Having given the last talk at So Coded 2013, I was delighted to be asked to come and MC the 2015 edition of the conference. The last time I MC'ed at an event, I found that briefly interviewing speakers before their slot led to a lot of randomness and, in one case, introducing the wrong speaker. So I decided to try and introduce a very loose narrative, based on a picaresque journey that represented the conference’s thematic arc, but with lots of my favourite pop culture references. Many thanks to Julia, Ole and Thorben for having me back.
I’ve added notes in italics just in case any of the (obvious, but obviously obvious to me) references aren’t clear. Much of the sense of these little bits are with apologies to Jennifer Brook and her time machine from Úll
This one is very clearly The Hobbit, subscribing to the "Why didn’t they just use the Eagles in the first place?" question. "German Wings" sets the scene for the final pun nicely.
A conference is a journey, and we’re all going on it together. Going on a journey together. The journey starts in a church, in Hamburg. You are sat, facing forward, surrounded by exciting, interesting and enthusiastic fellow adventurers.
The anticipation in the room is palpable. Suddenly the lights in the room fade. You look around, and your fellow adventurers have disappeared. "Where have they gone, you wonder?", but you hear a voice. The voice says: "Psst. Psst. Come here. Come here."
There’s a door right ahead of you. A wooden door, circular, homely. You open the door, and you step out into paradise. Blue skies, green hills, and...
Hobbits? You turn around, and you realise that you’re standing outside Bilbo Baggins’s hobbit hole. In fact, there are hobbit holes everywhere. The voice again ... "Welcome ... to The Shire".
Suddenly, a huge gust of wind, and swooping down, with a woman his back, is Gwaihir, the eagle. The eagle squaks, "qqqqqaaaauuuuuu." He looks looks at you and says: "Climb on to my back. We’re going on a journey. I am your German wings. I was was sponsored by mindmatters, a full stack web agency from Hamburg, to carry you and the first speaker from New Zealand to Germany. Get on, it’s the only way." You step on to the eagle’s back, and Gwaihir flaps his huge wings. 23 hours later, you descend into the town of Hamburg, fly through the window of the kulturkirche altona. The woman jumps off, and you suddenly realise what has happened. Sent on the back of a giant eagle paid for by mind matters, even though her journey is over, yours is only about to begin. Everyone, please welcome, HANNAH SCHICKEDANZ.
Jumping straight to Community was probably a leap, but the NZ theme tied in nicely with Hannah’s talk. The Community reference fits here because of the "random series of adventures with lots of pop culture references" that follows, along with the "first day in a new school" that a conference can often feel like.
"I'm on an adventure." you say, shy in your new surroundings. "I'm here to learn".
"You've come to the right place. Welcome to Greendale" says Abed Nadir as you climb the steps together. "We’ve had our fair share of adventures here." He leads you along the corridors, pointing out Dean Pelton's office, the teacher's lounge. Everything is new, but it all seems so familiar. You take a turn, and there it is: the table. "In here" he says, but he's beckoning to a vent in the wall. You climb in, crawling for what seems like an hour, and eventually you pop out, in what seems to be ... a church. It always seems to be a church.
You look up, and everyone else seems to have arrived before you. "Just in time", says Abed. "Cool. Coolcoolcool." It’s time. Time for RACHEL MYERS.
I originally had this as just a Matrix bit and I was going to change that because of the subsequent movies. Since Vu is the CTO of Mojang, introducing the Minecraft references was natural, and the Minecraft/Matrix connection flows out of it naturally, in a LEGO Star Wars meets Inception kind of way. In a sense, this was probably the most successful bit: short, on point, a personal connection, thematicly linked with the speaker, and a reference-within-a-reference that references itself. Yum.
We’ve travelled into the past together. The past isn’t quite like you remember. Everything seems to be made out of large blocks. But it still seems normal.
It's the moment you wrote your first line of code. You still remember the shock of excitement, the taste of power.
That voice again: "YOU are the chosen one, but you have a choice to make." Two large blocks suddenly appear in front of you, one is marked FF0000 Pill, the other is marked 0000FF Pill. You take one, and even though it’s a block the size of your head, you eat it.
You wake up, and you’re back in the church, where VU BUI is about to take the stage.
