We are really looking forward to HOPE 26 this August. We’ve gotten more speaker and workshop submissions than ever, we’re hearing from people who haven’t attended HOPE in decades, and we think we’ve really found the perfect spot, right in the middle of Manhattan.

But there’s a problem. For whatever reason, we’re several hundred ticket sales below where we need to be to make HOPE possible. There are many theories as to why, one of which is that people like to wait til the
last minute. However, the necessary expenses for putting on a conference like this won’t wait and we really need to solve this problem if we’re going to continue in the future.

HOPE will be awesome either way. The only question is whether we’re going to be able to do this again. We have two ways of accomplishing this: 1) sell several hundred more tickets; 2) get tax-deductible contributions to help us bridge the gap. (Links to do either are below.)

There are other ways you can help. If you can’t make it to HOPE but want to support the conference, you can buy a virtual ticket and interact with speakers and other conference attendees anywhere in the world. And you
can help us spread the word of HOPE – as doing this continues to be our biggest challenge with the deterioration of both social and mass media.

We’ve faced many challenges before, from venues being torn down to COVID to intimidation tactics. We believe with your help we’ll get past this challenge as well and continue to build the conference at our new location.

You can make a tax-deductible donation at https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/hope-av-fundraiser

Tickets can be purchased at https://store.2600.com/products/tickets-to-hope-26 (follow the link at the bottom of the page for virtual tickets)

AI is a topic on everyone’s mind. We continually hear from the big AI companies that their technology has already changed the world, and is poised to cause tremendous changes in the future. Everyone is talking about AI.

We have reached out to people at some of the major AI companies in the list below, asking them to speak at this year’s HOPE conference to start an open dialog about AI. Yet, in every case, when the representatives of the AI companies learned that their talk would not be allowed to be a mere unchallenged sales pitch, they became significantly less interested. And when they learned we would allow— and encourage— audience members to ask questions, the representatives stopped responding to us altogether. This happened with each and every company.

If AI is going to change the world, we believe the public should have some input. But the major AI players are all closed systems run by billionaires (and now a trillionaire) who control politicians and are allergic to democratic processes that include asking hard questions— or any questions at all. If these systems are so powerfully going to change our lives, shouldn’t our voices be taken seriously? Surely we deserve more than a choice between RoboCop and Brazil.

At HOPE we want an open conversation, an open exchange of ideas about this powerful new technology.

We welcome AI companies to present at HOPE and be part of the community, not merely on their terms, but in shared agreement with those of us set to be greatly effected by their systems, technologies, and products.

They claim to be open to scrutiny, but so far, even those that use the word “open” in their name appear through their actions to be anything but. Please consider this to be a public invitation to them to let hackers help improve the technology as well as to make the world a better place. We promise we won’t bite— but we will ask questions.

This invitation is hereby extended to any company involved in AI, including but not limited to:

OpenAI (ChatGPT)
Anthropic (Claude)
Meta (Meta AI)
Google (Gemini)
Microsoft (Copilot)
X/Twitter (Grok)
Nvidia (Nemotron)

We’ve just released the first batch of ten confirmed HOPE talks and will
shortly release ten more. We will continue doing this as our schedule becomes finalized. You can find the list at https://www.hope.net/talks/.

This is in addition to the slide show of presenters that is already visible on the hope.net site. Expect more details every day.

Tickets to HOPE 26 can be bought at
https://store.2600.com/products/tickets-to-hope-26

Virtual tickets can be reserved at
https://store.2600.com/products/tickets-to-hope-26-virtual-attendee

The preparations for HOPE 26 are in full swing! Tickets are still available here and cheap hotel rooms in midtown Manhattan can be found at this link (if rooms aren’t available, try back in a few hours as demand is high and our supply is frequently being replenished).

We wanted to share with you some of our initial presenters, which includes individuals and organizations. This represents only a tiny piece of what will be at this year’s conference. We are amazed at the response so far! More updates and programming notes will be posted.

Here are some of our first presenters:

Johannes Grenzfurthner: Austrian artist, filmmaker, writer, actor, curator, theatre director, performer, and lecturer, who is the founder, conceiver and artistic director of monochrom, an international art and theory group and film production company.

Fight for the Future: A non-profit advocacy group in the area of digital rights founded in 2011 that aims to promote causes related to copyright legislation, as well as online privacy and censorship through the use of the Internet.

Cindy Cohn: American civil liberties attorney specializing in Internet law who served as executive director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) from 2015 to 2026.

Freedom of the Press Foundation: A non-profit organization founded in 2012 to fund and support free speech and freedom of the press, pursuing technical projects to support journalists’ digital security and conducting legal advocacy for journalists.

Kel McClanahan, Esq.: Executive director of National Security Counselors, a Washington-area non-profit public interest law firm which specializes in national security law and information and privacy law.

Distributed Denial of Secrets: A non-profit whistleblower site founded in 2018 for news leaks and a frequent source for other news outlets, whose leaks have resulted in or contributed to multiple government investigations, including the second impeachment of President Donald Trump.

Jasmin Hagendorfer: Vienna-based contemporary artist, writer, filmmaker, curator, producer, and festival organizer whose work has been exhibited in Austria, Germany, Turkey, Serbia, and Greece.

Electronic Frontier Foundation: An American international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties.

Tiffany Rad: CEO and founder of Anatrope, Inc., which develops wireless automotive technologies for the security and data analytics industries, and whose industrial control system research was featured on the series, Mr. Robot.

Brandon Roberts: Investigative journalist specializing in applying computational techniques to watchdog and data-heavy journalism projects who currently works at ProPublica, a non-profit investigative journalism organization.

Again, this is only the beginning. There are MANY MORE speakers who we will be announcing in the days and weeks ahead. Stay tuned!

This is a FINAL reminder concerning the deadline for all talk and workshop submissions for HOPE 26, which is taking place at the New Yorker Hotel in New York City from August 14th through the 16th. Your talk and/or workshop submission must be in by the end of the day on Monday, June 1st!

To submit a talk proposal, email speakers@hope.net. To learn more aboutthe process, visit https://www.hope.net/call-for-speakers/.

To submit a workshop proposal, email workshops@hope.net. You can visit https://www.hope.net/call-for-workshops to find out more.

We’ve already received a ton of really great submissions and we’re going to begin listing those that have been accepted after the final deadline has passed. We think you’ll be as impressed as we are.

Ticket sales are what make all of this possible. We can do much more with the funds received from selling tickets in advance. Please buy your ticket(s) today and help us spread the word! To do this, visit https://store.2600.com/products/tickets-to-hope-26 – if you’re unable to attend in person, check out our virtual ticket option! Every one of our ticket sales helps the conference get a little bit more awesome!

Hotel rooms are still available at a heavily discounted price and an absolutely amazing deal for midtown Manhattan. If you try to reserve your room and any of your nights show as unavailabe, simply try again in a little while, as rooms are being replenished when we exceed our allotment. https://newyorkerhotel.book.pegsbe.com/promo?offerCode=08132026HO is the link to make your reservations!