LightningTalks

Overview

HacDC Lightning Talks sessions feature 12 speakers, each talking for 5 minutes. Topics can be anything of interest to the speaker. Speakers submit their ideas for approval, and 12 topics are chosen for a given session. Rejected topics may be resubmitted for any future session. To submit a talk topic proposal, please e-mail Katie a title and brief description (if not self explanatory).

Why would you want to do a lightning talk?

• To show off a project
• Let people know what you're into
• Get feedback on an idea
• Practice talking about a particular topic
• Practice public speaking in a nonthreatening way
• Find project contributors/volunteers/members

LOCATION:

• Normally held at: HacDC @ St. Stephen's Church
  • 1525 Newton St NW (corner of 16th St NW)
  • Look for a red door facing the parking lot. Take the green line metro to Columbia Heights.
  • google map

Upcoming Lightning Talks

Lightning Talks VII: November 9, 2013

The next round of HacDC Lightning Talks will take place at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 9, 2013, in the auditorium at Saint Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church.

Meetup event / Facebook event

Talks:

• The Slow Runway: Launching a Hardware Startup Without Outside Funding, by Rustom Meyer
• Memorizing phone numbers quickly and easily: Pegging, by Darius Roberts
• Bitcoin, by Darrell Duane
• Project Byzantium, by Ben Mendis
• something ham-radio-related, by Lee (tentative)
• Wine Tasting, by Celeste Lyn Paul
• Compiling functional programs into Arduino Due sketches using EmbeddedML, by Andrew Harris
• The state of the art in private submersibles, by Alec Smyth

Past Lightning Talks

Lightning Talks VI: November 3, 2012

The last round of HacDC Lightning Talks took place at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 3, 2012, in the auditorium at Saint Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church.

Video footage of these talks has been uploaded to YouTube. See below for links to individual talks within the video footage.

Meetup event / Facebook event

Talks:

• nature aquaria by Dave
• DC Community Access Network by Greg Bloom
• Deep Space Network by Katie
• Rapid Robot Prototyping with ROS by David Pietrocola
• next-generation robotic ocean sampler by Andrew
• van living by Shawn
• My First Patent by David

Lightning Talks V: June 9, 2012

The most recent HacDC Lightning Talks took place at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 9, 2012, in the dining room at Saint Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church. We invited folks from other DC/MD/VA-area hackerspaces—specifically, Baltimore Node, Harford Hackerspace, Unallocated Space, Southern Maryland Hackerspace, Nova Labs, 757 Labs, Apple Space, FredHack, hack.rva, North Street Labs, Roastella Labs, and Reverse Space—to come check out our space that afternoon and join our lightning talks.

Video footage of these talks has been uploaded to Youtube.

The lineup:

• Building a Software Sound Synthesizer in 5 Minutes, by Brock
• Language Learning in the Digital Age, by Todd Anderson
• Robotic Ocean Sampler, by Andrew Harris
  • Quantitation of persistent organic pollutants adsorbed on plastic debris from the Northern Pacific Gyre’s ‘‘eastern garbage patch’’, a paper from the Journal of Environmental Monitoring
  • the Algalita Marine Research Institute provides information on plastics in the oceans
  • Youtube video of Prototype Robotic Ocean Sampler test in the Chesapeake Bay
• Cycling the C&O Canal, by Nick B.
• Amateur Radio, by Lee Ciereszko
• The Day That Took SOPA Down, by Jeremy Pesner
• Open Source Hardware for CNC, by Alden Hart
• Are We Living in the Cyberpunk Dystopia?, by Todd Fine

HacDC Lightning Talks IV: June 19, 2010

Lightning Talks IV at DCWeek

These talks were presented as part of Digital Capital Week's Digital Garage mini-conference at the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church.

• Speakers:
  • Sysadmins: Have smartphone, will travel (Betsy Nichols and Andrei Tchijov) Media:HaveSmartphoneWillTravel.pdf
  • AI: Perceptions and Misconceptions (Bradford Barr) Media:Ai_perceptions_and_misconceptions.pdf
  • Writ Large: scaling a Cartesian robot (Dan Barlow) SVG
  • Fast Creativity: Using the DNA of Improvisational Comedy to Foster Ideas Fast (Shawn Westfall)
  • While you sleep: Making Art with your mind (and a little code) (Jack Whitsitt)
  • Intro to HacDC (Daniel Packer)
  • DIY cyborg implants (Jeremy Ruhland)

• For Digital Capital Week, HacDC Lightning Talks were held at:
  • Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church
  • 900 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington DC
  • google map

Digital Capital Week links:

• Digital Capital Week event website
• Digital Capital Week Digital Garage conference registration

HacDC Lightning Talks III: February 23, 2010

What an amazing Lightning Talks. The talks were well attended and the setup was better than ever with a great sound system setup and an actual camera crew. We had fantastic presentations spanning tech, science, art, music and even comedy.