This is probably the messiest or most absurd of the bits, but I guess the interpretation is dependent on whether you took the blue pill or the red pill. I loved the absurdity of putting a Jewel in the Nile reference, weakly drawing on Brian’s relationship with Ruby. The Jewel becomes a MacGuffin: something that the protagonist wins, gives them power, gets stolen and ultimately gets gambled away by a stranger. I ended up being quite happy with the loose metaphor. There’s also the Gandalf reference, because Gandalf. I feel guilty that I didn’t mention Jack Colton, where I do mention Angus MacGyver later, but I think mentioning him without mentioning Richard Dean Anderson balances it out, and who’s heard of Jack Colton anyway?. Note the "throwing a jewel wrapped in cloth" reference from Temple of Doom. I was sad that I didn’t end up using a full Indiana Jones reference (or indeed any Harrison Ford), but I sneaked that one in.
It’s early evening and you're sat upon a crudely made boat, floating along the Nile river. Suddenly, you hear gunshots. An explosion in the distance. A man with an amazingly dashing shock of blond air appears in the distance, but is soon running along the banks of the river. He beckons you.
"Catch!" shouts Michael Douglas, and he sends something wrapped in a cloth over the water. You catch the package, and you unwrap it quickly. Inside is a jewel. It’s warm to the touch, and you can feel its power washing over you.
"Now ... fly, you fool!"
You pull on the oars, adrenaline takes over, and soon you are far away, but the heat of the sun, the tiredness of your arms. You pass out, and you dream. And in your dream, you’re in a church. It’s always a church. Inside the church, everyone has gathered, and they’re waiting to see BRIAN SHIRAI.
This is probably my favourite bit, and it comes close to the Minecraft/Matrix in its success. With the wizard/priest/monk/jedi theme of the conference branding, the Star Wars reference had to be Jedi-centric, and what better moment to use than the bit where Obi-Wan explains the Force to Luke in A New Hope. I almost pooped my pants when Crockford’s talk was literally about bringing Hope. The fact that Crock is anatomically equivalent to Alec Guinness helped enormously too, and the Good Parts/Bad Parts was too tempting to let up. Note: I did run this by Crockford ahead of time, and he was totally cool with it.
You wake up, and you’re back on the boat, but you’ve landed on the other side of the river. The jewel glows brightly in your pocket, you know that you have something of great value. You step off the boat, into the dessert.
You start walking, and before long, you are in a canyon. It doesn’t feel safe, but you continue along: there’s nowhere else to go. THWACK. Again. Just before Everything goes dark, you see a man in a hood.
You wake up, and you’re in a cave. It’s the man. He tells you about your past, and your future. He tells you that we’re all surrounded by a Force, and that there is a light side and a dark side. Good parts, and bad parts, if you will.
You like listening to him, and as you listen, the cave starts to feel familiar. Like a church. DOUGLAS CROCKFORD, everybody.
I wondered about putting Mad Men in, but I felt I had to since I consider it one of the great TV shows of our generation, along with Game of Thrones. I felt like just keeping it simply to "Don approves" was the safest path, and I quite like the sense of it, even though it doesn’t draw on much humour. Note the Back to the Future reference, another obvious omission as a main reference, but again, I was happy to get it in. Is mentioning Hilldale a mistake or a nice time-travelling twist since we’ve come from 2015? You can decide.
You wake up, and the memory of the old man starts to fade away. Something feels different about the place. Older, but newer. Your clothes feel different. Your hair. Everything seems... Perfect.
You grab a newspaper from a street corner and check the date: July 23rd, 1955. But this isn't Hilldale, it's New York City.
You suddenly get a strong feeling that you're late for something. You rush to a building on Madison Avenue, fly up the elevator and burst in the door.
"So what do you think?" is all you're in time to hear. Don takes a long drag of his cigarette and quickly downs what's left of his scotch. "It's perfect." He says, and you feel the tension released from the room. "A church, an adventure, a gathering of friends, but it just needs one thing"
Everyone leans forward in their seats.
"It just needs JINA BOLTON" And here she is...
