 26:03.180]  I mean, people who buy a Hackers on Planet Earth ticket need to obviously pay somehow, and that's often traceable.
[26:03.500 --> 26:06.400]  Of course, we take Bitcoin, and that's a lot less traceable.
[26:06.540 --> 26:10.580]  But if they're using PayPal or a credit card, then okay, we need to know a little bit in the store.
[26:10.580 --> 26:13.120]  But otherwise, we don't ask for identity.
[26:13.280 --> 26:14.980]  We don't manage for identity.
[26:15.140 --> 26:19.660]  We don't need to know people's name or address or hometown or city or anything like that.
[26:19.920 --> 26:27.580]  And yeah, what we found was that a lot of these services would actually require not only a phone number, but a mobile phone number.
[26:27.760 --> 26:30.720]  And of course, we have some people that don't have mobile phones.
[26:30.860 --> 26:32.860]  So that was a challenge.
[26:33.000 --> 26:34.480]  And again, you know, we're technical people.
[26:34.700 --> 26:40.920]  We were talking about potential workarounds for that type of situation, but Matrix didn't have that problem in the first place.
[26:41.080 --> 26:47.760]  So it ended up being a good choice from the sort of ability to be anonymous at Hope.
[26:48.980 --> 26:58.460]  It's really interesting to me watching this come together, because in many ways, the Hope Conference and Radio Statler were trying to solve essentially the same problem.
[26:58.640 --> 26:59.840]  We're trying to do the same thing.
[27:00.180 --> 27:07.760]  And the technology choices that we made are very similar in terms of architecture, but very different.
[27:08.480 --> 27:14.960]  So for instance, Radio Statler did choose where we stood up a Discord server instead of doing Matrix.
[27:15.300 --> 27:23.700]  And, you know, we were using Jitsi for our coordination and Hope was using Zoom for a lot of that.
[27:23.820 --> 27:32.920]  So like those choices and how we both solved the same problem in very disparate ways is really fascinating to me.
[27:32.920 --> 27:33.620]  Yeah.
[27:33.840 --> 27:38.400]  Yeah, I can tell you that we looked at Jitsi very, very carefully.
[27:38.660 --> 27:39.640]  We used three different servers.
[27:39.840 --> 27:47.320]  We used FSF server, Free Software Foundation server, and the Chaos Computer Congress server, and one other server we stood up ourselves.
[27:48.160 --> 27:52.920]  We also looked at the possibility of using BigBlueButton as sort of the main broadcast component.
[27:53.440 --> 27:59.000]  And we did select BigBlueButton for workshops, and we haven't talked about workshops yet, but that worked out marvelously well.
[27:59.220 --> 28:01.300]  It is so well designed for workshops.
[28:01.800 --> 28:14.020]  But what we discovered for the portion of the speakers connecting and being sent out over the live stream was that Zoom created the least barriers, the least problems.
[28:14.240 --> 28:15.920]  There were a few people, there was actually a talk.
[28:16.700 --> 28:21.760]  There were a few people that didn't like Zoom, and there was actually a talk all about how much they hated Zoom.
[28:21.780 --> 28:24.040]  And I said, well, how do you feel about being in a Zoom meeting now?
[28:24.100 --> 28:25.920]  They said, we're really, really angry right now.
[28:25.920 --> 28:31.620]  So there was a very meta moment of Zoom hate going on there.
[28:31.720 --> 28:41.620]  But the fact is that with Jitsi, we discovered that when a person joined Jitsi who had poor connectivity, it would bring down the whole conference.
[28:41.620 --> 28:44.300]  And this would occur even with a few people in the conference.
[28:44.560 --> 28:47.760]  And with BigBlueButton, we had client problems.
[28:47.760 --> 28:54.120]  Even though it's just an HTML-based client, we had some early testers that had difficulty connecting.
[28:54.120 --> 28:58.420]  So we ended up going with Zoom for the broadcast portion.
[28:58.600 --> 29:00.060]  But that's just a teeny part.
[29:00.180 --> 29:09.060]  That's having one or two people in the speaker, an emcee, and a broadcast person, and maybe a facilitator in a Zoom meeting.
[29:09.240 --> 29:15.660]  And that was transparent to the attendees, because what goes out over the airwaves is the live stream.
[29:15.660 --> 29:26.360]  And the live stream was from Livestream.com through Internet Society with a simulcast to Periscope, simulcast to Twitch, simulcast to YouTube Live.
[29:26.620 --> 29:33.160]  And then right after it completed, we had a replay via Livestream.com and also a replay, which is still there.
[29:33.320 --> 29:35.700]  These are all still there, via Internet Archive.
[29:35.900 --> 29:39.880]  So in other words, the attendee experience was not at all the Zoom experience.
[29:39.880 --> 29:45.260]  We really used that because we wanted to have a very, very solid presentation.
[29:45.540 --> 29:47.100]  And I think Johnny touched on that.
