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.
Ayy, blue hair straw man mentioned!!
The person in question did have blue hair. It was at a German event in 2019.
Sadly like many other stereotypes, this one has a basis in truth.
I flew halfway around the world to go to 31C3 back in 2015, bringing a cool camera-based project I was working on at the time, only to find when I arrived that the congress is half hacking and half strident activism, and the activism side imposed rules that basically made my project impossible to demonstrate or work on, and it just became something I had to lug around for a month.
To be fair, I don’t resent that at all – it’s just a thing that happened. But it’s clear to me that the larger an event (or a club) gets (and C3 is massive), the more difficult it is to ensure everyone’s wellbeing, and the more political/restricted things inevitably get, because you have to contend with more and more people who don’t share your values or who are bad actors or who just don’t know how to get along with others.
So yeah, the best events end up being the small ones.
You totally get it.
Wait, are cameras not allowed? How ridiculous in 2025.
I don’t know about the specific rule(s) that were in force at 31C3, but a very common one at almost all hacker camps is ‘no pictures unless you have consent from all in the frame’. Which would make operating a camera pretty much impossible in a crowded environment with sufficient churn.
“ridiculous”? Au contraire. It’s awesome to have a time and space where you’re actually not being surveilled 24/7. Especially at the summer camps, some folks like to let their freak flag fly a little more than usual, and I feel it’s a pity to take that freedom away from them.
I also have the opposite experience of Jenny, at the same German events. When I take photos for Hackaday, I get a press angel to accompany me and we go and take photos. They have high-vis vests and yell at the top of their lungs “does anyone mind being in the picture” and then you can shoot. They’re also fellow hackers, and it’s great to hang out.
Or there’s long exposure. Or just being careful where you point the lens. There are tons of ways to get good photos while still respecting peoples’ privacy.
But in the end, “hey can I take a picture” isn’t that hard, and it’s the right thing to do, even in the normal world.
Like I said, I didn’t resent the rule. The problem was just that my project was a 360 degree stereoscopic video camera. It was infeasible to ask consent, because everyone in the hacker hall would have been in frame at all times. It was better to just leave it in the bag, and if I’d understood the culture ahead of time I’d have left it at home.
Since we’re stereotyping, I can tell you’re the kind of person to be offended by horrible concepts such as ‘social justice’
Came here to post two of the things mentioned in the article – organizers shouldn’t provide anything except the venue and force people to bring a hack.
E.g. charge exorbitant prices, bring something to show off and the price is cut in half, have a tent/display and the price is cut 3/4, give a talk or presentation and you attend free.
Very reasonable!
It’s only reasonable if you want to convey the message that money is an acceptable substitute for effort and/or creativity.
Which isn’t necessarily false – money is a rote contribution, but a contribution nonetheless – but I’m not sure if that’s what you wanted.
The money would gate keep it a bit. What would happen is rich “tourists” would still come along, and possibly they’d dominate in some circumstances. Certainly now I’m old, the idea of giving up the entire event to work a village doesn’t enthuse me like it used to.
I’ve just been to WHY and for the first time in 20+ years, I explored, I went to a few talks, lots of tents and other villages, and had a great time on 4 hours sleep, which is more than usual on all counts.
I’ve honestly been to a dozen hacker events where I’ve seen a single talk by a friend from the same village, and that’s all. I’ve been to all the big events, and never really learned anything because I’ve been flat out working, teaching locks and lock picking.
WHY was the first time I just camped, went to cool things, and had a different type of fun. And of course I still spent probably 12+ hours in the lockpicking area over ~3 days. I just wasn’t committed to being there running it.
tl;dr: don’t burn yourself out by running things for decades.
I was about to say that is stupid after the first sentence – as forcing your attendee to bring a hack is just such a can of worms, and would deny access to many people you would want to come – as what constitutes an acceptable hack, and no doubt many would claim next year can’t be the more refined/complete version of this years hack. Along with problems like I might be able to bring some drawings, video clips etc if my recent hacking is large but it isn’t practical or potentially even possible to transport it…
But adding a ‘you’re boring’ tax to the price of entry if you are not bringing anything to show might work – though again who judges if this hack is worthy, how do you keep the space feeling accessible to newcomers etc. Seems to me the right move is just to keep things smaller and have a rule printed bold on the tickets that whomever is deemed by popular vote to be most/least interesting gets rewarded/punished for it – not a precondition for entry, as that just leads to more work for the handful of organisers and you only get their personal bias.
