The inaugural Hacked: Festival has launched its calls for participation, with the first round of early bird passes currently for sale. The inaugural event will take place August 11 – 14 at the historic Yaletown Roundhouse.
Hacked is an experimental festival celebrating “disruptive innovation, exploration and art” taking place in Vancouver this summer. It will feature hacker led programming with talks, music, games, hands-on workshops, exhibits and market, popup hackspace, parties, films and artistic installations. “We are new and we are going to change what everyone expects from a tech event,” read the event’s website.
“Hacked Festival celebrates the ideas, practices and products that are changing and pushing the world forward and improving our lives,” said producer Anne-Marie Enns. “It’s built on the hacker ethics of sharing and openness. The programming is focused on liberating technologies that can be pillars for innovation and creativity. Our audience wants to make important things, and we want them to have the experience of a lifetime doing it.”
Just a week after the Hacked: Festival concludes, the annual GROW Conference is set to take place, a two hour drive north in Whistler. GROW will happen August 20-22.
The Call for Abstracts to either become a speaker or a workshop instructor is now open and submissions for content can be sent. Hacked: Festival will feature a “tech crawl” of Vancouver and its surrounding area to show off Vancouver’s most “innovative and disruptive” companies. It will take place in the morning on Monday, August 11.
Meanwhile, an open call for exhibitors is expected before June 1st, 2014.
Here’s some of the cool stuff event goers can expect from the festival:
The conference: “Our producers have worked on many award winning events and they are working on some exemplary stage and interaction design concepts for these presentations. Our talks are highly immersive and engaging interactions that will breed conversations in the theatre between the audience and speakers with hands-on tools.”
Exhibits + Market: “An interactive collection of some of the most intriguing prototypes, crowd-funded game-changers, startups and products that deliver a next gen experience from around the world. Try on the latest augmented reality goggles, pilot a unique drone prototype, create impossible structures with the newest 3D printing technology, and hack your brain with the latest EEG devices.”
Workshops + Hackspaces: “Use the latest hardware to hack together something new with industry leaders and festival participants. Build a robot, 3D print a tabletop game, design a new wearable prototype. Work alongside the very best in these professionally guided hacking workshops, covering a wide selection of topics.”
Arcade: “Try out virtual and augmented reality games, compete in a laser tag competition with custom 3D printed gear, and hack your own games on upcoming hardware.”
Films: “On our second night we’re hosting a movie night with some highly creative shorts (and short films).”
SIlent Disco: “Our opening party is a silent disco which also features an art installation launch.”
Popup Hackspaces: “With so many hackers in one city it’s a great opportunity to get together and make. We are helping to facilitate and promote popup hackspaces.”