[29:47.240 --> 29:52.720]  I mean, we didn't want to have people joining and, you know, running into difficulties.
[29:53.080 --> 29:59.700]  And our early testing indicated that Zoom was sort of the safest choice, even though it wasn't the most palatable choice we might have made.
[30:01.420 --> 30:04.320]  Yeah, and speaking to that whole attendee experience, yes.
[30:05.000 --> 30:21.320]  Between talks, we had a whole other thing going on where we had kind of like Adult Swim-style announcements being made and something that we called Hope Bumps, where people would record messages from all around the world on video, send them in to us, and we'd play them between talks.
[30:21.400 --> 30:31.560]  So it really got to be very entertaining and informative and a very positive experience overall, where people just felt like they were connecting all over the world.
[30:31.560 --> 30:39.300]  And sometimes other locations, secret 2600 offices were shown at various points.
[30:39.420 --> 30:40.660]  We tried to have fun with it.
[30:41.220 --> 30:48.860]  It's cool to hear you reference Adult Swim because that's exactly what I was thinking in my head when I saw all of that, especially the bumps.
[30:48.980 --> 30:51.780]  The bumps were fantastic and what a great idea that was.
[30:53.140 --> 30:59.100]  Yeah, we had people from Portugal and Mexico and just all over the world.
[30:59.100 --> 31:01.320]  It was really amazing to see.
[31:01.840 --> 31:08.040]  And I was surprised by just the quality that people were having to put together in such a short period of time.
[31:09.120 --> 31:21.200]  This was just amazing to me also because, first of all, you mentioned one thing that's good to highlight, was there are a bunch of people in the virtual hope that probably wouldn't have come to the in-person hope.
[31:21.260 --> 31:22.620]  And that made us richer.
[31:22.620 --> 31:26.120]  And thank you to everybody that contributed.
[31:26.980 --> 31:36.720]  The other is that over a nine-day conference, creativity becomes unbridled and largely unconstrained by time and, of course, by space as well.
[31:36.900 --> 31:41.800]  So if someone has an idea, you know, at a regular in-person conference, they're running from session to session.
[31:41.800 --> 31:42.960]  It's only three days.
[31:43.240 --> 31:49.780]  They're in a hotel room or something, and they don't have their, you know, home environment for, you know, producing a little video.
[31:50.080 --> 32:01.500]  But, of course, with nine days of hope, it was pretty easy for someone to say, hey, I want to send a video message, and I'm going to, you know, spend a half hour, an hour, a few minutes, whatever it takes, to craft that.
[32:01.500 --> 32:13.620]  And, of course, as you see more and more of the creativity that's coming out through the bunks, these little short video readings, and also through the speaker talks and also through the workshops, you see all this creativity going on.
[32:13.740 --> 32:16.620]  And that's got to inspire a lot of people to say, oh, I have an idea.
[32:16.860 --> 32:23.240]  Yeah, I'm going to do something that's, you know, building on some of the things I've seen during these days.
[32:23.400 --> 32:35.740]  So the ability of creativity to be fostered, take root, and grow during a nine-day conference is something that I, frankly, hadn't anticipated, but it sure happened.
[32:37.160 --> 32:42.140]  Let's talk about some of the other technology that was in use during the conference.
[32:42.140 --> 32:51.440]  I know we had all sorts of systems in place for programming the broadcast day and for just putting the schedule together.
[32:51.440 --> 32:54.540]  Anything in particular that you'd like to focus on?
[32:55.140 --> 32:57.020]  Well, there's a number of different elements.
[32:57.140 --> 33:00.200]  I think one that's worth highlighting is the pre-talk system.
[33:00.540 --> 33:04.060]  Pre-talks is what the Chaos Computer Congress uses.
[33:04.600 --> 33:06.620]  And we, so it's free software.
[33:06.920 --> 33:10.000]  We deployed an instance of it and did some customization.
[33:10.380 --> 33:16.200]  But pre-talks is, in our case, we didn't use it to accept talks and, like, do the refereeing and stuff.
[33:16.240 --> 33:20.780]  We had more of an email-based system than that with a speaker committee, and that worked out very well.
[33:21.160 --> 33:27.980]  But for pre-talks, what we were able to do was very rapidly modify the schedule as necessary.
[33:27.980 --> 33:37.120]  So when you have, you know, a speaker slot that gets changed or someone had a typo in their abstract, you know, anything like that, a late arriving session.
[33:37.180 --> 33:40.380]  So we could very easily make changes in pre-talks.
[33:40.480 --> 33:48.080]  And then we were able to push out that schedule release, which became available as a webpage, you know, at schedule.hope.net.
[33:48.080 --> 34:07.540]  And the thing that was great there is if you look back at all the previous years of Hackers on Planet Earth archives, they're all out there, you know, still stored, just like the current one will be, you'll find that the relations between, like, going from a speaker to a talk to the schedule and back again and what's the other speaker,
[34:07.720 --> 34:13.580]  you know, the biography, stuff like that, all these hyperlinks have always been kind of only partially done.
