Date: Tue, 22 Sep 92 01:41 CDT
From:
[email protected](dFx International Digest)
Subject: File 2--The Background on HoJo's/Xmascon
From--Kenneth Wood
Date--September 15, 1992
Some of you may have read about this year's HoHoCon conference in CuD
4.40. Some of you may also know that since the announcement ran in
that issue, conference details have changed under somewhat
"mysterious" circumstances. Unfortunately, not everyone knows of these
changes and they've yet to be presented in the public forum. There
seems to be a lot of people, including myself, who are eager to
receive the new conference details as well as an explanation of why
things changed so suddenly.
After talking with a few of the conference organizers and realizing
how busy they were, I asked if they needed any help and they mentioned
possibly writing something up to tell everyone what's going on and
shooting it over to CuD. Rather than have me try to remember what they
told me and put it in my own words, we agreed on transcribing a brief
phone interview.
(KW = Me)
(DF = Drunkfux)
KW: What exactly is HoHoCon?
DF: It's our big yearly anarchistic get-together where we worship the
'SpamGod' and slaughter cows in his honor. Oh, and we trade codes
too. Most of all, it's really el8. Spell that with an 8 please.
KW: Seriously now.
DF: Oh, all right. I honestly don't know really. The best way to describe
it is probably what it says in the announcement. Basically, it's a
three day gathering of people associated with what is commonly
referred to as the computer underground, the majority of which are
just people who are currently active in the "scene", whether they be
actual hackers or crackers (choose your preferred definition),
journalists, security professionals, or those who are just plain
interested.
KW: Does the conference actually last three days?
DF: Oh, no. The conference itself is held on Saturday. The rest of the
time, everyone does their own thing, although that generally is the
same thing. This is one of the few times each year when all us
compu-nerds can actually see each other face to face and sit around
and laugh at one another. Usually, the attendees break off into
groups and within time, there's a few dozen things happening at
once. Like last year, every few feet there was something different
going on. Sort of the Lollapalooza of hacking.
KW: What happens at the conference on Saturday?
DF: Everyone piles into the conference room, we say a few introductory
words, get things settled and proceed to let the speakers take over.
A general outline would be: introduction, speaker speaks then
answers questions from the audience, speaker shows any materials
he/she may have brought with him/her, including videos and the such,
speaker ends his speech, people clap, other people wake up, next
speaker gets on the mic and rocks the house. At both the beginning
and ending of the conference, journalist/editor type people pass out
reading materials and budding entrepreneurs sell everything from
t-shirts to back issues of magazines to sushi on a stick.
KW: What about Friday and Sunday? Do you have anything planned for then?
DF: Nope, not at all. That's the beauty of it. You really have to attend
one of these things to understand it. It's totally free form,
everyone does whatever they want to. It's not like your typical
stuffy, big room, security suit fest. All you have to do is be
yourself, unless you really feel like kissing someone's "booty".
KW: Does much happen during the non-conference times, like on Friday and
Sunday?
DF: Definitely. In fact, that's when people seem to have the most fun.
The conference is cool and all, no doubt, but it's more of a learning
and listening experience. You kinda have to sit there for a while.
Again, like I said before, everyone does their own thing. Some folks
sit around and talk about whatever or watch videos, others venture
off and "explore" the city and its establishments, some do actual
computing, and some try to do it all.
KW: Sounds good. Let's move on to the details of what happened with the
hotel this year. Can you tell us exactly what's been going on?
DF: No, because I don't know it all myself. I'll do my best to briefly
tell what I know. Here's the just of it -
We had been planning the conference for a while before we had even
found a hotel, which is always the hardest part. After deciding on
dates and the such, we proceeded to hunt down a conference site.
Howard Johnson's was definitely NOT our first choice. The name alone
was a turn off and we didn't know how people would take to it, but
they seemed nice and were semi-helpful as far as room pricing and
organizing went. Because not all of us have a lot of free time to fly
around and inspect hotels, we agreed to go with HoJo's mainly due to
the fact that almost every other hotel in town was booked conference
wise for that weekend. They agreed to take the conference in over
the phone and roughly 3 weeks later, a few of the conference
planners went to the hotel and were given the "grand tour" by a lady
named Shirley, who is believed to be the sales director. She showed
everyone the whole hotel, including the restaurant, bar, conference
room, pool, and the building which housed the rooms where, in her
own words, "we would be staying." Everyone agrees that she obviously
had the intention that we would be staying there. She had already
picked which building we would be in, as well as which conference
room. She also said things like, "this is where you'll be staying,"
"this is where we're gonna put you for your conference," etc.
