July 2016, October 2016, July 2017
LineCon
San Francisco has so many good lines. As connoisseurs of San Francisco's hidden treasures, we curated a day of waiting in SF's best lines (Tartine, Cable Car, Bi-Rite Ice Cream, etc.) paired with speakers on topics like: Lines of Poetry, Assembly Lines, Dashes, Qeueing Theory, Professional Line Waiting, and more! Talks take place in the line. Many people joined us along the way. I created this conference with Noah Swartz — and we've done three events in New York and San Francisco — with over 30 talks on line-related topics. We hoped to change people's perspectives on lines, while providing great content and conversations.
Some talks included:
John Earle: Around the Bloc: Waiting in Lines in the Soviet Union
Max Goodman: A Brief History of America Online
Kate Miltenberger: An exploration of the joke sub-genre “one-liners”
Lady Red: Mother Nature Queues Best - Examples of waiting behavior in the animal kingdom
Britta Gustafson: How To Read the Telephone Lines
Kona Lai: Dashes, Hyphens, and Other Typographical Lines
Edmund Zagorin: Supply Lines: What is the Bullwhip Effect? A talk based on the game telephone
Q&A with Taskrabbit's Serena P., a professional line waiter
Torrie Fischer: Lines in Non-Euclidian Geometry - How do they even?
Andy Issacson: Queueing Theory 101
Artie Moffa: Your Heartbeat is a Line of Poetry—A quick primer on iambic pentameter
January 2017, April 2017
Domain Swap
This is like a clothing swap, but for your websites. I organized an event where people brought a list of old domains they keep renewing, domains that no longer fit, domains they've outgrown, domains they've had parked for years and haven't used. The idea is to give them away to friends, trade for better domains, and pick up some hot, new URLs. Domains were listed on a ticker and people ICANN transfers among themselves. I hosted this in San Francisco and again in Portland with Aaron Parecki and the Indie Web community.
November 2017
Camping at Dreamforce
Since Salesforce spends a lot of time and money creating a fake National Park, I set up my tent at Salesforce's epic Dreamforce, in the main expo hall near a waterfall. I stayed inside it for a full 45 minutes until somebody noticed that it didn't belong there. It was pleasant inside the tent — great views of the conference.
I also listed the tent on AirBnB, but I was asked to collapse it before anyone was able to rent it out.
October 2017
Oracles at Oracle OpenWorld
I organized an alternate Oracle OpenWorld to take place at the same location and time as Oracle, the software company's conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. A group of 12 friends dressed as oracles, soothsayers, and wizards, wandered around the expo hall as though we weren't aware that we weren't at the correct conference. We had our own swag, lanyards, and floor plans (of a map of Delphi) for our own Oracle OpenWorld expo. We stayed the entire day and did tarot readings, seances, and other divinatory advice-giving with real conference goers. Many attendees opened up to us at an otherwise dry and impersonal event.
2017
Drone Dating on Tinder
I made a Tinder account for my drone, and after receiving tons of matches in the Bay Area I set up a speaking system, with a microphone, bluetooth speaker, headset, and baby monitor, so my drone can go on real dates in San Francisco.
2016, 2017
Attending Your Party as The Third Party
I found public Facebook events in my area, that seemed like they were accidentally made public: holiday parties, goodbye gatherings, backyard BBQs, and birthdays. Then I organized a group of people to go to the party without knowing anyone there. We interacted with guests without revealing that we crashed the party and rehearsed a song to break out into to reveal ourselves right before we left. I originally organized this with Michael Morgenstern, inspired by Max Hawkins' random event finding tool — I do this with small groups or solo as a way to experience what it would be like to be inside other friend groups I would never otherwise intersect.
Coming in 2018
Hold Music Awards
In collaboration with Edmund Zagorin and Albert Alexander, we created an organization and an event dedicated to celebrating popular hold music. With phone-based voting, live performances, and a panel discussion, the award ceremony is delightful and entertaining experience. We're running the Hold Music Awards at a sales conference near you in 2018.
October 2016, October 2017
Journey to the End of The Night
I designed checkpoints for the outdoor "zombie" chase game in San Francisco. For the election themed race, each checkpoint was supposed to represent a lobby the runners were trying to appeal to in order to get their vote. My location was The Fisherman's Wharf, where I ran The Pirate Bay — a group of pirates who also love to torrent.
Runners were asked to complete a file transfer fishing game with two pools of floppy disks (one for seeders and one for leachers) and a magnetic fishing rod. After completing the transfer, runners sang the pirates oath and received their stamp.