[34:13.620 --> 34:17.680]  And part of that is because managing that by hand is a bear.
[34:17.680 --> 34:26.540]  You know, you don't want to have three or four sets of links to update and all the associated style sheets and all the other stuff that goes into a webpage.
[34:26.880 --> 34:28.440]  But with pre-talks, it was just automated.
[34:28.660 --> 34:36.620]  So once we got over that leap of managing the schedule in pre-talks, there were some real benefits to the attendees.
[34:36.740 --> 34:45.920]  And in fact, one of the things, by the way, that we really liked, we talked about people attending from all around, is pre-talks gave a little dropdown and you can say, what's your time zone?
[34:45.920 --> 34:52.340]  And it'll give your talk times and workshop times and so forth in whatever time zone you select.
[34:52.520 --> 34:58.120]  And that was a cool feature that, of course, we never would have implemented if we were just, you know, doing it old school.
[34:59.180 --> 35:05.200]  Greg, was that something that came with pre-talks or was that something that one of our volunteers programmed into pre-talks?
[35:06.820 --> 35:07.780]  No, I'm not sure.
[35:07.840 --> 35:08.900]  Actually, that's a good question.
[35:08.960 --> 35:09.740]  I'm not positive.
[35:10.280 --> 35:11.960]  I think it might have been the latter.
[35:12.440 --> 35:13.160]  It might have been.
[35:13.260 --> 35:14.160]  I think Colin did that, right?
[35:14.480 --> 35:16.200]  Yeah, Colin added the time zones.
[35:16.760 --> 35:24.580]  It was a part of a lot of the customization stuff that we were doing with all of these things, whether evaluating or in production while we were at the event.
[35:24.960 --> 35:38.460]  But he added it because we were trying to make it more worldly as we realized a lot of the people were going to be on the other side of the international dateline and that would actually potentially cause disruption.
[35:38.780 --> 35:42.980]  You know, if they're at their presentation at the wrong time, you know, we needed it to be accurate.
[35:43.120 --> 35:50.360]  But then as soon as we did that, somebody from China pointed out that you're saying it's this day when it's actually this day for us.
[35:50.500 --> 35:55.960]  So then we had to figure out, well, he had to figure out how to make it indicate that the date had changed.
[35:55.960 --> 35:56.460]  And he did.
[35:56.640 --> 35:57.900]  He did an amazing job.
[35:57.920 --> 36:05.180]  And I was just so amazed by how quickly problems would be identified and addressed.
[36:05.780 --> 36:08.940]  And before you knew it, there wasn't a problem anymore.
[36:09.120 --> 36:19.460]  And on that subject, I think we really have to acknowledge the help desk and how they were on top of any problem attendees had, particularly Thurman, who just was there all the time.
[36:19.840 --> 36:25.800]  And I don't think any complaints went unaddressed throughout the entire nine-day period.
[36:26.140 --> 36:26.960]  It's true.
[36:26.960 --> 36:39.260]  And my philosophy in thinking about how hope was going to happen was that we were designing a service mechanism, a service design and delivery is how I approach this.
[36:39.460 --> 36:52.660]  And if you're going to be delivering all these services to well over 1,000 attendees, you need to have a way of fielding, tracking, and sort of circulating issues, you know, whatever they may be.
[36:52.720 --> 37:02.020]  If someone's ticket doesn't work or they need help with testing their microphone before they're taught, you know, basically anything that might come in.
[37:02.120 --> 37:03.660]  So we set up a regular help desk.
[37:03.880 --> 37:08.420]  We used some software called RT by an organization called Best Practical.
[37:08.560 --> 37:09.820]  That's more free software.
[37:10.060 --> 37:15.860]  And we actually even got a donation of a system from one of our partners.
[37:16.240 --> 37:17.320]  So we had a...
[37:18.060 --> 37:26.840]  basically a temporary help desk that was stood up and it allowed the addressing of issues, which is what Thurman and crew did quite a lot of.
[37:26.940 --> 37:34.240]  So if someone says, oh, I have this problem and it turns out it's a frequently asked question, then they can answer that question and then refer them to the documentation in the wiki.
[37:34.900 --> 37:37.980]  But sometimes it wasn't something that could be addressed by the help desk.
[37:38.120 --> 37:38.940]  They didn't know the answer.
[37:39.120 --> 37:40.000]  And so what do they do?
[37:40.100 --> 37:41.220]  Well, they did one of a couple things.
[37:41.440 --> 37:43.040]  One was they could route it to a queue.
[37:43.240 --> 37:46.680]  So if it's an AV question, they can route it to the audiovisual queue.
[37:47.260 --> 38:01.120]  Or more often, the person fielding the ticket can go to Matrix and get in the right volunteer chat room and say, hey, AV folks, we have this question and can you tell me the answer so I can type it into the ticket and get it back to the person you asked.
