Keeping Our History Alive: The Hacker’s Guide to Sticker Preservation

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Presented at GrrCON 2025 by

Brian Baskin

Laptop stickers are more than just colorful flair. They represent our interests, identities, and the communities we belong to. At cons they help us find our tribes in a sea of black shirts and oversized backpacks. Representing memories of days long gone, we are always looking for ways to retain and cherish our sticker collections. Plenty of hackers hold onto aging laptops just to preserve the stickers that tell their story. After hearing from many of them, I began experimenting with all kinds of techniques for removing and reusing these stickers without destroying them. This talk highlights the importance of stickers in our culture, starting with how we can preserve them and keep our history alive.