Episode: 4237
Title: HPR4237: My First OggCamp Experience
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4237/hpr4237.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 21:53:25

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4237 for Tuesday, the 29th of October 2024.
Today's show is entitled, My First Odd Camp Experience.
It is part of the series Odd Camp.
It is hosted by Kevin and is about 22 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Kevin shares his thoughts on his first ever Odd Camp.
Hello, hello, this is Kevin and you're listening to another episode of HPR.
And I just actually wanted to talk about very briefly about my recent experience of Odd Camp,
224 in Manchester.
Now this was a total first for me.
I had never actually been to Odd Camp before.
I'd heard it was an unconference and to be honest, I was actually wondering,
how does an unconference work?
I mean, I know the theory behind it is that everybody turns up.
They put forward what they actually want to talk about and then, you know,
generally it's usually voted upon or something.
But I've often thought, whoa, how does this actually work?
And I have to confess, I don't believe that Odd Camp is actually a true unconference.
Why do I say that?
Because I booked the tickets as soon as they were available.
And then not long after that, I actually saw that there was a schedule.
And I was thinking, how can an unconference have a schedule?
But anyway, let's go with it.
Like I said, I honestly didn't know what to expect.
And when we got there, we got there on the Friday I was travelling with Andrew.
They know us McNally.
Then we got there on the Friday and we met up quite a few different people.
It was actually great to meet.
I don't want to actually start running through names purely because I know I'm going to forget somebody.
And I don't want to come back and edit.
And also, I don't really want to start insulting people by somebody I spent the whole weekend
without forgetting to mention them.
So I will actually say that the whole weekend was fantastic for meeting up.
I mean, that was probably my one highlight from the weekend.
The biggest highlight was meeting up with all these guys.
Now, for those of you who don't know me, I live up in the Isle of Lewis.
So take conferences, open socials, not a lugging and like that.
These things just don't happen here.
And to be honest, they're not actually great as far as throughout Scotland that I've seen anyway.
So this was really was the first time that I had met an awful lot of people.
Not everybody, but an awful lot of people.
I had spoken to them plenty of the time.
I'd actually spoken to quite a few people who I had just spoken to through a VoIP.
And it was funny.
I actually didn't have a face for them.
And you know, I don't know if anybody else is guilty of this,
but you tend to have an idea and your own head as to what people might look like.
And it's funny because I actually turned out that all the people who didn't have advertising things
looked nothing like how I imagined it.
So it was nice to put a real face to that.
So, yes, we stayed at the Pendulum Hotel because I decided if I'm going to go,
I'm going to go for the whole experience.
I'm staying at the place where the conference is.
And that was fine.
The rooms I would say are okay.
I think they need a wee bit of modernization.
Let's say they're looking at wee bit dated the rooms.
The hotel itself is actually quite nice.
I mean, the foyer everywhere was lovely.
The breakfast we had were really good.
Actually, those sausages were fantastic.
I'm quite picky with my sausages.
But the sausages at breakfast time were really spot on.
The dinner's there.
We stayed there twice for eight.
And I have to confess, the food we got was nice.
The Friday was quite pricey because it wasn't the on-camp menu.
And the other day we stayed, it was a sandwich I got.
And it was okay.
It was nothing fancy, but it was perfectly adequate.
The one thing that I saw straight away was when we approaching the hotel
was outside that a sign saying, the garden bar, craft deals.
And I was like, ooh, craft deals.
Because I'm a beer drinker.
And I'm not a lager drinker.
So that got me very excited.
Unfortunately, that was a wee bit of a letdown.
Why?
Because there was one craft deal, craft, I see that was inverted commas,
was Timothy Taylor Landlord, which is a nice beer.
It's fine.
Would I call it craft?
No, not really.
It's a mass produced beer.
But okay, so I had that.
They didn't have anything on tap that I was interested in.
It was mostly lagerish and Guinness.
So then they had Timothy Taylor, brilliant, right?
Okay, I'll have that.
And after about three of those on the first night,
not saying three was sold all night, just three is what I had.
We were told that they had run out and they'd have to wait for the next delivery.
So we bit disappointed.
The other thing actually was that was disappointing was,
we had such a good time after the event when everybody could relax
and let there hear down a such, or in my case they hear that I don't have.
Then it was, we were having a good time yarning,
meeting up with everybody in the bar area.
And the first night they announced 10 o'clock last orders.
Being from Scotland, I'm like last orders,
I tend this just as unheard of.
And we were actually seeing a UCDs.
So 10 o'clock came and yes, right enough last orders.
And those of us who actually bought a drink at last orders,
were actually then told to go out to the foyer to drink it.
Which was a wee bit of an annoyance.
So yeah, so that was the only negative really that I would actually see
about the whole experience.
We had an adventurous last date night on the Saturday.
That was actually a very funny.
So we decided that we were going to go out for dinner.
And there was a place called the tap room.
And they sold a huge table pizza.
The idea was instead of buying for yourself,
you bought for the table.
So there were 24 inch pizzas.
And that loads of beers on.
There was no bad amount of such.
You went and actually poured your own.
Which was a really smart idea.
You just tapped your card against it.
And then you, well, you first of all selected,
do you want a pint, half pint,
some other thirds of pines?
And then pressed your card against it,
and you've got to fill that up.
So that was good.
But we had actually booked a table for half six.
We went in at half six, now six thirty p.m.
right?
We're not talking any unsusable hours.
And the group of us tried to order about three times.
And eventually Andrew actually decided,
no, I'm going to go get up and go and speak to somebody.
