Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Topic: Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread (Read 38030 times) previous topic - next topic

Re: Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #45 – March 30, 2014, 11:34:15 am

I'm here, so is Aaron from Oomlout. Shoot me an email, I live just across the street.

Re: Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #46 – March 30, 2014, 02:25:15 pm

Tip for anyone staying at City Inn: don't depend on Wifi working. I asked about Wifi when I checked in, and the lady made a call and said they will try to get it working tomorrow. There's working Ethernet in the room, and luckily I carry a WR703N travel router.

Update: a woman came by my room later offering me a router, so it looks like they have some on hand as needed.

Re: Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #47 – March 31, 2014, 11:34:21 am

I picked up a SIM at the Unicom shop on Ian's map closest to the hacker camp. I was helped by a girl who spoke english well. I asked for one of the 3G packages in the "A" group shown in Ian's photo, but she recommended the 4G plans instead as they seemed to be a better value but required a more expensive SIM up front. I told her I was only here for two weeks, and she said that both the 4G and 3G lists had to be used for a minimum of 6 months. She instead found me a 3G SIM that for 80 RMB gives 300 MB data/month. This was cheaper than the 300MB plan I was going to select, so I was happy. I'm not sure on the phone/text rates, but it will probably be fine for my short visit.

Picture of the package in case you want to ask for it specifically.
[attachment=0]

If you'd rather get another plan like the 4G, you might want to avoid saying you're here for a short visit.

Re: Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #48 – March 31, 2014, 02:12:26 pm

[quote author="EmbeddedCreations"]Tip for anyone staying at City Inn: don't depend on Wifi working. I asked about Wifi when I checked in, and the lady made a call and said they will try to get it working tomorrow. There's working Ethernet in the room, and luckily I carry a WR703N travel router.

Update: a woman came by my room later offering me a router, so it looks like they have some on hand as needed.[/quote]

Awesome tip, thanks, just packed the airport express.

Re: Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #49 – April 01, 2014, 02:32:41 am

Hi all,

Ben from San Francisco here... I do a lot of different contract enginnering work, mostly turning ideas into products, and I also built a web site that stores reusable electronic design snippets and can automatically assemble them into working circuit designs: http://http://dangerousprototypes.com/2013/03/14/hackeda-build-your-own-custom-circuit-board/.

I've been staying with my Chinese friend (who is also an awesome sourcing agent, let me know and I'll put you in touch) the last few days, and just got to my room at the Jie' En Mid-Century apts yesterday. I'm planning on doing some exploring today, if anyone else is in the area and wants to join, let me know. I'm in room 208.

Mobile: +86 1353025195[the number after 5]
Skype: nosliwne[the letter after 'a']
gchat/gmail: (same as skype)
QQ: 277180184[the number after 8]
WeChat said it was incompatible with my device :(

Re: Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #50 – April 04, 2014, 10:43:31 am

Hi,
I will arrive in ShenZhen tomorrow evening with the purpose of attending the Maker Faire and having a look at the markets.
I am Danish, but currently living in Beijing. I hope I might have a change to meet with some of you in ShenZhen.

Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #51 – April 06, 2014, 06:47:25 am

[quote author="jfa"]Hi,
I will arrive in ShenZhen tomorrow evening with the purpose of attending the Maker Faire and having a look at the markets.
I am Danish, but currently living in Beijing. I hope I might have a change to meet with some of you in ShenZhen.[/quote]

Reply with your wechat and I'll add you to the group chat.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #52 – April 06, 2014, 06:47:48 am

Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #53 – April 06, 2014, 06:58:23 am

Quick post mortem thoughts on he train I'll edit as I think of more.

1. This was a bunch of fun and excellent value for money. Things went well from my point of view, I hope that was the case for others.

2. It was so so so helpful having local knowledge of good places to eat. I've travelled a lot, food in a strange place is hard, especially for a quick trip. The fear of getting Ill makes these decisions hard. I really, really appreciate this aspect, it was done really well - the restaurants were all great as were the prices.

3. The soldering school stuff was awesome.

4. The market intro, language stuff and market tour was all excellent. Would be good to add basic colours to the language intro and perhaps bigger/smaller.

5. Internet in china is hard, people need a killer data plan. I've burnt though 2.5G of data on 3g in 5 days, no video about 1hr of skype..... The hotel internet has never worked for me (can ping gw but no dns responses from it). I've been looking up a lot of data sheets and stuff and generally staying in touch with home.

