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The Ultimate Hackaday Supercon 2018 Roundup

This year in Pasadena, California, I had the immense pleasure of attending my first Hackaday Superconference. It was equal parts inspiring, exciting, energizing, and utterly fantastic. If you haven’t been, then you must make it in 2019, because there is nothing else quite like it.

From the amazing speakers, to the melding of magnificent minds, there was no shortage of things to see and do during the event, which ran from November 2nd to the 4th. While I could easily fill a novel with all the things I saw and did, we’re going to distill this into a concentrated post. Join me as we take a journey through Supercon 2018!

Superconference 2018 Highlights

This year’s conference spanned across three different venues. We began in the Supplyframe HQ on Friday for talks, badge hacking, and the SMD soldering challenge. For Saturday and Sunday, Supercon took over the Supplyframe DesignLab and the Los Angeles College of Music (LACM) next door.

If you weren’t able to make it, I highly recommend you check out the talks, all of which are available in this handy playlist. Of course, all of this wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing work from the Supplyframe team and the 500+ hours our volunteers put in to help it all run as smoothly as it did.

Now, without further adieu, here are some highlights from the event!

We had multiple Tindarians at Supercon, including Sarah Petkus who did a captivating talk on her ongoing project, SHE BON.

In the space between the two venues, an epic Badgelife exhibit adorned the wall, complete with several badges from Tindarians:

Over at the DesignLab, Brian Benchoff also hosted a KISS Tindie Pad Printing demo:

As it turns out, this process is used to print text on all manner of things, including branded pens. After taking a pen from the Vatican, Brian recounted a series of unfortunate events, which led to this amazing quote:

“I learned three things: God exists, he’s catholic, and he uses comic sans.”

As the talks continued, the alley behind the DesignLab was filled with people hacking their badges and participating in the SMD challenge:

Let’s not forget the amazing Tindie meetup on Saturday either:

People wasted no time when it came to badge hacking. After all, there were cash prizes and Tindie gift certificates at stake for the winners of the contest.

Saturday night also played host to the Hackaday Prize 2018 award ceremony, where the trainable robotic arm Dexter took home the grand prize!

On Sunday night, the audience decided who would win the badge hacking awards. The badge hacks did not disappoint! We had everything from a 3D-printed enclosure, to amazing musical renditions, and even a rubber band gun powered by the badge!

When the sun went down, things got really intense. High voltage and explosions galore!

Once again, a huge thank you to all of the people who helped make this happen!

See you in 2019 for the next Hackaday Supercon!

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