the missing eyebrow

A weekend of geekery in a field.

The Nottinghack village, a beacon in the night!

I’ve just returned from the long anticipated Electro Magenetic Field camp at Pineham Park, Milton Keynes. I’ll be honest and say that I was expecting chaos to rein at the camp but was massively surprised how organised and slick (in a good way) the whole operation was. I think I’d have benefited from a site visit prior to the camp to easy my mind about the site, as it really was much more pleasant than it looked on paper or even on Google Earth.

As I work for a government agency that has something to do with sewage and water, I was very aware of the huge sewage plant next to the site and the sorts of aroma such a place is capable of generating from time to time. Not only that, but childhood memories of growing up next to the busy A1 road made me wonder how noisy the M1 was going to be. As it turned out we had the wind in the right direction most of the time pushing the smell and the noise away a bit. Even so I thought the site was pleasant.

my van with Mythbusters paper on the bonnet

Nottingham Hackspace wanted to have a really good presence at the camp and I think this was achieved through achieving our ambitious plans. We had a large number of Gazebos that we could tag together fairly easily making a sort of semi-enclosed space. We had large amounts of hand tools in Martin, Ben’s and my tool boxes as well as soldering irons, lots of sockets to plug in, colouring books and knitting by Kate, the vinyl plotter and the laser cutter in the back of my van. In many ways we were better equipped than we ever were in Hackspace 1.0 and really had a bigger site, and all that in a field.

We made our living village around the back. Jame’s fire pit and 10 hay bales as seating surrounded by our tents. In the end that choice backfired on me as I hadn’t considered what a draw the fire would be to visitors, many of whom stay until 3 or 4 in the morning chatting laughing and having a good (but loud) time. The Hacking area of the village was often in use until just as late too. At one point Martin Raynsford was showing people how to make “Useless Machines” at gone 4am whilst Sam-the-techie and RepRap Matt thrashed out code for the TILDA camp badge.

laser setup in the back of my van

There were a load of talks scheduled across a couple of large tents with stages Ben Goldacre spoke about Big Pharma, it was a personable and well delivered talk but I felt he was preaching to the choir to some existent. Goldacre was trying a few ideas for a talk on Big Pharma and did get a few laughs, mostly when he said “this story doesn’t have a Gillian McKeith or to give her full medical title Gillian McKeith” though the talk had nothing to do with McKeith so was a bit like sticking with something that gets you a laugh in another talk, McKeith is (rightfully) finished as a serious entity much thanks to Goldacre for that but... be a little more magnanimous in victory? He also got a few laughs when he said fuck. I was pleased to see a big name like Goldacre at the event and hope to see similar luminaries at the next camp.

My favourite talk was probably Tom Scott’s Science Fiction monolog done before a 5 minute and 18 second video presentation. If he posts it up I’ll put a link. This short story was delivered to the Beta Stage audience immediately following Tom and Charles talk about their experiences on Gadget Geeks last year. It was very funny and very interesting.

We were delighted to see our friends from TOG Dublin (Rob, Jeffery and Conner) as well as Richard from Bristol Hackspace who showed a number of us how to make Sporks from sheet metal. Bob from HacMan also stayed with us at the Nottinghack village as did Build Brightons Andrew, Toby and Mike. Also loads of friends from the London Hackspace dropped by, Heather and Sulli, SamLR, Sam-The-Techie, Ken, Jonty, Russ and all the others.

Hay Henge on the last day pack up

The whole thing was very well organised. I'd half expected it to be chaos and totally disorganised. On paper it shouldn't have worked. The organisers did a brilliant job, the power and data was spot on! The showers were good, the toilets were clean. There was food drink and a great atmosphere. It really was the highlight of what has been a truly great summer of hacking for me. I simply can't wait for 2014 and the next camp. Thank you to the EMF team. Amazing hard work and an amazing event.