CodeCon 2002, scheduled for February 15, 16 and 17 in San Francisco, California, is the premier event in 2002 for the P2P, cypherpunk and network/security application developer community. It is a workshop for developers of real-world applications that support individual liberties.

For the first two days of the conference, our policy is "bring your own code"; while those not demonstrating software are welcome to attend, the focus will be primarily on developer discussion. The final day of the workshop is intended to be more inclusive, consisting of public and press demonstrations, interviews, panels, and a public session allowing a larger number of presenters to demonstrate their projects in a more informal setting. All presentations must be accompanied by functional applications, ideally open source. Presenters must be one of the active developers of the code discussed.

CodeCon strongly encourages presenters from non-commercial and academic backgrounds to attend for the purposes of collaboration and sharing knowledge by providing. Free registration to workshop presenters and highly-discounted registration to full-time students are offered. Public session presenters and approved members of the press will receive free registration for the public session on Sunday, February 17.

The focus of CodeCon is running applications that:

Examples of excellent presentations include Mixmaster remailers and extensions, OpenNap, Swarmcast, Mojo Nation, Magic Money and OpenPGP applications. Novelty in technical approaches, security assumptions and end-user functionality are excellent properties.

Presentations about basic technologies, such as a new cipher or hash, non-interesting vulnerabilities in existing applications or discussions of unimplemented protocols are better suited for other conferences. The guidelines for the CodeCon public session on Sunday are less stringent than the main workshop; presentations more tangential to CodeCon's focus may be accepted for the public session.

Paper and Q&A

For those most comfortable with a traditional conference format, we will accept papers up to 25 pages in length. We encourage HTML or plain ASCII submissions but can accept PostScript, PDF or LaTeX. We will distribute papers in advance of the conference and provide 30 or 60 minutes for discussion and Q&A, at the presenter's discretion. In exceptional cases, we will accept anonymous papers and conduct either a non-directed discussion or a Q&A session directed by proxy. All papers should be accompanied by source code or an application. When possible, we would prefer that the application be available for interactive use during the workshop, either on a presenter-provided demonstration machine or one of the conference kiosks. Additionally, during the paper presentation, some use of this demo must be made; it may be relatively brief, but a demonstration of the running application is essential.

Interactive Demo

In addition to the traditional conference paper format, we encourage highly interactive presentations. Throughout the event, we will have several kiosks and local servers available for demonstration purposes. We also strongly encourage presenters to bring their own hardware. Application demos can be up to 20 minutes, followed by a period of up to 40 minutes for Q&A, which can include demonstration of additional features of the application not covered in the main presentation. If desired by the presenter, we can distribute URLs of applications several days before the workshop to allow attendees to familiarize themselves with the basics of applications prior to the workshop sessions.

Panel

In areas where multiple projects fall roughly in the same domain, the most efficient presentation may be a panel with one or more developers from each team. These developers may then individually demonstrate their applications, followed by discussion among the panel and Q&A with the other attendees as to differences in design goals, implementation and other aspects of the systems. If we receive multiple submissions from related projects for papers or demos, we may suggest to the presenters that they combine into a panel. Additionally, presenters are free to submit jointly as a pre-selected panel.

There is some flexibility in requirements and formats for presentations; please enquire if you would like to use an alternate form.

On the afternoon of Sunday, February 17, we will set aside a substantial amount of time for five minutes-or-less public session project presentations. Other events on this day, including panels and main presentations will be targeted at members of the press and public, so brief presentations on Sunday will reach a wide audience. Presenters from the first two days who wish to make an additional public session presentation may do so.

Presentations must be performed by one of the active developers on the project. That's the rule--no code, no mic. Multiple people may be involved in a presentation. You do get in for free if you're part of a presentation even if you don't speak during it, so creativity (within reason) is encouraged.

The workshop language is English, for both presentations and papers.

Ideally, demonstrations should be usable by attendees with 802.11b connected devices either via a web interface or locally on Windows, UNIX-like or MacOS platforms. Cross-platform applications are most desirable.

Our venue may be 21+. If you are submitting and are under 21, please advise the program committee; we may consider alternate venues for one or more days of the event. If you have a specific day on which you would prefer to present, please advise us.

Main workshop submissions should include, in the plain-text body of e-mail to submissions@codecon.org, the following information:

Public session submissions should include, in the plain-text body of e-mail to submissions@codecon.org, the following information:

Bram Cohen, BitTorrentDan Egnor, ofb.netJered Floyd, PermabitIan Grigg, SystemicsRyan Lackey, HavenCoDon Marti, Linux JournalGuido Sanchez, New Hack CityLen Sassaman, quickie.netBill Stewart, AT&TBrandon Wiley, FreenetJamie Zawinski, DNA Lounge

Recognizing that many developers of the most interesting cypherpunk applications are unable to afford accommodations and other expenses in San Francisco, CodeCon will attempt to locate housing and otherwise assist with these issues for presenters on a case-by-case basis. Please contact codecon-admin@codecon.org if your submission is accepted and you require assistance to attend.

If your organization is interested in sponsoring CodeCon, we would love to hear from you. In particular, we are looking for sponsors for social meals and parties on any of the three days of the conference, as well as sponsors for the conference as a whole, prizes or awards for quality presentations, and assistance with transportation or accommodation for presenters with limited resources. If you might be interested in sponsoring any of these aspects, please contact the conference organizers at codecon-admin@codecon.org.

If you have questions about CodeCon or would like to contact the organizers, please e-mail codecon-admin@codecon.org. Please note this address is only for questions and administrative requests, not for workshop presentation submissions.