[38:01.360 --> 38:09.940]  And so this is an example of where we're using multiple technologies to get really very, very rapid and responsive support.
[38:10.020 --> 38:17.060]  And the thing that was cool was we, because of the way Matrix works, is it's essentially a flat organization.
[38:17.100 --> 38:24.300]  So if someone had a question that only, you know, I or one of the program people would know, then I was there.
[38:24.500 --> 38:29.880]  And if someone had a question that 10 different tech support people knew, well, there's a bunch of tech support people running around.
[38:30.100 --> 38:37.220]  So this was, I'd say, a cornerstone, but it was only one element of the support system that we designed.
[38:37.400 --> 38:41.240]  And as you say, we had, I think, a very successful run.
[38:41.400 --> 38:44.920]  There were definitely some people that were confused about the technologies.
[38:45.000 --> 38:48.200]  And I think they got, they certainly got responses.
[38:48.200 --> 38:52.300]  And I think they got the support they needed to, you know, to get on board.
[38:52.520 --> 39:01.500]  And I guess, as we said before, fundamentally, help desk or no help desk, fundamentally, people could experience hope watching the live stream.
[39:01.860 --> 39:04.500]  And we didn't, anybody was having difficulty with that.
[39:05.760 --> 39:07.320]  Greg, Greg, you mentioned the wiki.
[39:07.540 --> 39:12.220]  And I think that's something that was developed a lot more this year than in previous hopes.
[39:13.140 --> 39:15.440]  Do you want to outline how that came about?
[39:15.940 --> 39:19.320]  Yeah, there was, there were a couple of regular uses of wiki.
[39:19.540 --> 39:27.260]  So we used it for, as I mentioned before, frequently asked questions lists and a little guidance about how to get access to the live stream and how to log into Matrix.
[39:27.560 --> 39:38.740]  That's a sort of, sort of tech support documentation that's, that's pretty well suited for a wiki because you have potentially a lot of different volunteers on these different teams that know what needs to be said.
[39:38.920 --> 39:46.100]  And so you want to give them access to edit the wiki directly and then, you know, of course if things change or there's an update, then someone can make that change.
[39:46.180 --> 39:49.400]  That's just easier to do than having a static website.
[39:49.720 --> 39:55.000]  So www.hope.net had a variety of things about the conference and it was a link to the schedule.
[39:55.280 --> 39:58.740]  But the wiki was where the tech support documentation went.
[39:58.940 --> 40:07.780]  But I think the thing to highlight that was well beyond what I just talked about for wiki is the wiki was also used for workshop information and also villages.
[40:08.020 --> 40:09.720]  So we had over 60 workshops.
[40:09.920 --> 40:12.380]  We had about, I think it was about five different villages.
[40:12.660 --> 40:15.500]  Villages are more like, more or less like long-running workshops.
[40:15.500 --> 40:20.680]  They would have programs maybe around the clock or maybe for some number of hours per day.
[40:20.680 --> 40:26.920]  So we had block picking, RF village, dim sum village, and a couple others.
[40:28.180 --> 40:35.960]  So they, the villages and the workshops would set up pages about their activity in the wiki.
[40:36.000 --> 40:48.240]  So if the wiki had, you know, slides, if it had information about stuff that people should have in front of them to participate in the workshop, well, this was all documented in the wiki.
[40:48.400 --> 40:53.120]  And of course, the variety and depth varied quite a lot over those 60 workshops.
[40:53.340 --> 41:04.800]  But the fact that the workshops were able to use the wiki as a way of very rapidly and in a self-service way, you know, providing all this information to attendees, that worked really well.
[41:04.880 --> 41:06.720]  We haven't done anything like that in the past.
[41:06.840 --> 41:10.140]  In the past, we had far fewer workshops.
[41:10.480 --> 41:13.380]  They were much more constrained in time.
[41:13.640 --> 41:23.580]  And it was more or less a matter of, you know, whoever shows up in the room, maybe we get 30 or 40 or sometimes 50 people in a room, whoever shows up in the room and gets into the workshop and then they find out what's going on.
[41:24.140 --> 41:34.340]  But with the hope workshops this year, they were essentially capacity unlimited, you know, in almost every case because the big blue button could scale well.
[41:34.520 --> 41:37.340]  So not everyone maybe got to participate, but anyone could watch.
[41:37.640 --> 41:42.640]  And there was advanced information that was provided on the wiki by the workshop organizer.
[41:42.860 --> 41:48.280]  Well, advanced information but also supporting information, like here's where to go to download something or do some documentation.
[41:49.220 --> 42:00.800]  We had a little bit of confusion at the beginning with workshop registration, but I think we learned from what our attendees were telling us and within a day or two that that was completely revamped.
[42:00.920 --> 42:01.220]  Is that right?
