[izak30]

Ahoy! I just stumbled on this. I was the Director of Technology for this set of local bizareness for its last two years. I won't say "I'm happy to answer any questions" because I may avoid some. If you want to ask, maybe hit me up, Especially the tech, especially if you got to play and have a good idea of what we were doing.

Also! I think I'm signed up to give a talk in May at ADG. If you're interested in this sort of world-building, and the hacker side of it; maybe come to that? My talk isn't on the shedule yet, but it's penciled in (and Definitely go to Catherine Herdlick's if you can!) http://www.meetup.com/Adventure-Design-Group/

[LAMike]

Over/Under 1 orgy while in Latitude?

[izak30]

Well, the public part of TLS spanned two Burning Men, and is in the Bay Area. It's not my scene, but I'm sure it happened.

---

Alt note: I spent two years at that gig, and much of it was "public" facing, i.e. to participants. Talking about it now it's very difficult not to default into the cloak and dagger mode. It's now shockingly easy for me to write coyly.

[kbhn]

Thanks for stopping by! What was the most memorable moment of the whole experience for you?

[izak30]

As far as the experience goes, one of the things I'd say over and over is that if you noticed my work, I did a bad job. I was building the automation, electronics, mechanics, and hardware and software systems to make things tick. I was typically working with about two other hacker-types. sometimes hardware and audio folks, sometimes web and software folks.

So there was this beach on the top floor of a building downtown. When you were invited in, a whole day would pass in the scope of twenty minutes. More than anything, it was a place to think. And through some very clever crafting with about a dozen RGB floodlights (and previous work deconstructing how to work the Philips Hue API) we made it simultaneously look like an office/gallery, that would pass from dawn through early morning, noon, afternoon, sunset, evening and the sort of blue-midnight you only see on television.

I didn't really "do" the experiences, I always knew what was behind the door when I opened it, and often times I was "doing" it for QA purposes, but that part of that room will probably stick on me like a soft spot for a very long time.

[MrEricSir]

> if you noticed my work, I did a bad job.

Partial counterpoint: I didn't notice the cameras in the sandbox, so I happily covered them up by accident. It just "felt right" to me for whatever reason to decorate the corners. Oops.

[izak30]

For those who don't know: He's talking about the in the aforementioned "beach" room, which had a different name, meaning, and story. MrEricSir appears to be one of the top google results for "The Latitude Book 2" if you care to explore.

There was a hexagon shaped table with a sandbox. In each corner of the sandbox there was a digital camera (connected to a raspberry pi) that would photograph the sandbox throughout your appointment and then send the pictures to your personal account on our website. When you went back to the website to confirm that you had completed your experience, you were presented with a handful of sandcastle-POV photos that were just for you.

Yeah, I heard that a couple of times. That's part of why there were 6 cameras, with the hope that two or three would be working + get a decent shot.

Still, I'd say from a design pov, that _totally worked_. People behave different when they know they're being watched or evaluated. This was meant to be a private space for you, and the photos of that thing were meant to be a pleasant surprise.

[lydialaurenson]

That's awesome. I was an early tester on Book 2 and I really wanted to take photos, but I didn't because I wasn't sure if it was against the rules. Really glad to hear that you added this detail so carefully!

[izak30]

OK, so my most memorable moment was The On Call Day From Hell.

I've told this story a few times a few different ways, but for this purpose, you could call what we did theatre. Every 5, or 10, or 15 minutes, all weekend, some weekdays and evenings, the show must go on. ~6 Locations spread through the city, two separate experiences, both with their own windows, problems, and margins for error.

Sunday morning comes around and I get an alert about one of the locations. The system didn't come online (startup was automated for one experience, and manual, but staffed for another). The automated experience wasn't booting up. I had a three hour window to make the trek from Oakland to SF and debug this, probably minor issue.

I had VPNs everywhere, if I needed to show up, it was usually a hardware or networking issue. I was grumbling as I left my girlfriend on Sunday morning. I felt like it wasn't my turn (there were two other engineers, one other who would sort of rotate these duties at the time). So I'm trudging along and I get a text from the staff member running the other thing. She tells me that "there's water under the tunnel". This is very bad. This particular thing was built into a basement, which was at one time a creek. Even in the drought we were pumping ...water (and mission st run off)... out fairly constantly.

So I parlay the problem downtown by forcing an unexpected reboot of all equipment and make sure it sets itself up properly. I move to the mission and I'm woefully underprepared. The set itself has begun getting wet, I go to the source and it's just a black hole. Our construction crew set it all up initially, and would normally be the go-to for this, but we were a very small crew. Construction wasn't responding, and the first appointment was in 45 minutes. This was my problem. So I psych myself up. I was going to something else and definitely not planning on getting shoulder deep in sludge. I undress as much as I can around other employees, the two of us cover the set with as much protective barrier as we can and I just stare at it.

I'm about to get into the sort of territory where I'm cautious about telling it to the HN audience, but I shit you not, a voice from inside the hole, and from a very good friend whispers to me "psssh. Hey, you, It's down here. Come on down".[1]

And I get shoulder deep in a sump pump field disassembly and repair. No appointments were missed, edited or canceled that day.

[1] There's a very practical and boring explanation for this, but it was a very laugh-out-loud at my own weird life sort of moment.

[izak30]

You mean the experience of running tech for a "secret society" or of my going through the immersive/interactive experiences?

[partisan]

At this pace, those secrets that were just welling up inside you won't ever make it out. Why not just answer one or both of those since either one would prove to be interesting to the readers you've hooked with your original post.

[izak30]

Thanks. That was what I needed. Hard to know where to start.

[aorloff]

I hate to say it, but the sump pump story was more interesting to me than the original secret society article. I guess I can empathize more...

[kordless]

Why not, indeed.

[kriro]

How did you put that time on your resume? The article indicates that it was not wanted...which seems odd/possibly illegal.

[mseebach]

I can't speak for the GP, but there are plenty of jobs that expects you to euphemise items on your CV. At many consulting shops you will be violating your NDA if you name clients, but there are also many places that simply value discretion without legally requiring it.

[izak30]

Yeah, this is the exact right answer. The artists in the crew have the pieces in their portfolio. The techs are free to go into details when needed. For much else of the gig and things around it go discretion is the norm.

[izak30]

Well, it's all public now, through various straight forward means like this article, public postings on the website by the owner, etc. This covers most of my NDA. At the time, most of the secrecy was for game mechanics. That's pretty moot now as well. I've had several jobs where nobody wants the specifics discussed, so I've gotten good at saying "Imagine if you had a shipping container with a lock that needed to open for a hundred different people at a hundred different times". You can zoom into and out of problems with fabricated scenarios.

The other side of this, is that for the 18 odd months that Book One was open I would just give you a card. From my POV, that was better than any description I could give. I gave them out like candy and I still only had about 50 or 70 people come through. I probably gave out a hundred and fifty invitations.

[lydialaurenson]

+1 for ADG, which is an amazing meetup, one of the best in the city!