And what counts anyway? There’s always amazing stuff that’s been there before – everyone loves World of Techno, it’s a brilliant staple of these camps!
But I’ll never forget that, nearly 3 decades ago, I was admiring 2 beautiful light-up costume effects on two beautiful goth ladies at an event, and one of them said to me “I created and soldered all this myself. She just bought a kit from Maplin.” Gatekeeping? Bitchiness? 99% of the people there had zero electronics! (I had a home made HUD camera system)
That sounds like something I’d personally hate just from the name, but I don’t know this from experience.
But still I’d be happy it is there for everyone else even if I hate it personally, and that is rather the point you shouldn’t be gatekeeping an event like this based on only the organiser’s personal taste, as that would make for a very dull event, especially the second time you attend.
So your goth ladies with a relatively low effort off the shelf creation should still be welcomed, as they should be even if they hadn’t yet done anything ‘hackworthy’ at all – How are they supposed to learn the ‘acceptable’ styles of hack, especially that long ago if they are actively kept out! For them to wish to be there at all shows their interest in learning and hopefully sharing, as no doubt they also have some skills most of the regulars lack and could learn from too – in this case probably some ability with a sewing machine or leather work to create their light up costume – the electronics are off the shelf, but actually getting them to work in a softer more textile environment would be the hack that many of us probably can’t get right. (As somebody who can sew moderately well I know its way way more nuanced a skill than it sounds before you try it).
Perfect, what a great way to put people off getting into the scene and gatekeep.
Sometimes you need a gate though.
Not every event needs to be made for beginners. I’m OK with skill-gating.
okay stupid question… something like wasteland… that looks super cool, but where does all of that go after the event is over? I can understand storing a wig and some pads in a box, but what about those walls? Where did they get those faux guns and those walls? Where do they put it when they’re done?
There are plenty of roleplayers and reenacters that store more than a full cargo van of stuff all year long to bring it out for one week(end) a year. I guess those people do the same.
This. Completely this.
Can’t comment on Wasteland, but the friends I hang out with have a whole village in storage.
I understand much of it is warehoused locally. The staff are even provided with trunks where they can store their gear they don’t want to lug home.
Consider that it’s not just a fun lil art project, it’s run as a business much like a ren faire or an industry convention.
Some large metal sculptures from Burning Man are stored by artists in their studios. For example, the studio called Reared in Steel is in my home town of Petaluma, California. Here is an article about it: https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/62046 . The studio is near a main road, and the pieces are stored outside, so you can glimpse them over the fence as you drive by. It’s pretty cool!
Sounds a bit gatekeeper-ish. On the other hand, I side with Groucho Marx.
It’s going to be a Darwinian filter in the end. People who have stifling gatekeeping and neuroses (such as a certain cohort of fanatics still worried about covid when throwing a conference in 2025, meanwhile every other industry on Earth is having conferences just fine) are going to lose out to people who do not have that hangup.
There will be things which could be considered “hacker spaces” and conventions, they just won’t include that particular milieu of annoying harridans. Which in my opinion is a great benefit. As you can probably tell, I can’t stand those people.
Do you suppose that an imposed limit can replicate the “vibe” of a happening that was inherently limited by the number that existed of passionately interested participants?
I ask purely from curiosity. I’ve attended virtually nothing of a hacker/maker bent. The thought of a festival is quite offputting to me so I can see where you’re coming from there.
I enjoy hanging out with one or two people with common interests and working on something together. But, a Nerdapalooza would get a hard pass from me.
A smaller event can be in a proper hotel, rather than a field! This appeals more, the older I get!
I have no problem with an outdoors event, but air mattresses can die in a fire, and Thermarests don’t cut it any more.
But there is a solution to combining a proper bed with an outdoors event, even without requiring a caravan or a camper with the associated hassle (often limited numbers and a ticket uplift) and it’s called a tent trailer.
