Activity Proposal: Franklin’s Barbecue (Just for Fun)

Image: Pork ribs, sausage, brisket, pulled pork by T.Tseng on Flickr CC-BY-2.0

Austin is home to world-class barbecue. Cov recommends dry-rub seasoned fatty beef brisket, the best of which is arguably to be found at Franklin’s. The bad news is that the wait is several hours. The good news is that the wait is worth it. We could all stand in line and make an outing out of it, playing a 0AD tournament on our laptops or something more casual on our phones similar to Tanks of Freedom last year. Or we could deliver the customary participant lightning talks to a very slowly moving audience, using mobile visual aids. Or we could send a couple of designated line-waiters to order for the group. Franklin’s opens at 11:00 Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Activity Proposal: Alamo Drafthouse (Just for Fun)

Not libre, but just for fun, Cov would like to propose we attend one of the Drafthouse Cinema special events. There’s a showing of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 Vertigo in 70mm at 16:00 on Saturday and a showing of Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 Princess Mononoke on Saturday at 12:00. We could also watch a first-run film. The Alamo Drafthouse is known for serving food and drinks during movies and kicking people out who talk on their phone during them. Full disclosure: Cov and Jessica are related to the proprietors.

Activity Proposal: ConleyCon Oggcast

The idea with this event is for each participant to scour Jamendo, the Free Music Archive, Libre.FM, the Internet Archive, and other repositories for one new-to-you libre licensed tune, worth listening to on repeat. Each participant will then record an audio credit, reading aloud the Title, Author, Source, and License (TASL), following the Creative Commons best practices guide. This could be recorded with a libre software application such as Sound Recorder on a smartphone or Audacity on a laptop. The event facilitator will stitch the segments together and submit the compilation to Hacker Public Radio for publication.

Activity Proposal: Audio-Controlled Robot Capture the Flag

Cov has ordered two audio controlled robots–Wigls–from Crowd Supply, and example control devices in the form of recorders (the flute-like instruments). So that gets us two robots that can be remotely controlled. Using magnets or other mechanisms we should be able to make the robots able to pick up flags or other transportable markers. We’ll need some sort of medium access control. The easiest would be time division by simply taking turns with the opposing robot turned off. Depending on what preparations Cov and others are able to make, the human operators round could use frequency division. After the human operators round we could also have an autonomous round with points given for completing various tasks like FIRST Robotics. Finishing the event could be a secure your own robot and pwn the opposing robot round. Somewhere in there we can program Arduinos and HiFive1s to emit the frequencies that the robots interpret as commands.

As we make preparations we’ll have a better sense of what is feasible in a reasonable amount of time and given the variety of skills and ideas participants will have. Let us know if you have any suggestions or would like to help with preparations.

ConleyCon 7 Location and Date

All friends of freedom are invited to the next installment in an awesome series of gatherings. We have arranged for accommodations for a long weekend beginning February 9th 2017 in Austin, Texas.

The state capital and home to University of Texas at Austin, this new destination for ConleyCon has world class barbecue and numerous attractions. If you have ideas for activities, please respond with proposals. Some events I fondly recall from prior events are the escape / puzzle rooms and competing in libre video game tournaments, which we can do again assuming there’s interest.

At UCSD

The ConleyCon 6 House

Tacos for Linner

ConleyCon 2015: Conleycoin

Hello everyone!

It’s time to finally kick off the event that you all have been waiting for…ConleyCon 2015!!!

Your unelected leadership committee of unpaid volunteers has been discussing away the plans for this year and we have set on a place and time. We are going back to the West Coast again to enjoy beautiful San Diego for a weekend (or longer if you want) of reunion (first time guests welcome too) and activities!

We have also decided on a date: December 4th through the 6th of 2015! Hopefully this should work out for most people. It’s far enough in the future to book time off and travel arrangements, it’s not in the summer season so hopefully travel will be cheap and available, and it’s our first ever winter con! If you are interested in coming, please let us know if you can make these dates.

Activities are still in the planning stages, but will likely include the usual lightening talks and group activities. We will also likely be doing one or more outdoor activities around the city as well. We have some ideas on where to go and what to do, but any input from you is welcomed as well. Finally, we are thinking of getting a house from airbnb for the weekend, although we can always fall back to hotel rooms if wanted.

As always, please email the committee (cov at mykolab dot com, csmatt at vt dot edu, xcco3x at gmail dot com, owenssarah89 at gmail dot com) with the following information:

• What is your name?
• What is your email address?
• What is your phone number?
• Where will you be travelling from? How and when will you be travelling?
• What size shirt do you wear?
• Do you have any dietary restrictions?
• If coming from out of town, would you like to crash at someone’s place or stay at a hotel? If you’re a local, do you have a spare bed or couch where someone could crash?

PS: Feel free to invite your friends, but we ask that they RSVP so we know how many are coming.

PPS: If you want to be upgraded to the unelected leadership committee of unpaid volunteers to help out, feel free to ask.

Video Game Tournaments at ConleyCon

Many years (if not all), we’ve had a video game tournament. Here are some of the games I remember:

• Warzone 2100
• Conley and Sarah’s Python game
• SuperTuxKart
• Xonotic
• Frozen Bubble

If anyone has a better recollection, please speak up. Anyhow, I’m wondering what a nice one might be for ConleyCon 2015 (Conleycoin) in San Diego. I think my first suggestion will be Tanks of Freedom. It’s a hotseat, turn-based, strategy game available from the F-Droid application repository.