garykamen / blog

08-24-08

Gnomedex 8.0

Just got back from Gnomedex 8.0, easily the most interesting yearly conference I’ve been to. In a nutshell, Gnomedex combines geek culture with tech, and usually a few surprises mixed in. I usually come back knowing a bit about something I previously knew nothing about. This year it was Cyborgs.

Nathan Wade, quite possibly the most well-spoken college junior, gave a talk on how he synthesized art and technology to create “Serial Cyborg”, a wooden sculpture derived from simple MRI scans of a human head. From one angle it looks more or less like a human skull. From another, you can make out specific facial features.

The most entertaining presentation came from Ben Huh, owner of the Icanhascheezburger network of websites. His presentation was centered the website’s rise to fame, focusing mostly on the statistics of growth. And of course mixed in were some relevant, hand-picked LOLcats. While Ben did not create the original website, he is directly responsible for its monumental growth and expansion in recent months.

Given the nature of this conference, there are certainly loads of attendee-created galleries and videos around the net. Flickr seems to have the most attendee-submitted images, and Ustream (where it was streamed live during the event) has plenty of videos.

Gnomedexers listen intently to Sarah Lacey's presentation on problems faced by the growing Blogosphere (credit Shashi Bellamkonda)