[42:01.780 --> 42:02.200]  Yeah.
[42:02.300 --> 42:06.660]  So this was another thing that our friend with PreTalks, Colin implemented.
[42:06.860 --> 42:20.280]  He implemented a registration system within PreTalks so that when you found the workshop on the schedule, you would enter your ticket code and your email address and you would become registered for that and you'd have capacity limits on each one.
[42:20.400 --> 42:23.280]  And the capacity was taken from the workshop organizers.
[42:23.280 --> 42:30.800]  So if they said we think we can teach 20, we think we can teach 50, we think we can teach 30, then that was what went into the capacity limit.
[42:31.000 --> 42:41.700]  And what we discovered right away was that there was so much enthusiasm for the workshops that the workshops were filling up very rapidly and people were feeling shut out and rightly so.
[42:42.060 --> 42:55.100]  We interacted with some of the workshop organizers and realized that for the most part it didn't matter if there were any number of people that were watching the workshop, but there might be a limit to how much interactivity they could provide.
[42:55.300 --> 43:02.780]  So if someone's in there and they need individual hand-holding then that might not scale to 100 people or something like that.
[43:02.940 --> 43:08.000]  But basically there was no reason to limit the number of people that could attend.
[43:08.300 --> 43:09.280]  And so we undid it.
[43:09.540 --> 43:13.860]  That was on Saturday we had pre-registration on...
[43:13.860 --> 43:29.780]  I guess pre-registration started on Friday but for the first day of the event Saturday pre-registration was required and by Sunday we said pre-registration isn't required and by Monday we had undone the pre-registration system entirely so that there was no need for anybody even to think about it.
[43:29.920 --> 43:30.700]  And it worked out well.
[43:30.780 --> 43:38.600]  As I said earlier we were using BigBlueButton for essentially all workshops and that was a really, really good choice.
[43:38.600 --> 43:58.560]  It was so solid so feature-rich for online instruction and we just like with Zoom and everything else we offered a little bit of advanced training to the organizers to make sure that they do kind of what to do in the room and a lot of them took us up on that and so we had a very smooth process with workshops overall.
[44:00.280 --> 44:05.020]  And we should probably mention that we raised over $10,000 for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[44:05.280 --> 44:08.400]  In fact, I think we might have raised $15,000 or got very close to it.
[44:08.780 --> 44:17.480]  We set this goal, this lofty goal during the conference to raise $10,000 because we thought we could do it and we did it within three days.
[44:17.660 --> 44:42.900]  So we had another six days left to go and we figured, okay, let's up it a little bit more and it went slower after that but we were thrilled that we were able to raise that much and in addition to that we were able to raise $1,000 for WBAI the week prior because we gave away tickets at half price and they went like hotcakes and so we gave away 10 of those but this is also a good point to mention
[44:42.900 --> 44:44.840]  that WBAI does need your support.
[44:45.280 --> 44:48.260]  Give a call to 516-620-36...
[44:48.260 --> 44:49.160]  Did I get it right?
[44:49.240 --> 44:49.640]  0-2.
[44:51.080 --> 44:52.520]  Yeah, could you say the number, Rob?
[44:52.700 --> 44:54.160]  Because I don't have it in front of me.
[44:56.600 --> 44:57.000]  516.
[44:57.320 --> 44:57.440]  Rob?
[44:57.560 --> 44:57.940]  516.
[44:59.400 --> 45:01.980]  516-620-3602.
[45:02.160 --> 45:02.820]  Thank you, Gila.
[45:02.920 --> 45:11.960]  Visit the website give to WBAI.org Or text WBAI to short code 41444.
[45:12.380 --> 45:12.820]  41444.
[45:13.600 --> 45:14.980]  Yeah, and show your support.
[45:15.400 --> 45:26.760]  Keep this radio station going because through WBAI we're able to get word about cool events like the HOPE conferences and all sorts of other things in the hacker community plus all the other shows that are on this radio station.
[45:27.300 --> 45:28.560]  It really matters.
[45:28.740 --> 45:32.060]  You won't find a place like this virtually anywhere else.
[45:32.960 --> 45:45.980]  Now, as far as going over some of the things that we were doing at HOPE over the past nine days ended on Sunday night and we're still recovering and now we have a blackout so more recovery to come.
[45:46.740 --> 45:51.620]  But we had nine keynote speakers one for every single day nine keynotes.
[45:51.980 --> 45:54.340]  Now, I know Alex, you were involved in a few of those.
[45:54.500 --> 45:56.720]  Do you have any highlights that you'd like to share?
[45:57.500 --> 46:00.940]  I mean, the entire thing was absolutely fantastic.
[46:01.420 --> 46:15.840]  I mean, I was the emcee under the wonderful tutelage of our friend and colleague Greg Newby with respect to the keynotes for Flavio Agio who is the Chief Information Security Officer of the World Health Organization.