After the tour, she brought everyone into her office and in the
people's opinion that were there, proceeded to ask some
semi-personal questions that seemed fairly unnecessary. Whether she
was being nosy or just trying to make conversation, it's not known.
Anyway, after all this chit-chat, she got back to discussing the
conference details and this is where she said things like "ok,
you'll have the conference room on Saturday from 10am until 5pm.",
and "I have you down for the one building that holds 40 rooms for
now, and if we need more later, it won't be a problem." She also
quoted room and tax rates, restaurant hours, reservation information
which included pointing out the 800 number that "you can start
giving to your people so they can make reservations", check in/out
times, and other assorted items. The last thing she said was
something close to "Well, everything is fine, I'll go ahead and
write you in here for December 18th through the 20th and we'll plan
on seeing you then." She also handed over a large stack of hotel
brochures to be distributed with advertisements for the conference.
Now, you tell me, doesn't it sound like agreed and confirmed that we
would be staying there?
KW: That's exactly what it sounds like to me.
DF: We thought so too. Everyone breathed a big sigh of relief knowing
that everything with the hotel was finally out of the way and we
could move on to the actual conference planning and advertising, as
in letting people know what the deal was. A number of people wrote
up announcements regarding the con as well as called around to let
people know the details. I put up the money to have one version of
the announcement printed out and duplicated a very large number of
times, and it was then bulk mailed out to people on a certain
collective mailing list. Oh, I mean snail mail too, not e-mail.
Chris Goggans also printed and mailed announcements, to a great
number of people. That same announcement was published in CuD and
also, somehow or other, appeared in comp.dcom.telecom. Needless to
say, by now, a lot of people knew about the conference and started
making plans to attend, which included making hotel reservations and
purchasing plane tickets.
KW: Wait. Did the hotel accept reservations for HoHoCon?
DF: Yep. More than 15 of them. Quoted them the room rate and the whole
deal and kept all their names together. One guy I spoke with
recently told me that he actually sent money to the hotel to
guarantee a room.
KW: Hell, it sounds like they must have been planning on having the
conference there. Did the guy get his money back?
DF: I don't know. He told me he had called the hotel and they said they
would send him back his money. Whether or not they did, I'm not
sure.
KW: What happened next?
DF: Well, I had ventured off to the west coast with my band for a few
weeks and upon returning, I received some beautiful news from Howard
Johnson's. It appears that there is a certain someone out there that
owns a Howard Johnson's up "north" we'll say. That someone also
happens to read CuD (or ordered an LoD t-shirt). After seeing the
announcement, he took it upon himself to fax it to the HoJo's down
here as well as call them and tell some sort of warped tale of how
everyone associated with the "computer underground" were nothing more
than raving, chaotic, unintelligent code maniacs who only lived to
destroy hotels. Unfortunately, the people down here believed this and
with the added factor of seeing "Cult Of The Dead Cow" as a
conference presenter, decided to breach their oral contract and
inform us that we could not stay at their hotel.
KW: Just like that?
DF: You got it.
KW: Do you know who the person was that faxed them the announcement?
DF: Yes, for the most part.
KW: Can I ask who it was?
DF: No. Not yet at least.
KW: How did you find out who it was?
DF: Let's just say some people don't cover their tracks too well. The
HoJo's employees down here are no wizards at keeping private things
private either. I found that out when they started giving our
studio's office number out to people who were trying to make HoHoCon
reservations after they decided to pull the plug.
KW: That's unbelievable. Those people really don't have their act
together, do they? Did you tell them to stop?
DF: We tried. After receiving about eight calls from different people all
telling us they got our name and number from HoJo's, I called them up
to politely ask them to stop and got nowhere. The lady I spoke with
was just some idiotic uneducated receptionist who kept telling me,
"Nobody's here, I don't know what to do! Can you call back?" So, the
next day, our attorney called and tried to explain the situation in a
very legal manner. The receptionist obviously freaked out and
transferred the call over to a lady named Gloria, who we thought must
have been the manager on duty or something close. Why else would they
transfer the call to her? Anyway.. Gloria was nothing less than a
unprofessional rude joke. After our attorney started explaining the
situation and asking that something be done to insure it didn't
continue to happen, she just started spewing out senseless sentences
that all basically said the same thing - I'm old and stupid and don't
want to take responsibility for any of this, call back tomorrow and
talk to someone else. We were recording the conversation and our
attorney told her and proceeded to try to say things for the record
and Gloria, who must have been smarter than she sounded, would
constantly say things really loud making it near impossible to get
things he needed to on tape. He would ask her to stay quiet for 5
seconds so he could ask us questions, and she'd say ok, and two
seconds later start belching out, "You'll have to call back tomorrow
and talk with somebody else besides me." It was kinda funny because
it really pissed off the attorney. So much so that I doubt he'll
forget about it for a long time.
