The H.O.P.E. conference offers 2600 a chance to bring the global hacker community together. Steve Rambam, a security specialist who was arrested by the F.B.I. before his talk at the 2006 conference, told me that he comes back because he feels like he is speaking to the vanguard of computer culture. “These kids are trendsetters,” he said. Johannes Grenzfurthner, an Austrian artist and hacker, told me before the talk that the hacking community has changed drastically in the past ten years, becoming more mainstream. One of the greatest shifts, he said, is the growing acceptance of women at conferences like H.O.P.E., despite the fact that the hacker community is still male dominated.