I liked how "Well dressed in New York City the 50s" segues nicely into "Well dressed in London with James Bond". I played with time here: most of the other bits are in real-time, but this one spans weeks, maybe months. There’s a teensy bit of slapstick here in the Austin Powers/Spy sense, but probably not very funny. I wanted to include a lot of falling, because I feel like that’s generally the sensation that people feel in the tech world when confronted with just so much stuff. The idea here was that the first day was supposed to end with an actual cliffhanger (to set up the Daenarys bait and switch), but I think I’m ok with the falling, perhaps a slight reference to Sansa/Theon jumping off the wall at Winterfell before we arrive in the world of Game of Thrones)
You jolt awake. You feel very grateful that you’re so well dressed, because everyone around you is too. It’s London, England. This MI5.
The best dressed man in the room comes over: "you, you’re coming with me".
You spend weeks together: intercepting terrorism, uncovering dastardly plots, overcoming intense psychological dilemmas.
Back in London, you have a new mission. You go to get equipped, but instead of Q, a new face appears. "Where’s Q, says Bond"
"Bathroom" says a new voice. "But I can show you ... this new contraption will allow you to fall, unharmed, from any height"
"Thanks" ... and off you go.
You speedbike over some mountains, hang-glide over a small fishing village, and partake in a high speed car chase. As your car rounds the corner of a beautiful sea-scape, the enemy shoots your wheel and the car spins out of control, rolling three times before crashing over the side of the cliff, in slow motion. James pushes the ejector seat and engages the free-fall apparatus, and you cling to him for dear life, but you can’t hold on. You’re slipping, you’re falling, you’re tumbling.
And there, in that last moment, you don’t know what’s going to happen, but all you can think of this the church... DAAN VAN BERKEL, the stage is yours.
I tried to memorise this part of the story and delivered it without the script. Bad move. It did mean that I didn't mention the names of the dragons, which I think was the right thing. I was trying to find a balance between obviousness and not being too explicit, leaving some room for imagination. The reference here is to The Prince that was Promised prophecy in Game of Thrones that the dragon will return with three heads. There’s also an appeal to the idea that Daenarys may turn out to be the villain of the story. Probably the weakest bit, simply because there’s so much to draw on and really this exists just to resolve the falling from the cliffhanger, and it doesn’t even resolve it very well, because it just results in another fall. Oh well.
You awake, and the whoosh of air flies past your face: you're falling, falling. This is it, you think. The end. But a roar and a crash and a whoosh. Valar Morghulis! you hear, as Daenerys Targaryen swoops in, atop Drogon. Rhaegal flies past her, catching you on his back.
Up ahead, you see a third dragon. Visyerion ... and on his back, WILL of HOUSE POSTGRES.
Suddenly, with a whoosh and a swirl, Daenerys turns, and her dragons follow, and you’re falling again. You suddenly realise that your Michael Douglas jewel is gone, stolen away by a Westerosi princess, as you and WILL crash through the roof, of a church.
In practice I skipped the lead up to this and headed straight to being captured. Bringing MacGyver in and tying it to the Merlin episode is delightful to me. In all of the TV shows of my childhood, in terms of absurdity, I think MacGyver in Camelot is equalled only by Captain Planet in Ireland. There’s another weak reference here to Looney Tunes and Monkey Island with the porthole carver (random paraphernalia to escape being trapped on a pirate ship) with the Monkey Island bit being more explicit later.
The dragon parade has landed you safely in Essos, and you’ve lost your face in Braavos, battled in the fighting pits of Meereen, and joined 5 kalasaars before having to escape on a boat to Westeros. Too late you realise that it’s a pirate ship, and you’ve been captured.
You don’t have time to wonder what Angus MacGyver is doing in an episode of Game of Thrones, but then you remember the episode where he travelled back in time so it makes perfect sense. MacGyver has been imprisoned with you but of course has fashioned an elaborate plan to use barnacles as swords and fight your way out. You suggest using the "ACME Arduino Jetpack" that's lying in the corner. He agrees, and a few minutes later, you're floating above the ocean, the ship leaving a trail behind. In the distance, you see a church...
DAVID CUARTIELLES, everyone.
Another of my favourites. The Monkey Island hints continue, this one drawing on the amazing tree-stump portal from Monkey Island 2 that brings you back to a scene in Monkey Island 1. Jumping from Lucasarts to Lucasfilm, bridging modern day and the original Jurassic Park movies, and tied neatly up with a terminal with the first line from Adventure, which sort of mirrors the tone of all of these bits. This and the next few stories didn’t really include much from their speakers, because I wasn't as familiar with their work. For the record, this was the talk that most-resonated with me: educating me about the real problem of racism that still exists in Germany, and what Laurel, her husband and their team are trying to do about it.
