Report by Hannah/IronFeather
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The first Interz0ne was fun.
We ran the Iron Feather Journal booth, saw some old friends, did a couple of interviews,
IF dee-jayed a set, we printed some war chalking T-shirts, I was on the webcam girl's panel discussion, and we were both indoctrinated into the Church of the Subgenius' by walking through a 6-foot tall vagina, and being blasted with silly string. :)
We enjoyed ourselves and it was a good crew. We had time to go to some of the talks, such as the Georgia Tech security flaws by Acidus, the Tesla coil demonstration, and JonnyX's welcoming speech. The Pope JonnyX's message to all seemed to be very clear....stand up for your rights and freedoms before they disappear!
The first day of the conference was pretty quiet, but the spirit and the lectures were great!!
The second day, a few more people showed up, but it was still pretty slow with attendees - about 75 or so. The first year of a 'con' is always trial and error, and I think Rockit, Monster and JonnyX all learned good things to do next time, and what not to do as well.
I would definitely go back again to learn some new stuff, and have fun too!!!
Look for pictures of the con on Sherrod's page at www.girlvinyl.com, and at www.ironfeather.com/interz0ne.
Big ups to the Interz0ne staff (Monster, Rockit and JonnyX) and volunteers (Sherrod, Damien, Melon and others) who made it all worthwhile.....thank you for your southern hospitality.
Special shoutouts go to Tara from hackerthreads for her warm conversation and her M
iami scene report, to V1RU5 from the DIS.ORG crew for swapping stories (may our glow devil duckie's never be forgotten), to the other webcam girls (Sherrod, Melon, Heidi and Nadia/Randy) who bared their souls, for the good vibes from Polymorph, to the Alabama crew, to Iridium from the SE2600 crew, and to all the cool kats who supported our IFJ booth. Nice to meet y'all in Atlanta, Georgia....
Be sure to keep up to date on the next InterzOne gig sometime in the the spring 2003; check out their webpage at: www.interz0ne.com.
LINKS
http://www.interz0ne.com/forum :: Forums relating to the Interz0ne conference. Start planning now for Interz0ne II.
http://www.v1ru5.org :: A cool cat from Las Vegas who has some great interests, a kind soul and a spirit ov phun! Stay chooned for infos about his two books : Introduction to computer viruses + The Physical Aspects of Network Security.
effjay :: effjay's LiveJournal entry about interz0ne.
SUBGENIUS ATLANTA DEVIVAL! Hosted by The Reverend Susie the Floozie and The Lymph Node Institute. Rants, High-Wierdness and Sarcasto-AntiReligioBlasphemy served with a extra-rich helping of "Bob"!
REPORT :: XTRA
by Stevyn/IronFeather
On weds, day before departure I replaced the valve cover gaskets on our 1978 Van in hopes it would halt our deadly oil leak. Sadly it only slowed that black gold from gushing. So we stocked xtra oil, 5 liters of gas, 4 gallons of water, tools, flashlites etc in case of any roadside repairs.
Our money in pocket was $60 and one gas credit card, Phillips66. Since our van only gets 10 miles to the gallon and we had 1500 miles to drive we needed $200 for fuel costs. Hannah did her research and compiled a list of Phillips66's around the states we were driving thro. We had to avoid Ohio completely as they didn't have any, so we went tho Indiana instead. Luckily we found them for the whole trip and saved the $60 to be used for food and beer.
For the conference we packed a camera, 16mm film projector, two turntables, crate of records, two computers, clothes, tent, propane cookstove, cooler of food & drinks and silk screen supplies in case we wanted to bust out a phresh t-shirt (which we did).
We left Lansing Michigan around 10pm, drove south to Indianapolis where we crashed at my Aunts house. For supper we hit the "Friendly Tavern" at 290 S. Main ST. Zionsville. They had tasty pub grub and Sam Adams on tap, nice one!
That night I set her up with one of the computers so she could access the net, take part in email and she was thrilled. I don't see many of my relatives often, in fact last time I did was nearly 20 years ago.
Next morn at 6am we snuck out and drove onwards to Atlanta. Friday evening we stumbled into the Interz0ne welcome area and were warmly welcomed by Rockit, JohnnyX, etc.
They let us access their crash space which made life so much sweeter than camping in our van. Cheers for that!
We showered, feeling good with phresh clothes and lubricated with a few "SouthPaw" beers & generous belts of vodka we once again joined the phreakz at the conference. Grinning JohnnyX dashed out in tuxedo tails walked around with a live cattle prod and laters gave the intro speech upstairs in the speakers room. He started off by breaking a few laws, testing the "Patriot Act" and incorporated the whole audience, hotel and a neighboring Boy Scout conference as coconspirators in his illegal demo that actually can be declared as a terrorist threat. what did he do?
He boldly turned his older TeeVee set upwards past channel 74 and made it possible to overhear cell fone calls. This is a serious crime and any of you with old teevees should turn them
into your local police department pronto. His message was about the insanity of it all and how technology is being used to turn the USA into a police state. It is up to us to help fellow humankind from this oppression. Privately he confided in me later that if things continue he may go abroad to seek safer havens which we will probably do as well..
Laters we joined in the frenzy of the SUBGENIUS revival hosted by The Reverend Susie the Floozie and The Lymph Node Institute. A band called the Hellblinki Sextet played ragtime punk jazz between rants. People cried, people screamed, many fell to their knees as hackers were welcomed to be "reborn" by entering a huge 6 foot tall vagina. The ministers of Bob has you sign a 10000 word legal waiver, carefully placed custom fit tin foil hats on the bold attendee and guided you to the dark void of salvation. Then the monster cunt spat you out covered in goo with a reborn soul of true slack.