First world problems at its best 😂
Some people here live in a daily stress of not dying from a flying bomb, you complain about going to a festival and meeting people who dare talk to you about things they find interesting. Wtf is wrong with you?
I guess you missed the part about not being lectured to by activists?
As for existential dread from unpreventable death, anyone with their head screwed on straight is well aware of the fact they are one distracted driver away from not getting home, or may die from any number of “first world problems”.
The likelihood and nature of their misfortune doesn’t make the complaint illegitimate.
Why should we act like third-worlders when we have the luxury to worry about other things? Not everyone’s life has to suck. Sorry yours does, I guess.
What can I say here, except that my awareness of some of the world’s problems due to my other work is umcomfortably more than my work here at Hackaday would seem to indicate. I don’t want to bring that to hacker events, and i am certain that my friends don’t either.
By that logic, nothing matters and we should all do nothing fun and be sad and depressed all the time.
And all flay ourselves raw so that we understand suffering.
Ah, but that’s not real suffering without the salt showers too!
Free Palestine, for sure, but again, don’t destroy yourself thinking of nothing else.
Lets turn that around?
Suppose you were at a hippy pity party, wearing your ‘terrorist snot rag’ and everything, but someone insisted on talking about nothing but the new ‘Sucky Singer w Giant Tatas’ album?
That’s you…Don’t be so sure you are right.
WTF is wrong with YOU?
Are you 12?
If that was a troll well played. If it was serious get help.
Oh brother. Next time you personally care about something in your life, anything at all, I hope someone immediately pipes up and points out that somebody in the third world is currently starving and has HIV and is stepping on a land mine, and that this invalidates everything you said. In as rude and insufferable a manner as possible.
My only real complaint about hacker spaces is the nearest one to me is over by the Portland Oregon Airport and I’m all the way out near Forest Grove over an hour’s drive away. We need more of them.
Start one?
I’m assuming the author is going to be reading the comments on this, so here’s my take:
To start this off, I actually kind-of agree with the general idea that hacker culture/activities have (to an extent) gotten diluted. I think there’s a degree of truth to the claims that there has been a generic festival element and more broad-spectrum political activism which has encroached on the original focus of this stuff.
I also think your four-rule model is a great idea! It’s also been my experience that the two most predictive elements of my enjoyment of just about any group event has been a combination of small (but not too small) size and active participation from everyone involved.
That being said, there’s something about the first part of your post I’d like to pick at a bit.
(I’m not sure how to properly convey my intended tone here (it’s not upset), so read the following in a combination of an “amused” and “really?” tone.)
From arguably its inception, “hacker” culture (or at least its more known proponents) has always branded itself with an undercurrent of ideological activism, although often in a way that was arguably self-serving but framed in a way that presented its activities in a noble light.
As the internet was first emerging, there was “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” (https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence).
When I was in my early teens and had gotten my hands on Hacking: The Art of Exploitation by Jon Erickson (still a great book), in the introduction there was a passage that read:
“Like many forms of art, hacking was often misunderstood. The few who got it formed an informal subculture that remained intensely focused on learning and mastering their art. They believed that information should be free and anything that stood in the way of that freedom should be circumvented. Such obstructions included authority figures, the bureaucracy of college classes, and discrimination.”
Notably, there was also a passage (emphasis on the sentence following the em dash) that almost immediately followed this, which read:
“Age, race, gender, appearance, academic degrees, and social status were not primary criteria for judging another’s worth— not because of a desire for equality, but because of a desire to advance the emerging art of hacking.”
Generally, if you asked people involved in “hacking” culture why they were involved in it, you would usually get some mix of “making cool stuff” and “promoting freedom”. Because of that second part, whether implicit or explicit, there was always this underlying sub-current in “hacking” culture and techno-optimism more broadly that it was a movement which was concerned with promoting “freedom” more broadly.
And truthfully, I don’t think that’s the case for a lot of people involved. A lot of people just want to “build cool stuff” and couldn’t care less about politics more broadly (until it affects them personally, of course).
And you know what? That’s fine.
It’s perfectly fine to have a community solely built around the idea of building and doing cool things, but if you attach any sort of philosophical/ideological element to it in a significant way, it’s not unreasonable to expect people who identify with that philosophical/ideological element to make that a significant focus of their involvement with that community.
