End of Summer Update

Remember when I used to record podcasts about social issues with guests from around the world? Well this is not one of those. I do discuss issues, in addition to things that have been going on; journeys, etc. All this from the comfort of my new home while making a dam fine cup of chai. If you enjoy me talking about life and the world for about 40 minutes, give this one a listen. Also you may enjoy Kate’s ukulele songs from hacker camp a few weeks ago. Well worth a listen!

Important announcement: a live podcast event this September 27th in Amsterdam! Yes. I’m launching the Realities Podcast (website almost ready), a production of citizenreporter, carrying on the tradition of this program’s candid, human conversations, only this time they will be done live with an audience! And you can be in that audience, if you can make it to Amsterdam in the coming month. Read all about it and sign up if you can be there for this most historic event.

Remembering Raja Oueis

On February 11th, 2015 my friend Raja Oueis passed away at the age of 27. I was lucky enough to meet Raja at hacker camp (OHM) in 2013. We spent several happy days exploring that crazy carnival of creativity, an event that we always looked back on with fondness. Not long after we were able to meet again, in Amsterdam and at the Hacker congress in Hamburg. Each in person meeting would be a joyous occasion for eating, laughing, thinking out loud  and plotting future hanging out oppertunities. It seemed only right, I think for both of us, that we did meet and become friends. One of those classic cases of someone you feel like you always knew from the first moment you speak.

Sadly over the past year, as Raja fought a daunting battle against cancer, our communication would be limited to short conversations online. I convinced myself that there would be time, that despite everything, we would get to sit and talk and drink chai and discuss matters of the heart one last time. Just as it felt meant to be that we would become friends, naturally fate would allow us one more chance to talk til the wee hours of the morning. But time ran out on us. My ticket to Beirut reads March and Raja’s ticket to another dimension seems to have been set for February.

Thankfully, though it is hardly enough, during those happy days camping among some of the kindest and most creative people on the planet, we turned on a microphone and together with many friends and strangers, talked about what we were experiencing and why it was special to us. In this podcast I’ll revisit those moments with Raja. Though his voice is one of many in these recordings, his wonderful answers mean even more to me now. I wish we had left the recorder on for so many more hours and days. But thats not how it works, I suppose. Nevertheless, I consider myself lucky to have known him and I’m pleased to be able to share this little tiny piece of such a larger than life human being.

Chaos Communication Camp 2011 Vlog

A video of 5+ minutes is in no way sufficient to explain 5 days of non-stop creativity that was CCC2011. But in an effort to give people who weren’t there a glimpse of this unique event, I present to you a video entry about hacker camp.  Note that it comes with no soundtrack other then exactly the audio that was captured with each video snippet. This is because I believe there is no need to try and add to the energy already present in these wonderful and perhaps strange moments.  Enjoy!

Gathering that Changes the World

Half awake having just brushed my teeth, I stumbled back towards my tent, past a few retired green Mig-21 jetfighters when I heard the familiar sound of Portuguese being spoken.  I greeted the two gentlemen, and learned they were from a prestigious Portuguese newspaper, attending hacker camp to produce content about open leaks. Open Leaks is a new initiative for facilitating leaks online, created by a former frontman of wikileaks.  These two gentlemen were not alone in their quest, as the five days of lectures, workshops, parties, and general randomness went on, I met several mainstream journalists who told me of a similar goal, to write about leaks.  Each time I met such journalists, I was compelled to tell them about the scale and breadth of the 3,000+ community attending this event, as well as those who attend virtually.  I spoke about the people who build things, the people who take things apart, the people who travel around the world in an effort to use their knowledge to solve problems, and the people who stay home trying to do the same.  My big wish by doing so, was to make sure journalists understood that our world is not just about wikileaks and anonymous, though they have surely played a part. Our world is massive and more diverse then perhaps the media is prepared to understand.  Our interests and specialties are endless, and worthy of any article or report about this event.