[46:16.600 --> 46:21.900]  A friend and colleague of mine since we detected a state-sponsored attempt on WHO this past March.
[46:22.380 --> 46:24.800]  And I thought Flavio did a wonderful job.
[46:24.980 --> 46:25.800]  He was so responsive.
[46:25.800 --> 46:33.260]  We had a tiny little snafu with the stream at the beginning and then everybody just rolled with it and it was great.
[46:33.540 --> 46:41.980]  And the questions that came in as others mentioned earlier in real time through Matrix were really fantastic.
[46:42.360 --> 46:50.020]  And then I also emceed the last day's keynote of Cindy Cone who is the Executive Director and
[46:56.400 --> 47:19.920]  through the last 30 years of legal battles facing the Hacker community and how the EFF was founded and I think she really was a wonderful closer for the entire conference because it was so energizing to hear how far we've come in 30 years and also to realize that without the community we're not going to get too much farther.
[47:20.580 --> 47:50.760]  We need to come together and do this all as a community because battles like encryption you think back to the clipper chip remember talking about the clipper chip back in the 90s here on WBAI I think with what's his face Declan who used to be a regular on the show way back then talking about the clipper chip A point of information in 1994 when we had the first health conference we blew up a
[47:50.760 --> 47:54.480]  clipper chip right there in the conference room Actually, that was Bernie's idea.
[47:54.640 --> 47:56.740]  But, yeah, I'll never forget that.
[47:57.000 --> 47:58.380]  I remember that, actually.
[47:58.580 --> 48:01.120]  Having been at the first stop, I actually do remember that now.
[48:01.240 --> 48:06.540]  But, I mean, if you think back, the Clipper chip is essentially back in 1994, we were arguing about math.
[48:07.080 --> 48:17.340]  And we're still arguing about math when it comes to encryption, when we're talking about backdoors to encryption, all the various noises that the Department of Justice are making right now.
[48:17.820 --> 48:26.880]  Cindy Cohen, I thought, was just an awesome closer, really energetic and energizing, coming from the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[48:27.200 --> 48:29.400]  So, you know, it was an awesome end.
[48:29.540 --> 48:34.480]  I was so glad to be part of the Speaker Committee, a speaker, presenter, an emcee.
[48:35.340 --> 48:51.720]  And as somebody who was 15 years old at the first one, it's just crazy to me to think that it's 2020 and we would have never pulled this thing off if it weren't for the collective efforts of everybody here and thousands of others behind the scenes.
[48:52.660 --> 48:57.500]  Speaking of kids, we had a lot of kids participating as speakers, as performers.
[48:57.740 --> 48:59.040]  I think that's really great.
[48:59.200 --> 49:05.960]  Like, people want to talk about the phone system the way it used to be from somebody who never got to experience it.
[49:06.300 --> 49:08.560]  Things like that are what make Hope magical.
[49:08.700 --> 49:09.200]  That was so cool.
[49:09.460 --> 49:09.660]  Yeah.
[49:09.660 --> 49:10.440]  Right?
[49:11.320 --> 49:24.820]  I mean, basically recreating all of the systems and really doing it right and basically the appreciation for the technology that this guy never got to experience.
[49:25.120 --> 49:27.360]  It's just, that to me, that's the magic of hacking.
[49:27.820 --> 49:39.040]  In a time when so many of us definitely got to experience it and to watch this, it's so surreal and to have them, like you said, get it right.
[49:39.040 --> 49:41.580]  And it's like, wow, that's, that's crazy.
[49:42.920 --> 49:54.620]  I feel like this is where, this is where Hackers on Planet Earth really walks the talk in that we very much value the skill set, the knowledge, the sharing of experience.
[49:54.920 --> 50:04.640]  And we very much don't care about things like age or disability or color or, or nationality or accents or things like that.
[50:04.640 --> 50:11.060]  And, and these, uh, relatively young speakers were selected based on the merits of their submission.
[50:11.620 --> 50:12.060]  Yeah.
[50:12.160 --> 50:15.380]  So long as you're spreading factual information, go for it.
[50:15.380 --> 50:15.540]  Right.
[50:15.640 --> 50:22.340]  The magic is that, that, you know, you have a kid doing something like this and you have a high ranking official at the World Health Organization giving the next talk.
[50:22.340 --> 50:24.200]  You know, that is what hope is.
[50:24.400 --> 50:30.620]  It's just, it's one, uh, hodgepodge like BAI is of one thing leading into another thing, yet it's all somehow related.
[50:31.680 --> 50:32.080]  Yeah.
[50:32.160 --> 50:47.420]  And if I could chime in there too, I mean, for me, this was, you know, as I said, as sort of at the closing too, I almost felt like I preferred the virtual hope in certain respects because, you know, it allowed you to sort of come in and out as you please without having to,
[50:47.440 --> 50:51.080]  to deal with the elevator to the 18th floor of the hotel, Pennsylvania.