This last part is a specific nit pick. I don’t know the specific nature of what happened so it’s difficult (if not outright impossible) for me to make an informed comment on the situation, but I’m really tired of people throwing around buzzwords (“performative activist”) to try and discredit people and avoid engaging with any actual argument being made (assuming it’s in good faith) by implying that their motives aren’t genuine in the absence of any evidence to that effect. Was this person “playing” to a recording (not likely given the circumstances) or anyone around them? If the answer is no, then it wasn’t performative.
I am not sure whether or not you have been to a European hacker event, or if you are American. I can’t comment on US hacker culture, but I can on European, and I think there’s something offputting about some of ourevents.
As for performative activism, I’m very much a get your hands dirty and do the work activist in my work outside Hackaday. I have a keen nose for people who merely talk the talk to be in the in crowd.
” I can’t comment on US hacker culture”
Wait, we have culture?
Sounds sort of elitist to me, what is wrong with somebody just showing up at an event just to see what others have done? I have never been to an official “hackers” event, the closest I have been was some years back a small local robot event/ show, I have never made a robot but I found even the small simple robots interesting in how some people really did distill something down to simple and elegant, a rather nice afternoon as I remember, but I had nothing to bring (this was before I even figured out how to blink a LED with a micro-computer) so I would have been denied entrance according to the above criterion. And who knows what young kid might have been inspired by the event to go into engineering?
Is there something wrong with elitism? Are actual elites (in talent and achievement) required to entertain the less capable? Sounds kind of entitled to me. You wouldn’t have to worry about elitism if you got good at something.
There’s nothing wrong with people showing up with nothing.
But when everyone does it, you are no longer at a hacker event, you’re at a festival.
Exactly. And if it’s a volunteer run event, good luck making it go with all tourists!
LARPing is not hacking.
Not even if you ‘hacked’ up your costume.
Any hacking was secondary.
Which isn’t to say that some costume hacks aren’t cool, but the costume party isn’t about the hacks.
Also:
‘Hacking’ is not art, it’s not easy to define, but it’s not just a synonym for or subset of ‘art’.
The main problem with real hacking type events, the RATIO.
I propose a revision:
Bring an actual hack or a girl for free admission.
One nerd per woman.
Especially if you show up with genuine interest in what’s on show and how it was built (which is a form of ‘not nothing’ I guess).
While that’s hard to show to a door/gate person, being denied access based on lack of a physical item to demo would be bad form.
But indeed, it’s a numbers (or rather ratio) thing.
hacking/making is very much a lifestyle. it consumes a lot of a persons time, it really is their passion. Hacker events are socially unique for hackers as they spend most of their time working on hacks/making things. so what they expect when going to a meet is that they will be inspired by other hackers and fuel their passions. there are more then enough people working on hacks and related projects to justify meet ups.
When events are treated as entertainment for people who are attracted to hacker culture but do not contribute to it in anyway, the hackers who are there to share knowledge are left without parity for their intellectual contribution, and can be demoted to at best educating people who are interested in them in what and why they are doing it becoming a performance act, or worse, a lab rat. This is not conducive to the cultivation of knowledge between like minded people.
the four tenant’s proposed in this article are sound.
Thank you for this comment!
Now I feel like I understood the reason behind the article and why gatekeeping could be usefull here.
In the end it depends on what kind of people the organiser want to attract and I’m sure there is also a place for hacking festivals.
your reply read to me like a screed against youtube videos :)
Does it?
People creating Youtube vids know they’ll get little if any exchange of ideas in return, just views, comments (a lot of them ranging between off-topic and downright stupid) and maybe a bit of monetisation.
Hackers at a hacker camp can expect constructive comments, assistance in overcoming problems or just sparring. Not from everyone, but there’s almost always enough of that to make it worthwhile.
Most Youtube videos deserve all the screed they get…and probably deserve a lot more.
Hands down this is the article of the year.
No to central planning, govt grants, politics and apathetic spectating; yes to local, self-organised events where people do stuff and get to know each other. thank you Jenny!
a strategy i have heard of being used occasionally by festival organisers trying to maintain their niche is to deliberately schedule to coincide with a large commercial event likely to be attractive to the kind of spectator-attendees that you don’t want too many of
Good hack.
