Keynote: The Power of Play

Rob Conery dives into how unstructured, “just for fun” experiments—from Claude Shannon’s mechanical mice at Bell Labs to Homebrew Computer Club beer-fueled schematics and open-source pioneers rewriting collaboration rules—have sparked some of the biggest tech revolutions.

He argues that goofing off with wild ideas (AI, open networking, public code) isn’t a distraction but the very heart of serious innovation. Play, it turns out, is the secret ingredient that lights the fuse of revolution.

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