A couple of decades ago now, several things happened which gave life to our world and made it what it has become. Hackerspaces proliferated, giving what was previously dispersed a physical focus. Alongside that a range of hardware gave new expression to our projects; among them the Arduino, affordable 3D printing, and mail-order printed circuit boards.

The result was a flowering of creativity and of a community we’d never had before.Visiting another city could come with a while spent in their hackerspace, and from that new-found community blossomed a fresh wave of events. The older hacker camps expanded and morphed in character to become more exciting showcases for our expression, and new events sprang up alongside them. The 2010s provided me and my friends with some of the most formative experiences of our lives, and we’re guessing that among those of you reading this piece will be plenty who also found their people.

And then came COVID. Something that sticks in my mind when thinking about the COVID pandemic is a British news pundit from March 2020 saying that nothing would be quite the same as before once the pandemic was over. In our community this came home to me after 2022, when the first large European hacker camps made a return. They were awesome in their own way, but somehow sterile, it was as though something was missing. Since then we’ve had a few more summers spent trailing across the continent to hang out and drink Club-Mate in the sun, and while we commend the respective orgas for creating some great experiences, finding that spark can still be elusive. Hanging out with some of my friends round a European hackerspace barbecue before we headed home recently, we tried to put our finger on exactly where the problem lay.

Just what has gone wrong with hacker camps?

Perhaps the most stinging criticism we arrived at was that our larger events seem inexorably to be morphing into festivals. It’s partly found on the field itself and we find events hosting music stages, but also in the attendees. Where a decade or more ago people were coming with their cool hacks to be the event, now an increasing number of people are coming as spectators just to see the event. This no doubt reflects changing fashions in a world where festival attendance is no longer solely for a hard core of music fans, but its effect has been to slowly turn fields of vibrant villages where the real fun happened, into fields of tents with a few bright spots among them, and the attendees gravitating toward a central core where increasingly, the spectacle is put on for them.

The other chief gripe was around the eternal tussle in our community between technology and activism. Hackers have always been activists, if you doubt that take a read of Hackaday’s coverage of privacy issues, but the fact remains that we are accidental activists; activism is not the reason we do what we do. The feeling was that some events in our community have become far more about performative imposition of a particular interpretation of our culture or conforming to political expectations than they have about the hacks, and that the fun has been sucked out of them as a result.

People who know me outside my work for Hackaday will tell you that I have a significant career as an activist in a particular field, but when I’m at a hacker camp I am not there to be lectured at length about her ideology by an earnest young activist with blue hair and a lot of body piercings. I am especially not there to be policed as some kind of enemy simply because I indicate that I’m bored with what she has to say; I know from my own activism that going on about it too much is not going to make you any friends.

It’s evident that one of the problems with the larger hacker camps is not only that they have simply become too big, but that there are also some cultural traps which events can too readily fall into. Our conversation turned to those events we think get it right, and how we would approach an event of our own. One of my favourite events is a smaller one with under 500 attendees, whose organisers have a good handle on what makes a good event because they’re in large part making the event they want to be at. Thus it has a strong village culture, a lack of any of the trappings of a festival, and significant discouragement when it comes to people attending simply to be political activists.

That’s what I want to see more of, but even there is danger. I want it to remain awesome but not become a victim of its own success as so many events do. If it grows too much it will become a sterile clique of the same people grabbing all the tickets every time it’s held, and everyone else missing out. Thus there’s one final piece of the puzzle in ensuring that any hacker event doesn’t become a closed shop, that our camps should split and replicate rather than simply becoming ever larger.

The four-rule model

Condensing the above, my friends and I came up with a four-rule model for the hacker camps we want.

Limited numbers, self replicating, village led, bring a hack.

Let’s look at those in more detail.

Limited numbers

There’s something special about a camp where you can get to know everyone on the field at some level, and it’s visibly lost as an event gets larger. We had differing views about the ideal size of a small camp with some people suggesting up to 500 people, but I have good reasons for putting forward a hundred people as an ideal, with a hard limit at 150. The smaller a camp is the less work there is for its orga, and by my observation, putting on a camp for 500 people is still quite a lot of effort. 150 people may sound small, but small camps work. There’s also the advantage that staying small ducks under some red tape requirements.

Self replicating

As an event becomes more popular and fills up, that clique effect becomes a problem. So these events should be self replicating. When that attendee limit is reached, it’s time to repeat the formula and set up another event somewhere else. Far enough away to not be in direct competition, but near enough to be accessible. The figure we picked out of the air for Europe was 200 km, or around 120 miles, because a couple of hours drive is not insurmountable but hardly on your doorstep. This would eventually create a diverse archipelago of small related events, with some attendees going to more than one. Success should be measured in how many child events are spawned, not in how many people attend.

Village-led

The strength of a hacker camp lies in its villages, yet larger camps increasingly provide all the fun centrally and starve the villages. The formula for a small camp should have the orga providing the field, hygiene facilities, power, internet, and nothing else, with the villages making the camp. Need a talk track? Organise one in your village. Want a bar to hang out and drink Club-Mate at? Be the bar village. It’s your camp, make it.

Bring a hack

An event I wish I was in a position to attend is the Wasteland weekend, a post-apocalyptic festival in the Californian desert. Famously you will be denied entry to Wasteland if you aren’t post-apocalyptic enough, or if you deem post-apocalyptic to be merely cosplaying a character from a film franchise. The organisers restrict entry to the people who match their vision of the event, so of course all would-be attendees make an effort to follow their rules.

It’s an idea that works here: if you want to be part of a hacker camp, bring a hack. A project, something you make or do; anything (and I mean anything) that will enhance the event and make it awesome. What that is is up to you, but bringing it ensures you are not merely a spectator.

See You On A Field Not Too Far Away

With those four ingredients, my friends and I think being part of the hacker and maker community can become fun again. Get all your friends and their friends, hire a complete camping site for a weekend outside school holidays, turn up, and enjoy yourselves. A bunch of Europeans are going to make good on this and give it a try, before releasing a detailed version of the formula for others to try too.

Maybe we’ll see you next summer.