Afterwards the masses went outside to sneak into the hotel swimming pool for naked baptism. Naked Reverend Susie the Floozie saved many souls that night, that is, till the hotel phreaked out and shut down the service.
Outside the entry an abandoned puppy was found and adopted by the hacker attendees. At the bar I ran into Polymorph who we knew from the Pennylane Coffeehouse in Boulder in the mid 1990s. he travels everywhere and has some good stories in his skull.
I also met lovely Sherrod from Girlvinyl.com. Turns out she is the webmistress for AtlantaGoth.com thus she filled me in on the Atlanta scene. I was surprised to find out there was a good sized "Noise" scene. She did confess that she really prefers girly synth pop bands instead. She hosted the webgirls panel and next Interz0ne will be hosting the hacker jeopardy. Shouts to Sherrod, you rool!
Back in the crash space I set up my silk screen supplies and burned the "War Chalker" design. And we crashed out.
Saturday morn we fried up some eggs on our cook stove, downed a few beers and went to the conference to set up the IFJ booth. Hannah ran it mostly as I ran about checking shyt out as well as making trips to the bar and back to the room to silk screen print the war chalker design on some shirts.
During most of the tyme Hannah ran the IFJ booth that featured Iron Feather Journals, our t-shirts and a few other goodys. Around 3pm-6pm I deejayed lounge, go-go, rocksteady, etc. on the Epoch's SUBGENIUS sound system. It is always a treat to crank phun choonz on a sound rig. I do have to say that the Gemini XL-DD50 turntables were the worst decks ever. You hit start and they slowly attempted to start turning. Power fluctuating made them slow & speed up, etc. I was tempted many tymes to run outside and haul in my own decks but I persisted and played choonz anyways, I thought to myself, "I pity the fool that has to mix on these"
Epoch who has the sound system was cool and was busy that night DJing a "swinger" event elsewhere in the hotel. Cheers for him for allowing us to use his sound system.
We quickly broke down our booth and drove up the street to snag some chicken burritos from a Mexican drag queen diner. Rushing back to the conference Hannah joined four other lovely ladies for the webgirl panel.
My mind was racing as I fantasized about Hannah inviting the girls out later for a fotoshoot but in reality they were not pervs like me. In fact the ladies were shy enuff to keep their sites private. If anyone has any pics or links of these ladies drop me mail ;)
Later that night outdoors near the pool area of the hotel Specwhore demonstrated his home made Tesla Coil! It was wicked to see him fire it up and using a long pole fry things such as AOL CD-roms, chips, motherboards, etc.
Massive lightening bolts crackled thro the air, rated in the millions of volts everyone was in awe. I wondered what would happen if JohnnyX attempted to shock the tesla coil with his cattle prod.
For supper we cooked soup, bread and a hotdog and washed it down with the cheapy "Southpaw" beer.
Later that night we were horrified to find out the liquor stores were closed and would not reopen till Monday! If Bob Dobbs was truly in power he would change such liquor laws as his first miracle.
In big conference room they showed the movie FREEDOM DOWNTIME by 2600 Magazine. Excellent film that I highly recommend you see and purchase. It is a feature length documentary about the Free Kevin movement and the hacker world. Learn about the insanity of the cops, clueless justice system and warped corporations. This film will make you cry, laugh and get pissed.
I missed most of the speakers which sux as I really enjoy hearing the topics and taking notes for the IFJ. Next tyme Im going to get my shyt together so I can hit some and either record or take good notes for future issues of IFJ.
Randal L. Schwartz, Optyx, V1ru5, Acidus, etc. gave presentations that were recorded so check those out online soon.
The next day, Sunday, we realized that our booth so far had only sold $7 worth of gear. So we opened the booth from 10am - 4pm and eventually raised the total to $40 thanks to some shirt sales. Not enuff to cover our fuel costs, but the amount of phun had, the great people we met, the hospitality of the staff, the knowledge we learned and the word of Bob made it all worth it!
The final meeting before everyone bailed yielded some great suggestions for the next Interz0ne conference which will be held spring of 2003. Everyone knew what was up.
The whole event was well organized, staff was there in place, rooms ready for speakers, TV crew filmed everything, vending area, DJ area, network area, etc. The only things I could think to suggest is some heavy promotion, especially in Atlanta with newspaper ads, etc to get the locals to support. The other is to nail down speakers firmly as some didn't show up.
Before hitting the streets we drove downtown to eat at the VARSITY which is one of Atlanta's landmarks of excellence. We feasted on hamburgers, chili dogs, onion rings, chocolate shakes and fried apple pies. Did I mention that we are veggetarians? Dam, on vacation anything goes.
On the way home to Lanzing we talked about it all and wanted to decide if we would attend the next conference knowing that we didn't cover our costs. A first time for any event needs wrinkles ironed out and I was impressed by their 1st year. Would have been cooler if a few hundred more people showed up but I'm confident that is exactly what will happen next year as word gets out globally and locally. We have both decided it was well worth the drive so we are planning on it, see ya there!
PS: things I wrote down to do when I get home include: check out nakednerds.com, blueblood.net, www.mods.dk, openradio.org, create some gifts to give out such as mix cds and stickers, get our products online 4 sale, interview Polymorph & Randal L. Schwartz, get my brothers to attend future hacker cons as they would be in heaven, silk screen a Bob shirt, practice my house set, watch Ray Bradburys MARTIAN CHRONICALS with hannah, write a letter to V1ru5, start a banner exchange dealy, open a bookshop stall in the local lanzing farm market, DJ a lounge night in lansing, learn how to cook an omlette like the "Omlette House" does (710 Dixie Ave Elizabethtown KY), get a job.
As of Oct. 3, 2002
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