Last year I spent a weekend at ORD Camp, a Chicago unconference populated by hackers of all descriptions.
There was a heady mix of 3d printing enthusiasts, robot-builders, programmers, drinkers, dreamers, proud Chicagoans, and werewolves. Everyone brought a talk, or an activity, or at least a bottle.
I couldn’t make it this year. Here’s what I remember from 2013.
Christina Pei brought lockpicking sets and gave everyone a chance to use them. It’s not hard to pick a Master key lock with two simple metal tools! I found out about The Open Organization of Lockpickers (@toool). And I learned that it is legal to own lockpicks in 49 states, the one exception being my own home state of Tennessee. (Note that many cities have their own lockpick possession laws, so the rest of you are not necessarily out of the woods.)
Strangers host and producer Lea Thau crammed a two-hour-plus workshop on storytelling into 40 minutes, leaving time for attendees to write—and then for a few to tell—true stories of their own lives. Awesome.
Human cannonball Kate McGroarty (@KateMcGroarty) did a mile-a-minute improv workshop. I learned: you can define a character just by choosing a funky shape for your spine. Or the way you walk. Also, the best gift you can give your improv partner is a name. Marvel at the speed with which your mind fills in a character for: “Earl”. “Anastasia”. I think my wife and I are going to host an improv party at our house. When did we stop being shy people? I blame Kate.
Third Coast International Audio Festival artistic director Julie Shapiro’s session was called Choose Your Own Audio Adventure. Lights off, bunch of nerds in a room listening to beautiful short scraps of audio and voting on what to play next. One example: Radiolab’s story of what happened on day 86 of Aleksander Gamme’s trek to the South Pole (just the first 5 minutes).
Jim Blandy’s session, live-coding the lambda calculus, was as virtuosic as you’d expect, if you know him.
Around a table, I asked Louis Wasserman what kind of math he studied before he got into programming, and he said combinatorics. What little I know of combinatorics (I said) is a few counting techniques, and the proofs for those always seem really ugly, with a lot of tricky case analysis. To counter that notion, Louis showed me a surprising proof of a theorem about complete subgraphs. I hope I get around to blogging it here later. It’s dead sexy.
And I got to chat with Jennifer Brandel, lead producer of WBEZ’s Curious City and organizer of Dance Dance Party Party. The common thread here seems to be: these are beautiful, beautiful things that could totally happen in your city.
Even with all that, my favorite parts of the trip are not even on the list, because they’d be boring to you. Meeting people I’ve wanted to meet for a long time. Listening to music.
Honestly I spent most of the time at ORD Camp sick or else in introvert people-overload. But the event is still unfolding in my head. It was unique, and I’m grateful for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment