What could be more fun than spending a summer weekend in the city with a group of smart, unruly geeks who have little respect for authority but a high regard for brains?

The Cape? The Hamptons? You can keep ’em!

Ever since I went to my first HOPE conference in 2012, I’ve been hooked. And that was way before Ed Snowden, Target, and Heartbleed. Given everything that has happened lately,  this year’s version,  HOPE X , held as usual in midtown Manhattan (starting Friday, July 18), ought to be even better. You don’t have to be a total geek to enjoy the goings on, but it helps. (Geek alert: I was a software developer for many years.)

Let’s get this out of the way right now: Most hackers are NOT criminals (although quite a few criminals do engage in hacking.) They’re simply people–often young–who enjoy messing around with technology and breaking into things. And HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) is one of many conferences where hackers and their friends congregate, compete, teach, and learn. (Another one is DEFCON, in Vegas, which I’ll be attending and covering on this site starting in early August).

There’s a lot worth learning about at these conferences.  Like all the latest threats to our privacy and security and how to protect yourself. And the ingenious new services people are constantly inventing. The best part is stimulating your mind by exposing it to some of the most creative and passionate people in the world.

I’ll be posting a list shortly of some of the most interesting things I expect to report on at HOPE X. Meanwhile, to give you a feel for the conference,  here are a few highlights of interesting, often amusing, sights I saw at HOPE 9 in July 2012, that got me hooked.

The black humor

There are signs all over bristling with irony and sarcasm as a sane reaction to living in a country that has become crazed about security.  Here are several I saw at HOPE 9  in 2012.

–Jeff Fox

The welcoming sign when you first enter HOPE.

Orwellian, but not much of an exaggeration these days.

The humor even permeated the men’s room.

Learn about dubious products you’d never imagined

So exactly what personal data did “PMSBuddy.com” collect? Their web site is gone now, but their Facebook page lives on.

Yes, that’s a screen shot of a drone someone had made from their dead cat. Fortunately, the flying feline didn’t actually appear “live” at the conference.

You could buy hard-to-obtain bottles of Club Mate, supposedly the imported, highly caffeinated drink of choice for hackers. I did.

New threats to enjoy

This presentation showed the many ways your “smart home” can tell the world all about your daily activities. Now that the Internet of Things is upon us, I expect to hear a lot more about this issue.

And then there was this elaborate routine put on by the infamous, hilarious culture-jamming duo, the Yes Men (http://theyesmen.org) .