First off I’d like to thank my committee, without them it would have all been a scattered mess. They are Eoghan O’Brien, Gavin Fitzgerald, John Flanagan, Mark Brennan, and Mark Kohls. Each had their own jobs which they pulled off incredibly well, and I’m very glad to have worked with them as a team.

I’d like to say a big thank you to all our speakers, who made the weekend what it was. They are Alan J. Guinane, Christian van den Bosch, Ciarán Maher, David Malone, Eoin McLoughlin, Evert Bopp, Jeff Gough, John Lunney, Lorraine Morgan, Martha Rotter, Mel Gorman, Neil Fahey, and Randall Munroe.

Next up are the various groups who sponsored Skycon ‘09. Without their support there is no way we could have done it. The groups are, AIB, Microsoft, The University of Limerick Computer Science and Information Systems Department, and The University of Limerick Sports and Arts Fund.

I’d like to thank the people who worked behind the scenes to make sure everything flowed smoothly; Paul Lee for his assistance, patience and motivation, Annette McElligott for offering us the use of the CSIS building, the staff in the Kilmurry Lodge Hotel, who accommodated us perfectly, ULTV for recording the two tracks, and John the CSIS porter.

I’d like to thank everyone who helped publicise Skycon ‘09; Gareth Eason and Joe Johnson who wrote blog posts promoting the event, Niall Campbell who managed our Facebook group, and all the people who twittered about skycon.

A special thanks to Sarah Ní Riain for her awesome xkcd cake. Sarah, you rock.

Thank you to everyone for coming, particularly those who travelled to Limerick for the event. It was great to catch up with some old friends and make news one too.

All in all the day was alot of fun, to both organise and attend, and I look forward to the next Skycon.

P.S. colmmac has some great photos up on flickr.

P.P.S. I’ve posted the Table Quiz that accompanied the meal.

I left home shortly after 03:00 to catch a 03:30 bus. Hugh arrived in the airport shortly after I did, wondering if security would accept a boarding pass scribbled on the back of an exam paper (the printer was out of paper and ink). The flight flew by, mainly due to my comatose state.

The hostel we’re staying in (Heart of Gold Hostel – Berlin, in reference to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) is superb; the staff are friendly, movies on a projector, beds for €15 a night, beer on tap all night. How bad?

We called around to the BCC late in the afternoon to pick up tickets early, to avoid tomorrows queues. We met Mitch and went for dinner in a great, cheap Thai place, which had buckets of vegetarian options.

I’ve made a point of talking very little about the people I’ve met at previous conferences, out of respect for their privacy.

I remember one of the press rules at Defcon was that should a human want to attend anonymously then they should be free to do so. Defcon will not take your name or ask for ID. All participants are asked to respect all other participants, nobody should capture any other humans attribute without that humans express permission. So, no photos unless you get permission from everyone in the frame, no audio/video recordings unless every human recorded has given permission to be recorded. A quiet room is provided for recordings. Speakers are generally excluded from this privacy amnesty, they’ll generally already be associated with the con due to being a speaker. Just don’t harass the speakers.

I remember hearing stories from old Defcons where if a flash went off people would come over to you and insist the photo was deleted/film destroyed.

Despite the cons tagline being “nothing to hide” these people are very serious about the security of personal information relating to them and privacy too. With good reason

On the Weekend of the 25th artemis’ brother came down to NY again. On the Friday night we hit the Mars Bar (which ended with me sleeping on the couch again) and on Saturday we went to a very expensive nightclub, Marquee. It was the first time I’ve seen a $9,000 bottle of champagne on sale.

