Building Hackerspaces Everywhere (Brucon 2009)

This talk titled "Building Hackerspaces Everywhere" was given by Astera at Brucon 2009.

Abstract: Within the last 12 months, we've seen hackerspaces spread all across the world at an incredible rate, and hackers everywhere getting involved with the movement and turning into the most excited entusiasts for shared community spaces to research and/or build things. As of today there are 102 officially known active hackerspaces and another 82 in planning or building process. The media has developed an interest in the movement, its history (reaching back dozens of years already), and its current status. However, the epic plan of taking over the world and bringing new mechanisms of studying, working and experience to the people doesn't stop here. The 40 minute talk will mostly focus on why to build a hackerspace, how, and what questions to ask yourself in the process. It will conclude in an extensive Q/A round.

Speaker Bio: Astera is a robotics lover, hackerspace enthusiast and technology fanatic, while at the same time she feels the urgent need of sharing her thoughts and futuristic fears with the world in order to save the planet from ZARs (zombie alien robots), the general ever-growing dumbing down, and the omnipresent stultification of human population, for example. When not working on shiny little twin robots at the Metalab, Vienna's awesome hackerspace, or automated home environment in her spare time, she works as industrial designer, consultant, coder and part-time sysadmin. Currently, astera devotes every free minute to hackerspaces.org, the knowledge base hackertalks.org, and the Republic of BLAH (boundless l33ts and hackers), which she just founded. Fortunately the angst of a robotic uprising and fall of all mankind keeps her wake almost all night, therefore prolonging her workday, leaving enough time to travel around the world and give enlightening talks.

You can download a High resolution video here.

Vivek Ramachandran is a security evangelist and has been working in computer security related fields for the past 7 years. In 2007, Vivek spoke at world renowned conferences Defcon (WEP Cloaking Exposed) and Toorcon (The Caffe Latte Attack). The discovery of the Caffe Latte Attack was covered by CBS5 news, BBC online, Network World etc news agencies.In 2006, Vivek was announced as one of winners of the Microsoft Security Shootout contest held in India among 65,000 participants. He has also been a recipient of a Team Achievement at Cisco Systems for his work on 802.1x and Port Security modules on the Catalyst 6500 switches. Currently he spends all of his time maintaining Security- Freak.Net , SecurityTube.Net and is the co-founder of Axonize. Vivek, is a Bachelor in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.You can contact him at vivek[at]securitytube.net