[50:52.100 --> 50:52.820]  It's funny.
[50:53.380 --> 50:59.640]  Everyone, everyone always takes the elevator to the 18th floor as, as the thing they really don't miss.
[51:00.020 --> 51:08.540]  But I will say though, one of the things that I thought was just absolutely fantastic with this hope, um, were, were the attendees and the matrix chat.
[51:08.680 --> 51:24.660]  That's what really made it for me being able to interact with so many different people and so many different channels in real time during my talk, after my talk and everyone being so civil and accommodating and nice and nobody being a jerk, nobody being nasty to people who,
[51:24.680 --> 51:27.080]  who, you know, were asking rudimentary questions.
[51:27.280 --> 51:28.200]  Everybody was there to learn.
[51:28.320 --> 51:29.280]  Everybody was there to teach.
[51:29.280 --> 51:37.140]  It was the real hope spirit that I remember from way, way back in the day that, you know, that, that was here again in 2020 in virtual hope.
[51:37.220 --> 51:39.220]  And we all had to come together to make this happen.
[51:39.220 --> 51:46.060]  And, and, and I, I really think that the attendees though, deserve a round of applause because they, they made the compliment for me.
[51:46.400 --> 51:47.660]  They were absolutely pretty awesome.
[51:48.620 --> 51:54.180]  We're struggling to remember everything and, and, and pack it into one hour and we're not going to be able to do it.
[51:54.280 --> 52:14.000]  But I, I, I do want to mention, uh, the, the film festival that Lexicon organized during our conference, because I was, I was completely amazed by the quality that people came up with, uh, during these nine days, they, they, they started the film and ended the film within that period and it had to contain certain elements.
[52:14.380 --> 52:19.100]  And, uh, I, I, I saw the, uh, the entries and they were all really good.
[52:19.620 --> 52:26.460]  And, um, I, I, I just couldn't believe that kind of, that kind of skill, that kind of talent was, was walking amongst us.
[52:26.880 --> 52:30.760]  And, um, it just speaks to the, the level of, um, of dedication.
[52:31.600 --> 52:32.000]  Yeah.
[52:32.120 --> 52:45.580]  And that, the fact that they were able to, the filmmakers were able to pull something like that off during the pandemic, during the conference, um, you know, with, with such limited time and resources available and they still, there were so much like really amazing things that popped out.
[52:45.700 --> 52:48.280]  I was, I was proud to sponsor that, uh, film festival a little bit.
[52:48.380 --> 52:58.000]  The winners of each category, um, get some custom artwork from me, which, uh, I need to start on, but, uh, it was, it, it's just like another example of something that you can do at Hope.
[52:58.340 --> 53:02.840]  Um, because no one says we can't, no one says we can't have a film festival.
[53:03.080 --> 53:04.920]  No one says we can't have a remote film festival.
[53:05.800 --> 53:09.260]  And, and, uh, we, we just, uh, we just managed to do it.
[53:09.360 --> 53:11.980]  Lexicon really, uh, knocked it out of the park, wrangling that whole thing.
[53:12.360 --> 53:15.220]  And, uh, I definitely, uh, got to give him his props for that.
[53:16.220 --> 53:16.580]  Absolutely.
[53:16.700 --> 53:23.940]  And let's not forget the performers too, because in addition to the talks at midnight, every night, we had people performing in various ways.
[53:24.340 --> 53:27.220]  Radio Wonderland, that was one of the things that really left out at me.
[53:27.380 --> 53:28.260]  I'd never seen that before.
[53:28.820 --> 53:35.540]  This is, uh, a guy, yeah, he basically takes a radio and he tunes it and maybe you'll hear BAI, but he turns it into music.
[53:35.620 --> 53:36.320]  It's live.
[53:36.500 --> 53:38.120]  He can never do the same piece twice.
[53:38.640 --> 53:41.140]  And, and, uh, I believe that's in the archives as well.
[53:41.580 --> 53:46.880]  Uh, Cameron Glass had, had this amazing, uh, presentation, a young musician from New York.
[53:47.100 --> 53:49.560]  Uh, and, and there were, there were so many others too.
[53:49.700 --> 53:51.920]  I, I don't want to leave anybody out, but I fear I will.
[53:52.520 --> 53:55.920]  Uh, it was just an extra added element that made hope really special.
[53:56.220 --> 54:07.360]  And, and, and it was great to have those performance for per, excuse me, performance appear on radio Statler and actually be able to give a full on presentation at times on how they create what they're creating.
[54:07.600 --> 54:17.780]  Uh, because as performers, you know, they're hired to show up and make their music or whatever it is they're making and they have their dedicated time slot and then they have to go and you can maybe infer what they're doing based on what you can see in the video.
[54:18.040 --> 54:20.940]  If, uh, you were privileged enough to be able to have video of that.
[54:21.080 --> 54:26.420]  Uh, but being able to give them that voice on radio Statler and say, all right, you do something cool.
