HOPE Forums

arseny wrote:

Some people were crazy though -- weren't there recruiters for some crazy institutions?

ya, there was one who you could apply for college. tho in return to getting this education, you had to agree to work for the government for 2 years.

i enjoyed the vendors. nice place to find some amusing toys and amusing conversation. the hacker porn video for sale was quite amusing, cheesy but amusing to see for sale.
i would like to see the vendor table there every HOPE. who wouldn't want the extra income for HOPE.

Having crazy people there can be a good thing if what they're peddling is of interest.

Nick: Isn't Make published by O'Reilly?

On the FSF stand, we had some good sales. We cleaned out of books.

I loved the setup.  It was somehow roomy enough where you could even hang out and chat with the vendors for a while without disrupting the flow of customers, even when it got crowded.

Arseny, I don't know how many laws of time and space you broke to fit so much into the available room, but it worked very nicely.

E gold.

i'm excited to see what vendors will be at HOPE 7.

I like the idea of vendors, but I didn't think that they had enough diversity of wares being pedaled. (Insert obligatory wares = warez joke here.)

Like, I wanted to pick up a few buttons, perhaps some stickers or keychains, maybe a t-shirt or 3, but from what I remember, it was mainly books (O'Reilly), wifi gear, one person selling those faraday cage wallets, and the TV-B-Gone thing.

Perhaps get some people with hacker schwag next time? Thinkgeek? Jinx? Hacker Stickers? Culture whatever their name is? (They were at Shmoocon.)

I don't know about that stuff, Lex: it can pretty much all be had at K-mart across the street or something if people are desperate.  The stuff I get really excited about spending money on at cons (and devoting precious luggage-space to) is the stuff that is more difficult or impossible to get the rest of the time.

Who doesn't love the opportunity to get something they want directly from the proprietors, rather than having to order it online and wait for shipping?  Tv-b-gone and the 2600 merch are good examples of that, as well as those shirts people were silk-screening right at their table (where the heck were they from anyhow?)

And then there's the gear you simply are not guaranteed to find at all outside the con, like the HOPE shirts (leftovers on the Web notwithstanding,) the various stuff signed by keynote speakers or whoever, the more obscure books and videos, some of the wackier hardware, etc.