2016 Schedule
Developer
ARG's FTW > < ( ( ( ° >
What the what? Is that a fish in the talk title? Yes. Technically a bass, but we'll get to that in due course.
Alternate Reality Games, as popularized by Nine Inch Nails, Microsoft and others in the real world and Ernest Cline in the amazing novel Ready Player One in the fictional world, are a thing.
What are they? Why do they exist? And most importantly how do you win at them? In Ready Player One billions of dollars are at stake, clans formed, competition was fierce, riddles were solved and a prize awarded.
Much the same happened this year in a promotional stunt involving Google, except the prizes in total were closer to $100,000.
One Denver Software Engineer picked up a fake business card in California and became engrossed in a game that brought him through time and space. Through ridiculous and awesome Zork, Back To The Future and Jurassic Park jokes. Past binary, Base64, waveform and all other matter of riddles. Did he emerge victorious? (spoiler alert: yes) What did he learn? How did different real-world clans work together before and after victory? And who designed the game and for what purpose? Was it a success from their stand point?
All this and more will be covered during this funny, informative and technical talk that can be grok'd by people who don't even know what to grok something means.
The intrepid fish hunter, who caught a time traveling, hacker bass during the 2016 firebase.foo challenge will reveal all the secrets. And maybe even tell you about the time he won a year's worth of free beer, or a novelty five figure check in other technical competitions.
He has previously spoken at every Denver Startup Week, is a local tech community organizer, speaks at national conferences around America, and has given a keynote in Paris and a seminar in Hong Kong. Yet, he'd rather be in dark room hacking for spoils than speaking in front of a group. Public speaking still makes him nervous.
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