ShmooCon
loreeventshacking
Stands for: ShmooCon - the affordable-on-purpose Washington hacker con (2005-2025)
The Washington, D.C. hacker convention that stayed small, cheap, and beloved on purpose - held every winter from 2005 until its farewell edition in 2025.
Organized by The Shmoo Group, ShmooCon inverted the industry's growth logic: roughly two thousand seats at the Washington Hilton, tickets priced to be affordable, and demand so fierce that sales sold out in seconds - a ritual of its own. The format was fixed and loved: a first day of rapid-fire talks called One Track Mind, then two days across Build It, Belay It, and Bring It On, plus fixtures like Hack Fortress and the TOOOL lockpick village. After twenty years the organizers closed it on their own terms with the 2025 edition - a conference that ended not by fading but by finishing, which in this industry is its own kind of distinction.
Also known as: shmoocon, shmoo group, one track mind