• Speakers:
  • The Word Clock (Alden Hart)
  • Digital Capital Week (Peter Corbett)
  • Equipping and Empowering the Faithful (Rev. Fred Williams)
  • Machine self replication for fun and profit (R. Mark Adams, PhD)
  • Computer Graphics Ain't Basket Weaving (but Close!) (Jim Mallos)
  • The Strap-On SharkFin (Justin Shaw)
  • Should Libraries be Homes for Human Ingenuity? (Phil Shapiro)
  • Chicken (Benjamin Hartley)
  • The USB Scroll Wheel of DOOM! (Elliot Williams)
  • Creating a Kit is not Quick (Nikolas Coukouma)
  • Musical actors for performance in SuperCollider (James Harkins)
  • The Cure for Cancer: Medicine as Engineering (Darius Roberts)
  • BrainQuartz (Jack Whitsitt)

• Cancelled:
  • Low Power Design Techniques, system/board level (William Gibb)

HacDC Lightning Talks II: November 17, 2009

Lightning Talks II at St. Stephens

Top notch talks made this a night to remember and we managed to improve upon the first talks in several ways including more comfortable seating arrangements, video recording (will be posted here eventually), and smoother transitions between speakers with mini Q&A sessions. The cookies were tasty (if I must say so myself), and about a dozen attendees enjoyed drinks and mingling after the talks at a nearby pub.

• Speakers:
  • The future of space-based lidar (Brian)
  • Rapid Open Source Hardware Prototyping (Riley)
  • Intro to DSP (Omer)
  • sudo make me a website (Daniel)
  • Best food near HacDC (Timball)
  • Taking high-res photos with cheap point-and-shoots (Jim)
  • Simple devices, complex sounds (Elliot)
  • Developing Firefox Extensions (looking at Greasemonkey as an example) (Nikolas)
  • XMPP - It's more than just IM (Arc)
  • Eating Tag Soup (Kevin)
  • "Pwn" your neighbor: Enhanced WEP/WPA brute force cracking using GPU hardware acceleration (Andy)
    • Reference material: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
  • Five Foods to Try in Japan (User:Katie)
  • Bonus talk: Dis-assembly of windows notepad using IDA Free (Jason)
    • IDA Free
    • Immunity - an alternative to IDA Free suggested by Riley

HacDC Lightning Talks I: October 1st, 2009

The first Lightning Talks at St. Stephens in the old HacDC space

We packed the house with smiling hackers at the first monthly HacDC Lightning Talks! The talks were awesome and so were the cookies! Thanks to everyone who participated and made this a success. Next month will be even better organized with more space, better arrangement, more advance scheduling, and video recording.

• Speakers:
  • Unearthing an 8-bit Dungeon (Jason)
  • Kōdō, the Japanese Way of Incense (Katie)
  • Cross-Platform Multiple Compiler Build System (Eryc)
  • The Solenoid Beat: towards a mechanical drum machine w/ MIDI controller (Michael)
  • I CAN HAZ LOLSPEAK?: Examining LOLspeak through linguistics. (Ederlyn)
  • After the End of the World: Lessons We Can Learn from the Black Death (Benjamin)
  • A few minutes about cache coherency (Andrew)
  • Miniaturizing your projects - Techniques for using tiny little QFN surface mount components at home (Alden)
  • The Last Gasp of the Time Capsule (Luke)
  • Building a Sailboat in Five Days (Andrew J)
  • The Evolution of Death (Daniel)

• Cancelled/Postponed:
  • Daimoku (Rodney
  • Remembrancer (Alberto)
  • Using PGP web of trust to authenticate users??? (Derek)
  • A 5 Minute Discourse On The Exploration Of Mercury And The MESSENGER Flyby Discoveries (Indy)

Other Hackerspace Lightning Talks

* Noisebridge Five Minutes of Fame (old site)
* Lightning Talks at MetaLab, Vienna (2008-11-15)
* Lightning Talks at Interlock Rochester (2010-01-12)