I feel that I would LOVE to attend a Hacker Camp.
I feel that I would LOVE to present something. I have done so before at Maker Faires, many years ago.
But damn. I have a family, a full time job and am not as young as I once was. Most of the time I would LOVE to attend a nap. The idea of attending an event as a spectator sounds like a lot of energy to muster up but that would pay off. But to gather enough energy to present though… Maybe some day? Would it be weird to show up when I am even older and retired?
You’d get to be the genuine greybeard full of that esoteric obsolete knowledge that most of the folks there would find interesting/horrifying and just maybe enlightening, doesn’t seem too weird to me.
At least if you still feel like it would be an event you want to go at that point in your life, the whole age is just a number type concept really does seem to apply to these sort of things quite well in both directions age wise – if you are feeling like you want to go you probably fit in pretty well.
Hi Jenny. We met at EMF sometime ago. I was one of the folks who helped build and design the first Cybar (the one in the image in your article there). You might not remember as it was a long time ago. My main contribution was the Polybius logo, fit-out as well as a lot of driving to and fro!
I’m glad you liked the original Cybar – I did too, but sometime after, I felt that ‘Cyberpunk’ might not be something worth celebrating. Folks kept asking me for t-shirts and merch related to the Cybar and I wondered if people had missed the point – “big corps trampling over your freedom isn’t something to aspire to”. It was quite perverse in a way. Point being is that Cyberpunk is just an aesthetic now – it’s performative. Your article suggests that there’s a lot of that going on in hacker festivals. I’d suggest that – as glad as I am that you liked what I helped make – it’s also an example of style with no real world consequence (aside from, you know, it being festival-like fun).
But I’d say maybe consider that the point of these festivals may not be what you want or need and that is no bad thing? Growth and evolution, whether it be good or bad, is better than stagnation I’d argue. In the early days, the scrappy, hacker like challenges were a lot of fun and the folks who came along were mostly folks from a particular hacking background. That has given way to a festival atmosphere where folks younger to the scene can get ‘an in’.
You mention the “bring a hack” with you as a sort of ‘way to get involved’ but also ‘setting expectations’. That leans a bit too close to literal gatekeeping. Now some say gatekeeping, others might say ‘upholding values’ or ‘get involved, you’ll love it’. But who gets to decide? The community as a whole? How would you bring that about? It doesn’t sound particularly inviting.
A related example: the demoscene does a reasonable job of this with events like Revision in particular. I’m not obliged to make a demo – I can just go – but if I do make one and enter, I feel involved and get more out of it. The festival is thus neatly designed to “encourage” folks to get involved. I think festivals like EMF do the same.
You point out some of the more performative political aspects but if we are going to stereotype, lets double down and suggest that the person you describe with blue hair and piercings was probably also young – maybe this is their first brush with such concepts? Perhaps your role, as an old-hand in the hacking game, is to help guide such folks?
I don’t think wasteland weekend is a good example to draw from here. The goal there is visual consistency to create an escapist fantasy, not promoting ‘hacker culture’. Indeed, a more careful analysis of what hacker culture actually is, and how it might have changed, might be worth looking at.
All in all, hackers are still hacking in various corners of the world. Perhaps the big camps are not as singularly focused as they once were but I dispute that this is a problem. I would say they are spaces to learn a wider variety of things of a related nature whilst having some fun along the way. I don’t doubt smaller festivals will pop up, as you describe, but other groups are popping up with the hacker-ethos and non-performative, real-world consequences. I find the repair-cafe movement is the next step on my personal hacking journey. Maybe the thing to do is get a Jenny-micro-hack-a-day festival going in the UK? See how it pans out?
My perception of the majority of big name events is very much a YouTube analog – lots of watching, not much doing – partly because some of the tech/hacks have got to a level beyond many in terms of time, knowledge & tools. And the arms race of e-waste (badges) really highlights that complexity.
If the event is clear on outcomes & facilities, it should then attract like minded people. No booked music, food or bar but have easy access to shops. Encourage (gamify, reward, recognise (certificates, medals)) performance pieces in the evenings – music, cheesy disco, poetry. Provide a shared cooking environment for those that don’t have the gear, perhaps some group meals. Have some hard cover accomodation for those who need it.