Of course sometimes it is not for any one person to tell someone about this, as they have experience it for themselves.  But as the days went on I noticed them sitting with different people, observing different events and random occurrences that so often make up the average day at hacker camp.  Walk around and you might stumble upon someone building a tesla coil or a crepe machine, sit in one place and a 6 propellor drone might land next to you. Whatever you choose to do at camp, you would have to be tied up and wrapped in a sleeping bag to not experience a unique energy and overload of creativity.  Nothing is impossible here. Nothing is uninteresting here. Everyone has something to offer, whether they know it or not.

And so the Chaos Communication Camp 2011 came and went. Some never wanted it to end. Some needed it to end for their own health . It was exciting, it was tiring. It was inspiring, it was maddening.   Whoever you are, journalist or hacker, or even neither, if you were there, you lived one of the most amazing times of your life. Even if you haven’t realized it yet.

Hacker Camp 2009 Impressions

In many ways it is as if we never left. 2 years ago I sat at a picnic table under a tarp on the Polish-German border on the site of a former East German military base with a couple of thousand hackers and general purpose nerds.  2 years later here I sit, this time somewhere in the Netherlands, in the infamous Metalab tent filled with Vienna’s creative and hilarious geek crew.  To my left and right, tiny laptops connected to several layers of wires. In front of me, beyond a few more piles of wires and what looks like a virtual reality unit from the 80’s, several pale and half-asleep campers are tending to the Austrian breakfast.  It’s 12:36pm. 2007, 2009, its as if we just unpaused after the last camp.

It is always difficult to properly describe the scale and degree of amazing these gatherings are. I’ve only been a member of the community since 2005, but in these few years I’ve fallen in love with the attitude, atmosphere, and insanity of hacker camp and hacker gatherings in general. Yet when it comes up in conversation with those who have never experienced it, my words are met with giggles and eyes rolling, again- how to explain what happens here?

Last night as I stopped by the Italian embassy tent, I was greeted, as per tradition, by Italian hackers with grappa and cookies. Earlier they were surely cooking pasta in huge vats right next to their own huge pile of wires and laptops.  As I attempted to drink the powerful drink, cheering from the Austrian village caught my attention. Overhead, some kind of balloon creation consisting of mass quantities of glow sticks and a well designed frame powerful by 3 oversized helium balloons.  2 members of the lab climb atop the circa 1980’s Austria Telecom phonebooth to get a better vantage point for holding the rope the balloons are tethered to. In the semi-dark, hordes of hackers stop to cheer on the flying contraption, some calling on the rope holders to “set it free!”  Eventually nature takes control and the cord snaps, the flying spaghetti monster fights its way through a line of trees and floats up into the night sky like some kind of rainbow creature heading towards the moon. More cheers, campers move on to the next big tent and whatever project those people are working on.

Blinking lights, house music, machines copying themselves, French hackers making crepes, and the last remaining imaginary soviet republic with its own tent embassy, the list of creative or uncreative ideas is neverending here.  I spent much of my second day walking from tent to tent asking different groups about their healthcare system.  I ran into enthusiastic Scandinavians, a Brazilian sitting between tents on his laptop, a Slovak on his way to the bar, and a friendly Romanian gentleman who has found the perfect shade trees under which to position his tents.  As he and I discuss the healthcare system in Romania, hacker children splash around in the small lake around which the camp is set up.  Just behind us is the rather un-camp-like American house, where a group of American hackers are housed, I can hear their loud conversations about some technical topics I don’t understand.  I’m told the American hacker house makes good breakfasts, something to keep in mind for my last few days here.

It is now 1pm. The sun is blazing and even more people are filing into this tent. They’re coming to watch the replicator machine replicate itself. It is behind me and the constant buzz buzz sound of plastic being cut or drilled or whatever that thing does, it provides great writing music.  Time to load up on water, grab my mobile internet device and camera, and head out to see how camp looks after yet another night of beautiful madness.