Armed with a phone book and a telephone connected to the conference hall's PA system, Corley gave a live demonstration of how easy it was to impersonate someone else on the phone -- and to fool the person at the other end of the line into divulging sensitive information. He cautioned the audience to keep their private details secure.

In a discussion on underground documentaries, Jason Scott, the filmmaker who chronicled the history of bulletin board systems in "BBS: The Documentary," joined the young Canadian filmmaker Julian McArdle, who recently made "On Piracy," a documentary on illegal downloading. Scott recounted the challenges he faced in filming "BBS," and shared his inspirations. "I noticed that it was getting to be 2001 and nobody had made the Time-Life series of BBSes," he said. Scott is currently shooting a documentary on text adventure games.

The conference's closing ceremonies featured a long series of teary farewells and thank-you speeches that brought to mind the Academy Awards, sans the tuxes and evening gowns. Instead, it was a sea of black T-shirts, jeans, utility belts, and long hair -- a celebration of idiosyncratic community, and the equally idiosyncratic conference that brought them together.