[54:26.800 --> 54:28.900]  How the heck do you do it?
[54:29.100 --> 54:44.580]  And to give them an hour or two hours to like step you through exactly how they make these weird tones and sounds and mixes and loops and, and, and, and to have them be so open about it, to have them come in and go, yes, this is how I perform my craft.
[54:44.840 --> 54:48.440]  He, this is how I make these things that are so unique to me.
[54:48.760 --> 54:51.120]  You should also try to do this.
[54:51.440 --> 54:54.160]  It's great fun with that was amazing.
[54:54.420 --> 55:06.120]  Just that complete absence of, you know, uh, firewalling and, and patenting and, you know, trademarking and, and knowledge defending and saying like, well, well this, that's a secret and that's a secret.
[55:06.240 --> 55:12.840]  I can tell you this much, but after that, that's, you know, I can't, I can't get into that because then you might steal it and do what I do.
[55:13.160 --> 55:17.540]  Uh, whereas every performer at Hope's mentality is please do what I do.
[55:17.540 --> 55:18.640]  This is fun.
[55:18.780 --> 55:19.620]  I'm having fun.
[55:19.760 --> 55:21.100]  I wish you'd have fun too.
[55:21.280 --> 55:21.900]  We should do it.
[55:21.920 --> 55:22.900]  We should have fun together.
[55:23.420 --> 55:25.240]  So we gotta, we gotta wrap this up soon.
[55:25.380 --> 55:29.920]  We're running out of time, but, uh, one last round of, uh, final thoughts on, uh, how this whole thing went.
[55:31.720 --> 55:32.120]  Um,
[55:35.320 --> 55:40.320]  this is Johnny and I, uh, again, I'm just, uh, I can't believe how well it went.
[55:40.520 --> 55:46.500]  You know, I went in as a pessimist saying like, oh, this is going to be terrible and no part of it.
[55:46.700 --> 55:58.140]  Well, you know, but given like how short the run-up was and, uh, watching firsthand, like when, like how soon before like critical decisions were made, I was like, I don't know about this.
[55:58.280 --> 56:02.440]  And then to watch it just be executed so well was just amazing.
[56:02.440 --> 56:05.320]  And it's a credit to every single person involved.
[56:05.460 --> 56:05.860]  Hands down.
[56:05.860 --> 56:08.180]  I, I, I do want to be cheeky.
[56:08.260 --> 56:19.500]  I do want to be cheeky here for a second and, and welcome hope, uh, to the challenges of running a, a, uh, conference long broadcast, uh, that we at Radio Saler have been doing for over a decade now.
[56:21.140 --> 56:21.560]  Yes.
[56:22.300 --> 56:22.820]  Yes.
[56:23.660 --> 56:23.660]  Yes.
[56:23.720 --> 56:23.800]  Yes.
[56:23.920 --> 56:26.900]  One word from me with a hyphen precedent setting.
[56:28.720 --> 56:29.600]  That's a good one.
[56:29.860 --> 56:30.380]  Absolutely.
[56:30.700 --> 56:31.000]  Agreed.
[56:32.200 --> 56:35.400]  Exhausting and, uh, worth every second.
[56:36.720 --> 56:37.200]  Yeah.
[56:37.400 --> 56:39.940]  For me, it's another in a series of life changing events.
[56:40.160 --> 56:54.780]  I feel like these are transformative in what I learned in, in the interaction that we have such intense interaction with, with everybody, not, not the people only that you're working with day after day, but even the people that you're working with for just a few minutes,
[56:54.940 --> 57:04.140]  whether doing their talk or giving them a little help and the intensity on Boeing was, uh, was fantastic for me and, uh, definitely life changing.
[57:05.120 --> 57:06.520]  Well, we want to hear from you.
[57:06.720 --> 57:15.620]  If you were at hope or if you go to hope now and watch the talks feedback at hope.net, tell us what you think, what we can do better, what you liked, what you didn't like.
[57:16.060 --> 57:18.100]  And, um, maybe we'll read it on the air.
[57:18.260 --> 57:24.020]  Maybe we'll print it in the magazine, but thank you everybody who attended, uh, because you really strengthened the community.
[57:24.300 --> 57:29.260]  You gave us a new burst of energy and, uh, we're looking forward to the next time.
[57:29.260 --> 57:30.760]  Absolutely.
[57:31.180 --> 57:49.180]  And, uh, check out your local 2600 meetings virtually this Friday, all
[57:58.730 --> 58:00.910]  over and, uh, the two.
[58:00.910 --> 58:02.570]  Oh, I have a tie!
[58:14.530 --> 58:15.070]  Amirike?
[58:15.830 --> 58:16.710]  Did you get something out?
[58:17.410 --> 58:18.450]  If you can show?
[58:19.150 --> 58:20.250]  If you can get?
[58:21.790 --> 58:23.610]  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh I want to give you again.