Was also at Ignite NYC on the 29th where I met up with Gus again. Unfortunately it was held in a club and so artemis was turned away for not having ID. The worthwhile talks were:

• Jessica Bruder (author, journalist-at-large) – How to be an Undercover Hooker (reprising her talk on taking an NYPD course)
• Rose White (Yarnivore) – Weird and wonderful knitting — graffiti and science and art combined!
• Audacia Ray (Village Voice’s Naked City) – Porn as a front runner in technology innovations
• Natalie Jeremijenko (NYU XDesign) – A bomb shelter for the climate crisis
• Dustyn Roberts (NYU’s ITP, Honeybee Robotics) – Flying High with Engineers Without Borders (on building a Kite Aerial Photography rig for mapping in Kenya)
• Limor Fried (ladyada) & Phillip Torrone (Make & Citizen Engineer) – Open source hardware, hacking SIM cards, modding a payphone for fun and for profit.
• Nick Bilton (NY Times, NYC Resistor) – The Future of News

I took a trip up to Toronto to visit sith on the 1st of August. I went up the CN tower with its scary glass floor, explored the brewery region, had two very nice meals and saw the Farmers Market. I also had lunch a few weeks later with sith in the Wild Onion on his trip around Ireland.

The following week I prepared myself for a trip to Las Vegas for DEFCON 16. I had an awesome time at DEFCON, met loads of interesting people and had a great time. If I had to choose between DEFCON and H.O.P.E. I’d pick DEFCON. While H.O.P.E. may have had better talks/speakers, DEFCON was amazing socially. The parties were awesome and the after parties back in hotel rooms were full of the most interesting conversations I’ve had in years. I also went to see Penn&Teller and The Blue Man Group.

Billy arrived in NY the week after DEFCON. The same week my family had their passports stolen in Spain, within hours of landing in the country. They were in my Dads Laptop bag, his laptop, my sisters phone and camera and all the families passports were stolen from the rental car at a motorway service station while they were inside getting something to eat. They eventually got temporary single use passports from a consulate and were able to get home.

I went to see Regina Spektor in McCarren Pool, supported by Albert Hammond Junior. There are several videos of the Gig up on Youtube. I heard a bunch of new songs and songs I hadn’t heard before. The highlight for me were Poor Little Rich Boy, Ghost of Corporate Future and a beatbox version of Hotel Song.

I came back to Limerick the following week. Overall I feel that my time in New York was very worthwhile. With 24hour public transport and food available almost as regularly the city feels like an extension of a college campus. As a knock on effect it is possible that offices don’t have closing times, and so often all-nighters were pulled as deadlines approached. People in New York live so they can work, not work so they can live.

I helped polarice pack Skynet flyers into Orientation packs. I showed three groups around the college durring Orientation week, Woodwork, Law & Accounting and Ethnochoreology students. All groups were great and I wish them the best of luck in UL.

A few things I’ve noticed; two advertismsents struck me, one was an Advertisement for Norton Anti-Virus on a freeway billboard and the second was for Cingular who were advertising that their network had the fewest dropped calls. It seemed strange that they were advertising this as in Ireland all mobile advertising seems to revolve around either price or a new feature (“Porting”, 3G, i-mode).

Finally crashed out in the hotel at an hour which was far too late by our body clocks.

This morning Laura, Cian and Gar went to watch the Irish match and myself, Dan and Conal went back to the toy shop to get some more of the handheld media players. The shop was very pleased to shift six more this morning and I think Garth is going along to pick some up too. He left this morning to stay with friends. After the toy shop we went to a Barns & Noble and picked up a few books.

After that we went down to the Frog Pond in the park near our hotel and went ice skating. Some chickened out but myself, Colm, Ivan, Pili, Laura and Dan went. I had never been before and it has been many years since I’ve been rollerblading but it was still lots of fun. None of us had done it more than once before which made the playing field somewhat level.

I nearly fell once when I collided with a seven year old who went zooming past, and there were kids who must have been as young as four there. Laura left early and Cian got many photos of us (Dan even managed to get a video while he was skating). After a lap or two you do begin to get tired and so your ankles give in a bit and it starts to really hurt, thankfully there was very little walking after that.

So after that we went over to the airport and this leaves me here now. It’s been a great trip; we discovered that Americans put High-fructose corn syrup (which is loaded with GM) in nearly everything. Its come to the point where we are thinking of getting t-shirts with “I went to the US and all I got was High-Fructose Corn Syrup” printed on them.

Anyway, we’re being called to the gate, it’s been a great trip and I hope to come back here in the future.