This summer’s Electromagnetic Field hacker camp in a field in western England gave many of the European side of our community their big fix of cool stuff for the year.

Some lucky individuals can spend the year as perpetual travelers, landing in a new country every week or so for the latest in the global round of camps. For the rest of us it is likely that there will be one main event each year that is the highlight, your annual fill of all that our global community has to offer. For many Europeans the main event was the biennial British event, Electromagnetic Field. From a modest start in 2012 this has rapidly become a major spectacle, one of the ones to include in your calendar, delivered both for our community and by our community.

The Race for Tickets

For me the event began in January with a split-second attempt to catch one of the first tranche of tickets. The website returned a 500 error within about a second, so I had a nail-biting wait for a few weeks to secure one from a later batch. Meanwhile it was out with a couple of talk submissions, because delivering a talk is one way to give something back to the event and the breadth of experience revealed in them from the far corners of our community never ceases to amaze.

Through the spring and summer the event went from being something in the distant future to being uncomfortably close. We had a Hackaday village for the first time, so there was a gazebo to source, a table, some chairs, and of course the Hackaday and Tindie swag that we all know and love. There was also a personal project to produce, which I’ll get to a bit later.

A Lot of Camping for a Little Hatchback

All this led to my trusty little European hatchback being laden to the bump stops for the couple of hours on the motorway from Oxfordshire to the camp, and with a not-very-competitive Hacky Racer on its roof. The site itself is set back about a mile from the road down a narrow lane, and to reach it you drive over a fold in the land. The marquees of Electromagnetic Field rose like magic from the surrounding trees, lending a frisson of excitement to arrival. The most anticipated event of my year had begun.

Choosing Your Plot is Key

Choosing where to site a hacker camp village is a process that reflects the character of your community. Many hackerspaces choose to hang out at the quiet end of the field, some opt to be close to the bar, and others consider geographical factors such as elevation for radio amateurs. For Hackaday, we want to be in the centre of things, the …read more

Source:: Hackaday