Schedule: Geek Life sessions

9:00am Monday, 03/09/2009

Refactor Your Wetware

Location: Imperial Ballroom

Andrew Hunt (Pragmatic Programmers, LLC)

Software development happens in your head; not in an editor, IDE, or design tool. We’re well educated on how to work with software and hardware, but what about wetware—our own brains? Read more.

11:00am Tuesday, 03/10/2009

Building the Programmable Environment: Co-Design and Physical/Digital Space Making

Location: Gold Room

Jennifer Magnolfi (Herman Miller)

The design and production of physical/digital spaces is at the heart of what we call the Programmable Environment. Instead of environments complete and fixed in time, subject to renovation or demolition when their purpose is no longer relevant, the result is a spatial system designed to evolve over time, in interaction with the users who inhabit it. Read more.

11:55am Tuesday, 03/10/2009

Technology Uses Us: Humans as an Ecological Niche

Location: Gold Room

Maureen McHugh (.)

More and more we use biological metaphors for our technology. Cars break and are fixed, but computers get infected. Technology evolves, competes, exploits our emotions. We are the ecological niche for technology. And its uses of us may be no more benevolent than our uses of our own ecological niches. Read more.

2:00pm Tuesday, 03/10/2009

Emerging Research and Technologies for Life Hacking

Location: Valley Room

Alvaro Fernandez (SharpBrains)

Life hacking. Brain training. One and the same. The brain's frontal lobes enable our goal-oriented behavior, supporting our so-called "executive functions," which can be enhanced with targeted practice. Such as life hacking. This session will provide an overview of the cognitive neuroscience underpinning life hacking, and review the state-of-the-art of non-invasive tools for brain training. Read more.

2:55pm Tuesday, 03/10/2009

The Greatest Virtual Marathon: Computing and Materials in Sports

Location: Imperial Ballroom

Michael Tchao (Nike Techlab)

The greatest sports athletes' records live and die by their hi-tech gear. They use new swimsuits like the razor to shave seconds off their laps and sensors like the Nike+ to record their training. Michael Tchao of Nike Labs will share with us the process behind these creations and the new materials and technology that make them happen. Read more.

2:55pm Tuesday, 03/10/2009

Sensors, Smart Content, and the Future of News

Location: Gold Room

Nick Bilton (The New York Times R&D Labs)

We are currently in a time when sharing and social networks are changing the way we consume editorialized media and the definition of "'content" is increasingly blurred. In the R&D Labs at The New York Times we are exploring some of the questions around how we will consume information in the next 2 to 20 years. Read more.

4:10pm Tuesday, 03/10/2009

Mr. Hacker Goes to Washington

Location: Imperial Ballroom

Greg Elin (Sunlight Foundation)

Want to help fix democracy? Hackers, those crazy Utopian dreamers with DIY attitudes, have begun a sustained assault on government with projects like the Sunlight Foundation, OpenCongress, GovTrack, Watchdog.net, FedSpending, MySociety, and Public.Resource. The goal? Read more.

4:10pm Tuesday, 03/10/2009

Priorities for a Greener World: If You Could Design Anything, What Should You Do?

Location: Gold Room

Jeremy Faludi (Worldchanging, Stanford, Project Frog)

Does paper vs. plastic even matter compared to how you got to the store? Everyone today is aware that there are looming environmental problems, and many are looking to create change. This talk derives a list of the industries and areas of our lives that most need change, in order of priority, and suggests what some of these changes should be. Read more.

5:05pm Tuesday, 03/10/2009

Robots: The Next Ten Years

Location: Empire Room

David Calkins (Robotics Society of America, et. al.)

What coming in robots? More than just the butler bot, we can expect to see many robots in all aspects of our life - home, work, hospitals, schools.... Single task robots will permeate our lives, as will telepresence bots giving us the ability to truly bi-locate. Noone can predict the future, but we can get a sneak peak. Read more.

11:55am Wednesday, 03/11/2009

Superstruct: How to Invent the Future by Playing a Game

Location: Imperial Ballroom

Jane McGonigal (Social Chocolate)

What are the five biggest problems the world will face in 2019 – and how can we get a head-start on solving them together? Find out in this talk, which presents the results of SUPERSTRUCT, the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game. Read more.

2:00pm Wednesday, 03/11/2009

Urban Homesteading: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Modern Making

Location: Imperial Ballroom

Mark Frauenfelder (Make Magazine)

In 1900 about 40 percent of Americans (40 million) lived on farms, and a similar percentage worked on farms. People were makers by necessity, and as a result they acquired many useful DIY skills that they applied to their leisure activities as well. Read more.

2:55pm Wednesday, 03/11/2009

Japanese Tech Culture: Demystifying "Weird" Japanese Toys and Tools

Location: Gold Room

Lisa Katayama (TokyoMango), Fumi Yamazaki (Fumi Yamazaki)

What do Japanese geeks, teenagers, and high school girls do for hours behind their computers and cell phone screens? Katayama and Yamazaki demonstrate several examples of web apps and gadgets that are fun, creative, and uniquely Japanese. Through these, we see how crucial, hard-to-grasp aspects of Japanese culture materialize as new obsessions when technology is thrown into the mix. Read more.

4:10pm Wednesday, 03/11/2009

Collaborative Play: Improving the World by Making Fun Stuff with Smart People

Location: Gold Room

Rose White (City University of New York - Graduate Center / NYC Resistor )

A "hacker space" and a "community center" sound like different places, but spaces organized in the last year, like NYC Resistor and HacDC, have merged the two. These are cross-disciplinary, self-organized, adult-education centers, mostly focused on technology, with heavy detours into related sciences and crafts, and they are alive with learning. You could build one in your city, too! Read more.

4:10pm Wednesday, 03/11/2009

Smart Energy and What Lies Ahead

Location: Empire Room

Rob Faludi (Digi International, NYU ITP, SVA IXD)

A few words about monitoring your power; followed by a few more in regard to Lord Kelvin, gadget-driven tasks, behavioral fantasies, paradigm breakers and trying to pass the grandma test. Read more.

9:40am Thursday, 03/12/2009

Tales from Technomadia

Location: Gold Room

Chris Dunphy (Technomadia), Cherie Ve Ard (Technomadia)

Why wait until retirement to explore the world? Two Gen-X geeks decided to give up their conventional homes almost three years ago to create a conscious merging of life, work, sustainable living, and adventure. They share their adventures, practical advice, and insights to living nomadically on the road while utilizing mobile technology to operate their lives and tech businesses. Read more.