The Next HOPE, Call for Projects!

Traditionally HOPE conferences have been more about the talks than the physical projects, but with the 2008 conference that started to change, and this time organizers are pushing for an even stronger showing of projects and tech art. This call for projects goes out to hackers, makers, technologists, artists, and free thinkers around the world. Come share your passions and ideas with 3,000+ of your soon-to-be closest friends.

If you want to pitch in and you don’t know what to do…

* Lounge/Hang-Out Spaces
o HOPE usually has work spaces, seminar spaces, and crash spaces. Can you organize more chill zones for simple conversation?
* Games
o You have 3,000+ people, three floors of a massive hotel, an RFID tracking system, and The City of New York. What can you do with that? Teach, play, explore.
* Art
o What’s your vision of the future? Show us using hardware, software, electricity and imagination.
* Night Life
o The talks usually stop around midnight. What else could be going on between midnight and 9am? Plan it, make it interesting, make it happen.

The main visual theme of the conference is visions of the future from the past, so things that reference The World’s Fairs, The Jetsons, flying cars, DaVinci, Asimov, and so forth would be very appropriate. However, projects are not required to carry the central theme in any way. Some projects, such as OpenAMD, are already being planned to be simply visions of the future from the present, rather than referencing any futurist thoughts from antiquity.

Some projects already in the works include…

* The Attendee Meta-Data Project (“OpenAMD”)
o An expansion of the RFID crowd tracking project from The Last Hope.
o Needs programmers and hardware hackers, and is prime for spinoff projects.
o Many possibilities exist for the development of games, data mining, and visualizations.
o Ask about the OpenAMD API.
o http://amd.hope.net/
o contact: [email protected]
* Radio Statler!
o Streaming 24 hours a day live from the expo floor.
o Needs people to do shows, experienced engineers, reporters, and people with interesting audio gear.
o Needs a large isolation booth.
o http://radio.hope.net/
o contact: [email protected]
* Installation Art
o The Next HOPE invites artists, local and beyond, who have a vision of the future expressed as installation art.
o Installations must be technology-based. They can range from electrical experiments to computer-controlled machines, to data and information processing visualizations, they can be static or interactive, and they could be visual or musical, this is a very open field.
o This is an unpaid exhibition, but the selected installation artists will be given free admission to the conference, and an online gallery with artist biographies will be set up for promotional purposes.
o What are your space, power, time, and data connection requirements?
o contact the curator: [email protected]
* The Hackerspace and Hardware Hacking Village
o A 24 hour gathering point for the hackerspace community, a hardware hacking workshop area, and a supply post for hardware hacking tools and expendables.
o Are you involved with a hackerspace? Reserve a special area for your group to chill and show off projects!
o Looking for hardware hackers and hackerspaces from all around the world to come together and and share ideas.
o contact: [email protected]

If you need help with your project, you can find a lot of people on our forum before the conference starts, at talk.hope.net. The HOPE wiki is also available for your use, wiki.hope.net.