Hey, Jason from LayerOne here. I just thought I'd go on record and run down some of the commentary as well as the article itself.
LayerOne was started to infuse the traditional hacker style conventions like Defcon and Toorcon with some of the spirit and ideas of conferences like Emerging Tech. Encouraging use of collaborative spaces such as wikis and IRC while the conference is going on. We've set up a note exchange where people can leave their notes or comments on a talk. The whole concept is to add a nurturing environment onto a conference and seeing where it goes from there.
Then again, we also want the people who can't make it out to see what they're missing...
We've also kept it simple this year, with a single track of speakers. There's no worrying about two talks you really want to see being placed back to back. We'll also have what's known as a classroom setup in part of the conference area, so if you bring your laptop or a notepad you'll have a space to get your thoughts organized. It's a comfort thing.
Sure, we've got some decent talks of the hacker variety lined up, but I wouldn't go so far as to call this a "hacker conference". We've also got some great soft tech talks on the line-up. That's why we're calling it a "technology conference".
To be perfectly honest we know that there's no way we can educate the masses. In fact, everyone we'll be reaching this weekend will be people who are already clued in. In a way, we'll be preaching to the choir this year, and probably for a couple years to come. Hopefully we'll turn someone else on to a viewpoint they haven't considered, but that may be a few years out.
I hope to catch at least some of you there this weekend. Cheers!