You are pulled violently beneath the waves and everything goes dark again. As suddenly as you were pulled under, you’re shot up, flying high. As you reach the apex of your ascent, you look down to see a giant water beast crash back into the water. It looks like this particular mosasaur doesn’t like the taste of web developer.
You have just enough time to realise that you are on an island that feels rather like a Jurassic World, before you cascade through the trees and land next to a tree-stump and a computer terminal with a blinking display.
"This is a Unix system" you think, "I know this". The flashing lights on the screen reveal a sentence:
"You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully."
You press the "Enter" key, and the stump slides open to reveal a staircase. You climb down, and think of the church, where LAUREL RAFFINGTON is about to go on.
I’m very happy with the opening of this, tying the past/present theme together with a jump from Adventure to Zork and then in to Monkey Island, which of course was devised to "fix" the mistakes that text-only adventure games had with ambiguous instructions and too-easy-to-die scenarios. That theme continues into a kind of tragedy. In Monkey Island 3 there was a joke setting to enable 3D mode, which became a parody of itself with MI4 and the Telltale Monkey Island: the more polygons on the screen it seemed the further we got from the true spirit of the original two games. I like how the pixelated world preempts Michal’s talk that comes up next.
"Look behind you, a three-headed grue", a rather pixelated pirate calls out as you descend the cavern into an equally pixelated cave. "You can’t fool me with that old trick" you think, but there is a strange chill in the room. You run toward the light at the end of the cave, and emerge on a beach, where an old hermit sits alongside a parrot. "I know the secret" says the parrot, but flies off before you can hear any more, and as the parrot flies, before your eyes, it turns from 2d pixels into a series of more and more complex polygons, then morphing into a beautifully rendered 3d scenescape. As the pixelated world around you shifts from 320x240 resolution, getting ever more complex, you reflect on your life, and the simpler days gone by.
It reminds you of the church, where PETER ESZENYI is about to talk.
Casablanca feels to me both out of place, but perfect. It really is the ultimate nostalgia movie, and really that’s what the story is all about: a personal journey, being in a place, always thinking about leaving, but ultimately staying put having learned a lot. I like the resolution ... it’s not deep or meaningful, but the idea that the jewel was just left lying around by Daenarys (or whoever she passed it along to): the object that we originally thought was valuable is just left to be gambled away by a stranger.
Your nostalgia has turned the world black and white, and as you walk along the beach, a building appears, lit with a neon sign: "Rick’s Café Americaine". You wander in, and join the party. Of all the gin joints in all the world, you walked into this one.
You walk to the bar and call for a drink. "If it’s July 2015 in Hamburg", the bartender asks, "What time is it at home?"
"I don't know", you think "I didn’t charge my watch".
On the bar you notice something sparkling: it’s your jewel. But you don’t take it. It just fills you with nostalgia. A mysterious man reaches for it, and places it on the roulette table.
You pick up your drink.
As you you sip, you realise that this is not a bar at all, but a church, and the mysterious man in the corner is MICHAŁ TASZYCKI
The "so coded" bit came to me just a few minutes before I went on stage, and it wasn’t in the original script. It just about fits in the sense that the whole story is an attempt to get the audience to think in a particular way. The summary is neat quickly sums up the picaresque adventure. The whole dream/reality/dream bit is resolved, and a quick Anthony Eden pun maybe spoils everything, but I love it, particularly as it bookends the terrible/amazing German Wings pun we started with. The final reference to note is loosely based on the Wind Fish from Zelda: Link’s Awakening: that the world is tied together as a dream, but when the Wind Fish awakens, the world disappears, and we wake up in a new place.
You have come to the end of your journey. You flown on an eagle and a dragon, fallen from your fair share of heights, shared a drink with a spy, an advertising genius, and a lost soul. You’ve been captured, released, eaten alive, and narrowly escaped. You have soared heights, and tunnelled depths, and yet somehow it feels like you never even left home.
You reflect back on all the things you’ve learned, and you wonder what tomorrow’s adventure is going to be. Even though you’re tired, part of you can’t wait.
You pause for a moment.
And then you smile. You feel so ... so coded.
And you realise that you’re in a new place. It’s a garden. The Garden of ANTHONY EDEN.