Pecha Kucha night in Amsterdam

Never a dull moment (well … almost never …)

Barry Wels presenting at the 11th Pecha Kucha night in Amsterdam

Wednesday a Toool delegation went to the 11th Pecha Kucha night in Amsterdam. For those who do not know pecha kucha: it a series of small presentations. Each presentation contains of twenty slides and each slide will be shown for exactly twenty seconds. And I can tell you: twenty seconds is fast when you are on stage. I also did a presentation and it went ok, although I must admit it was not my best performance ever.

After the presentation we put up a lockpick table and did a hands on session. From the three hundred attendees quite a large number learned to pick locks that evening. Worth mentioning is that the evening was organized in a former bank building. Guess who we found drooling over the huge safe (containing Lips four wheel combination locks)?

The last slide of my presentation was about an idea we have for quite some time now. We are looking for a ‘mechanical hacker space’ (or a Toool playground, hardware shop etc). A room to have our toool meetings but also a permanent workshop and possibly even training room.Currently we are exploring all sorts of relatively low costs rooms (like a 40m2 and 90m2 room at the Volkskrant building). After the presentation someone came to us and gave some more leads to cheap places were creative people come together. Lets see if this place ever becomes more then just an idea. If you have a nice space for rent we are interested to hear about it …

5 Responses to “Pecha Kucha night in Amsterdam”

  1. mh says:

    Nice idea for recruiting and networking.

    About the safe: Is “tissue material” a translation of Kuchenblech?
    Also I really wonder why they mount the alarm sensors on the outside, like in that Antwerp diamond vault…

    Cheers
    mh

  2. Paul says:

    That door is almost certainly the ’emergency door’. There would be an even bigger one somewhere else !

  3. NKT says:

    I’d suggest that the alarm sensor you see there is the trembler/vibration sensor. If you touch the safe, you’ll set it off anyway, so why hide it? You *want* idiot attackers to hit it with a hammer!

  4. mh says:

    I think the sensor on the left side is a seismic detector and the sensor on the top right hand side is a magnet / reed switch type, just like the one mentioned here: http://blackbag.toool.nl/?p=346
    I’m quite sure that (sophisticated) attacks against both can be carried out without triggering them, if they are exposed like this; esp. if the wiring is accessible like this.

  5. Schuyler says:

    So funny,

    I have attended several Pecha Kucha nights here in Boston, and they are also held in a converted bank. It’s a bar now, but you walk right the old vault on the way to the bathroom!