But mostly focus on what the hack you will get out of it across three or four related topics – for instance robots: motors, sensing, telemetry, mission control. So those starting out can learn and those that have a evil genius plan can recruit some minions for a build fest. Make sure it’s not all soldering or coding but a good mix of both. Include asthetics in to the mix. Have an early evening mass show & tell.
Limited numbers – check, not seeing any of the same faces the next day is not community building.
Self replicating – write a manual if only bullet points & URLS, do a post event review
Village led – tricky, but need to ensure coverage & balance across the theme, perhaps provide a way for individuals to sign up to a village to bring people together and have some no topic villages for those learning or roving or with their own (related) vision.
Bring a hack – at a minimum, tool box, parts and any work-in-progress
And only let them leave if they have one full bin bag of rubbish – clear up is a b1tc8!
THAT is a very good point. Whether for a hacker camp, a festival, or even a weekend BBQ. I’m sure a lot of people here have been involved in both the pre-planning of such an event, but also been the suckers left at the end who have to clean up the mountains of garbage. We can also make this a bit easier by having lots of bins/recycling points available during the event, and making sure those bins get emptied frequently during the event, not just piled up in a mountain until the end.
Serious disclaimer—this is coming from of the world’s worst offenders of people who pine for “…the good ol’ days…”.
It seems as though the biggest problem here is psychological—and that hacker camps and maker spaces are the victims of evolution; that not only do we not know what to do about it, but that it can’t be stopped.
There is a longing for something we used to have and know that it is disappearing, and we want it back.
This article and comments are filled with examples of how venues / situations are inexorably becoming more scarce [this happens all the time, in all walks of life—cf. the enormous efforts expended to build a completely new steam locomotive, the Peppercorn-class ‘Tornado’, replete with everything wrong with traditional steam locomotives, including the the one thing which could have resulted in a major decrease in maintenance costs—the outright rejection of this (brand-new-design) locomotive’s being oil-fired]
1) Second Law of Thermodynamics: entropy increases.
2) Old saying: “The only thing good about the good old days is that they’re gone.”
I’d suspect the biggest psychological component at work is that the organisers love the buzz of the numbers and have somewhat lost sight of the outcomes.
Having x,000’s of attendees and a badge that can run a medium LLM and known music acts and celebrity speakers and a selection of fine ales at the bar and cuisine from around the globe – fine, if that’s your bag.
So when people pine for the good ‘ol days, they are still available, it just needs to be organised & run to that nostalgic vision. The question is, when people do the pining, can they articulate what it is that they pine for and more importantly, would they participate in it?
NB: I’ve no problem with community events where people largely just hang out, but I do wonder what could be achieved with some people in a field collaborating on something cool.
There is no single ‘good old days’ status to return to. Even if you only look at the Dutch every-four-years camps, they have been continuously changing. The first one I went to (HEU in 1993) was very focused on digital rights and on computer security (mostly how to defeat it). There was a tiny bit of making, and no villages. And, as I recall, only one of the attendees was female. OHM in 2013 was a real flowering of making, and also the first time I really noticed families with children attending. Everything changes every time. Someone might (very reasonably) have a favourite place on this spectrum, but it’s not like there was a time when all the camps were the same.
And yes, even a few people in a field working on some hacks is a delightful experience. You don’t really need any infrastructure, just find a campsite with power and take a few friends. I recommend it.
I’ve noticed there’s a certain type of person who gets extremely uncomfortable when others comment that things are changing and it’s for the worse, and they instantly reach for these lofty tropes about how “change is inevitable” and “it’s ALWAYS like this, you just started noticing” and you generally sound very desperate to shut people up and keep them from pointing out that something they don’t like is currently happening.
Weird rambling non-sequitur nonsense about a locomotive…
Can’t stand your type either, it’s mutual. People talk about a social outlet they used to have a couple years ago and how they miss it, and how they might bring it back, and you try to slyly conflate it with some other ambiguous “good ol’ days…” I wonder what is being implied there? Hmm.
It’s incredibly slimy.