I was fortunate enough to have the honor of interviewing Brady Forest today. I thought I’d ask him some questions that would be relevant to the hackers / MAKE folks / tinkerers in the crowd. I’m pleased to say that from what I’ve been told there’s a fair possibility that if you’ve done soldering before and have any interest in doing live tinkering at a conference, Etech should show up on your radar.
Aten: How much of your life does Etech consume?
Brady: it consumes… I start working 10 months in advance. In some ways 14 months in advance. 10 months is the theme for the following year, its my first conference of the year, so it gets my attention. I’d like to have as many worthwhile things as possible crammed into into that time – the conference is only four days. Every facet of the conference has to be interesting. There is tech/art in the halls, events in the evenings. Its broad.
Aten: What is your background?
Brady: I have an engineering degree, worked in management, integrations – then did a friends music startup kind of like pandora which was then bought by bought by MS, done some music, worked at a google news competitor, then ended up in search as a project manager. Did evangelism/blogging sort of half product, half watching the outside world. I talked to O’Reilly and after some negotiations I ended up coming aboard.