6. I think it would be good to include name cards for participants as well as pcbs. Get people to submit a design with a wechat login and include it on the card. They would be useful for both other participants and buying. Give people a template with enough chinese that stall vendors can find us later (eg. to email data sheets - yes, they will do this for you).

7. Perhaps it would be good to rent an office for the duration of the trip as a base for people. Perhaps something big enough to use as the presentation space but generally something for people to use as a base. The presentation space was fancy and no doubt expensive, something more ghetto would probably be fine. Not sure how to deal with the lock thing, perhaps a pinpad. Throw in some decent internet and a fridge of beer to make it awesome.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Re: Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #54 – April 06, 2014, 07:45:26 am

Haha Tom I totally agree with you, these days were AWESOME and I'm very happy that I will stay here longer.
About the data plan, I think of it as a way to disconnect from my "other" world and to fully enjoy the moments I was living without being distracted from the Internet. With some light browsing and messaging, I ate just 170mb of my cheap ass 300mb data plan. A big part of the merit for this goes to the CRAPPY chinese internet, I got so frustrated every time I had to load a page that I said "fuck it, do I REALLY need that??" and closed the phone! :)

Re: Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #55 – April 08, 2014, 02:25:40 am

yes I agree, totally awesome - thanks Ian, Jin and everyone else.

(the hotel net was screwed because there were 2 rogue servers running on it - for next time the router/DNS you want is 10.88.88.1 - if they gave you a wifi router make sure it's plugged in the right way around ....)

Suggestions for the next one you run:
- a link to the course mini-web site from the DangerousPrototypes front page
- a scheduled day off in the middle to go shopping
- PCB exchange (for those who want to - we should have just done it)

Paul

Re: Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #56 – April 08, 2014, 04:59:22 am

Thanks everyone for coming!!! We had such a great time putting this together and meeting everyone! I defo want to do it again, though it will be much more compact and a few months until we can get to it.

In the future I'd like to limit talks to one morning, 2 hours, 15 minutes each (8 talks). It was too grueling to keep everything up for three days. I'l sending everyone a survey now to help figure out what to keep and what to cut.

Videos of everything will go in the coming weeks as we have time to edit stuff together.

Thanks again for coming, great to meet you all!

Re: Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #57 – April 11, 2014, 06:00:19 pm

I had an amazing time; huge props to Ian and Jinhe on putting on (and pulling off!) the event. It was an invaluable experience, made all the more mind-blowing by the calibre of the attendees. So many great, passionate minds in one place.

All the improvement suggestions made so far I agree with. Break in the middle++. Everyone was just itching to get into the markets!
Having a home-base office would allow for hosting a networking event, which I think would've filled in the professional end of the event nicely. I'd say start the ball rolling for the networking event with everyone getting up and doing a 2-minute lightening talk on what they do/their project, and then let people just mingle. While the dinners and parties were awesome, there were so many people I realize now that I really didn't get an opportunity to talk to or learn about.

You should also point out to future attendees that they should try to stay for at least a few extra days after the event in order to cover the markets. I'm very thankful that I did this, and would've been so disappointed if I hadn't!

Oh, and don't forget to send out the hot air temps & flow rates that the instructor was using. :)

Thanks again Ian, Jinhe, and Akiba, you guys successfully pulled off THE best event I've ever attended.

Re: Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #58 – April 30, 2014, 01:57:58 pm

Hi all

looks like that the hacker camp went off with a bang.

I wanted to go but I only learn of the trip after I arrived back from my snowboarding in Japan (with a broken arm, which required 9 pins and plate inserted into my soldering arm)

Anyhoo I would be interested (in the early planing stages) of a trip to HK for Halloween (I went back in 2007 and it was a bloody hoot) so I would be thinking of flying to HK or Shenzhen from Sydney (it depends on what is cheaper and easy for visas) and having a Geek tour (shopping, tours, classes etc) and if there was a possibility of a soldering workshop (I am not sure if they would do it for a single person or as a group or that was a once off) and have my weekend partying on in HK

I like to seek advice on if such a trip can be arranged (if someone has the contacts or can act as a go-between) or any other advice (as I said this trip is in the VERY early stages and is open to ideas)

Re: Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 2014 Participants thread

Reply #59 – April 30, 2014, 02:04:27 pm

We're going to try to do 2 more this year, averaging once per quarter. Not sure when else yet, after maker fair bay area. That's June or July, but that's a pretty terrible time to be in SZ if you're not used to the heat. October is good, but starting to get really cold.