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.
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!
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.
Sounds a bit gatekeeper-ish. On the other hand, I side with Groucho Marx.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What, you don’t like performance artists who get hired by people to fulfill their fantasies, their deep dark fantasies? Van Darkholme was going to be a movie star, with modelling and acting. After a hundred or two auditions and small parts, he decided he had enough. Then he got into escort work. The client requested a lot of fetishes. So he just decided to go full master and changed his entire house into a dungeon, dungeon master, with a full dungeon in his house, and its gone really well. Fisting is 300 bucks. Usually the guy is pretty much high on popper, to really get relaxed, and he has this long latex glove that goes all the way up to his armpit. Then he puts on a surgical latex glove up to his wrist. And just lube it up. It’s a long process to get his whole arm up there. But its an intense feeling for the other person, he thinks for himself too. He goes to places, that even though it’s physical, with his hand, for some reason it’s also more emotional. It’s more psychological too. They both reach the same place, it’s really strange at the same time. And he found with a session like that it’s really exhausting.
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?