In June 2010 I flew to Wollongong, New South Wales, for IEEE ISTAS 2010, the International Symposium on Technology and Society held June 7–9, where I gave a keynote titled "Social-Technical Issues Facing the Humancentric RFID Implantee Sub-culture through the Eyes of Amal Graafstra." The other keynotes came from Dr. Mark Gasson of the University of Reading and nanotechnology professor Gordon Wallace, and a roundtable on human implantables put me at the same table as anti-RFID crusader Katherine Albrecht.
I spent the morning of my talk ripping apart my own PowerPoint. I normally present to audiences who have no idea what RFID is; this was a small crowd with a great deal of brainpower between them, and by then not one person had asked "can't they track you!?" I had 45 minutes and got through the deck in about 20, which was fine by me, because stretching it out any longer would have turned something meant to spark discussion into an eye-glazing experience. The questions afterward were the good kind, and Albrecht herself came up to engage me in conversation.
Media requests stacked up around the symposium: newspapers, radio spots for JJJ and ABC Radio, and a television crew from ABC's 7:30 Report. The rest of the trip was pure travelogue: fixing my dental implant's loose healing abutment with a star driver from the local hardware store, the blowhole at Kiama, the discovery of ginger beer, a hostel bunk in Kings Cross, Thai food with Mark Gasson, and an accidental Jonah Hill sighting at a Sydney Film Festival screening. Then a rental campervan around New Zealand's south island before slogging back to Seattle and the waiting pile of email.