KW: Did they stop giving out your information?
DF: Yeah, it looks that way. But now they tell people the conference has
been canceled, which is nothing more than a lie.
KW: Has anything else happened with the hotel?
DF: Yeah, but too much to get into and nothing extremely important to
anybody else. At this point, we're just trying to get everything
worked out with the new location.
KW: Which is?
DF: Well, I can't say as of yet because we haven't received the written
confirmation. As soon as we do, we'll release all the new
information.
KW: So the conference hasn't been cancelled?
DF: Definitely not. It'll be happening in Houston on December 18th
through the 20th no matter what. Even if we have to hold it at the
Squeaky Springs motel, it'll happen.
KW: Will the new hotel be near the old one?
DF: If we go with the one we're counting on, then no. Here's where some
of the changes come up. Some good, most bad.
First, one of the good things, if we get this hotel, it'll be a hell
of a lot nicer than HoBlo's. It is not located next to an airport,
but there is shuttle transportation to and from both airports, which
is good in case people have to fly in to Intercontinental.
Unfortunately, the shuttle isn't free, but we're trying to get
something worked out. The room rates are also going to be a bit
higher, around $49.
KW: Is everything going ok with the planning?
DF: I guess so. It's just been a bitch and a half to find a new hotel and
get all the details worked out. Plus, one of the main problems now is
the money thing. One of the downfalls for us is the fact that the
conference room rental at the new hotel is quite a bit more than it
was at BloJo's and I'm the one who gets to prepay it. So, we've been
discussing asking for small monetary contributions, like under five
bucks, at the conference door. But that's not something I really want
to do. We'll have to see what happens. That's not the only cost
related to this whole deal either, far from it. Last year, between
Judge Dredd of NIA and myself, we managed to rack up some nice phone
and postage bills getting the information out to people, which
included faxing the announcement out to the media and mailing hotel
brochures to those who asked for them.
The other problem is keeping in touch with people. The address that
people have been corresponding with -
[email protected] - the one
that appeared in the announcements may not make it past September 30
because the site is fixing to start charging at a rate that would
make it quite hard to afford with the amount of time we have to spend
online. Hopefully, at the worst, we can get the admins to keep the
account active with a mail forward and not have to shell out mongo
dollars to do so. One of the things we could use now is a new account
somewhere else where we don't have to worry about how long we take to
reply to someone's mail when they're asking for information. I guess
the account would have to be in Houston also. I'm sure we'll figure
out a way to get the announcements and updates out to people even if
something doesn't turn up.
Luckily, we do have a slug-mail address that people can write to -
Fennec Information Systems
Attn: HoHoCon/dFx
11504 Hughes Road
Suite 131
Houston, Texas
77089
The only other thing I can think of that we would need as far as
communications go, is some fresh virgin codes. Just kidding. We could
use a vmb of some sort, and not one that was hacked out and will die
2 weeks down the line. Something that will stay up until the
conference happens so that people can just call and get all the
updated information. It's a long shot, but if someone is willing to
donate one, we're willing to accept one.
KW: Do you have anything lined up for the conference yet?
DF: You mean along the lines of speakers?
KW: Speakers or activities. Whatever you have planned.
DF: Yeah, we've got a few speakers lined up so far. We'll announce them a
little later on when they give a definite attendance confirmation. As
far as activities go, I don't really know of anything yet but I'm
sure there'll be some video viewing happening at some point.
KW: Are you expecting a lot of people to show up?
DF: At first, I didn't really know what to expect. I honestly didn't
think as many people were going to show as last year, just because so
many of them did. That was a total surprise. But after the response
we've received, it looks as if there'll be even more this year. I
think the word getting out early and the stories still lingering from
last year as well as the support from people like CuD has helped a
great deal.
KW: I can't think of too much more. Is there anything else you think
people should know or that you wanted to say?
DF: Not really. This is dragging on a bit anyway. Boycott Howard
Johnson's as well as it's manager, James Marx, and owner, Henry Woo.
The conference is still happening, December 18, 19, and 20. See CuD
4.40 for details, excluding location. Come to the conference,
everyone's gonna be there. It'll be swell. Eat spam. Code it up. Call
d.r.u. Don't count your chips before they're all cashed in. Traxster
for president. Donate to the cause. Eighteen on the fairway and when
the dog is gone, the cat will play. Monday, Tuesday, Happy Days...
KW: Ok, ok. I think that's enough.
DF: Use the force jedi master. Yeah Ocean. New lime flavor...
KW: Alright, end of discussion. I'm hanging up now.
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