And the guy that he spoke to kind of wondered
often, didn't see anything.
And then we spoke to somebody else.
And eventually we told the kitchen's out of food.
We're thinking it's six thirty,
seriously.
Okay, right?
Could have told us that before we sat down.
And Dave Morris, who's very well known to HPR listeners,
he had then said there is, I'm actually
be honest, I'm really glad he said it.
He said there's a brew dog place up the road.
We had a good experience there before.
And for Dave, of course, he was the one who was walking
with a stick, so he was a wee bit slow.
And it turned out that this brew dog place was actually quite a bit further
away than he remembers.
So we walked quite a bit, actually recording a hail show
last night.
And to be given out a meal at brew dog,
and brew dog was actually relatively quiet about.
Maybe we found out why.
The sadness was a wee bit on the lacking side.
The beer was good, the food was good.
But, oh my word, the food just came out in drips and thrab.
Some people had finished their dinners,
and a bunch of other people hadn't even received their shit.
In fact, two of the HPR regulars,
Ken and Dave actually had to go up and chase their food,
because they actually didn't get it at all.
They had to almost reordered it.
So, yeah, it was a bit frustrating.
Although, I will give our due, when it came to pain,
the woman says that she applied student discount to her dinner,
because we had such a bad experience.
Although to be honest, I think Dave and Ken should have ate free.
It was that bad for them, the service.
The actual food was nice.
The beer was nice.
So, yeah, so that was generally my negative parts,
done and out of the way.
The rest of the weekend was great, and I have to confess,
I was really like a child on Christmas morning.
The whole thing, I just loved it.
Meeting up, when you got there,
you obviously registered on the morning,
and then there was a welcome talk.
That was with everybody in the main area.
And then, outside of that, there was an area where they had tables,
and they had the swap, the text swap.
They had the sponsors there, they had the stickers there,
and that was quite a kind of communal area.
And they had the main hall,
which was used for the main talk of the time.
There was two rooms, one and two,
which were just for the smaller talks.
And there was another theater, I can't remember the name of it,
but it was more like a universal lecture theater.
Ken did his talk there on how I'm reduced.
That's when the only time I was in a cotton theater, I think that was called.
But anyway, the names don't really mean much.
But those were all really good.
Now, I was thinking, when I saw all this, I thought, my word,
there was so much I wanted to go to as far as talks went.
And the problem is a lot of them overlap.
Some, especially in the main theater, what I know about,
some of the smaller venues were only half an hour.
And there were so many talks that actually I really wanted to go see so many.
I think in the end, I went to see about five or six,
not including the lightning talks.
But that doesn't sound like an awful lot.
But the problem was, I could talk into that many people, people who I said,
I'd never met, I'd spoken to on telegram, I'd spoken to things like mumble, et cetera,
or over time, but I had never actually met them in the Persian, in the flesh.
So that was excellent.
I actually went over to speak to the HPR guys.
And I missed my first talk, because I was talking to Dave,
Mr. X, and Ken.
And I spoke for that long.
I actually missed the entire of the first talk.
But in saying that, do I regret that?
Absolutely not, because that's what I felt like the whole point of it was.
It was, like I said, getting it meeting up with all these guys.
When it comes to the talks, the only one thing that I would say I would like to tweak about it
is that I went to some talks and I actually enjoyed it.
There's no talks I didn't enjoy.
However, I almost wish, I don't know how you would maybe do this.
But you know when I'm menu, where you get the spice rating, where it's like, you know,
okay, I can handle a wee bit of spice, one chili is fine.
But if it's three chilies, no, no, no, I'm not going to touch that.
I almost wish there was a technical level of talk.
Because I did go to two that I kind of could follow it.
But to be honest, it was a bit beyond me.
I wasn't a specialist in the area.
And some of it just went over my head.
It was just too much of a jump.
So I almost wish that there was a techy rating on the talk.
I don't know how you do that.
I mean, would it be, I don't know, would it be a number of penguins?
We tucks thing.
I don't know.
But I actually wish there was that rating.
Just because there was one talk in particular that I had two talks and I wanted to go to.
And they're on the same time.
I chose the one, unfortunately, the one I chose actually ended up being very techy,
very in detail for this specific subject.
Whereas I was just wanting more introduction to the subject if that makes sense.
But one thing I will say is that throughout the whole time,
the friendliness was one thing you really picked up on.
There was no, I don't know, why can I say this?
Superiority complex with most of the people talking,
you could come up to them.
They were very approachable.
They were saying talk.
It was funny.
There was one particular talk I was at and somebody asked a question and the response was,
I'll speak to you at the bar because obviously the guy knew that this was just too big an answer
to expansive an answer to discuss in front of the whole audience.
So that was really good.
Yeah, so the whole thing.
Now the unconference part was on the first day they had a whiteboard
and you put your posted notes onto a section.
Now I believe in the past to be voted on but this time to be honest,
there actually wasn't as many from what I heard as it had been before.
So instead of voted on, it was just the goal was let's fill up the talks.
There was quite a few actually available on Sunday afternoon.
I do remember that but Saturday was mostly filled.
This is on talk, even if they had none of these unconference talks,
they would still have been enough to fill in a schedule from the talks that were arranged.
So I liked actually both of them.
I think to be honest, I actually think I preferred hearing the unconference talks.
Why do I say that?
Because it was something that these guys were really passionate about.
It was something that they had clearly decided that they were going to put the talk up
and it's something that you could feel that enthusiasm for it.
That's maybe what the best way to describe it.
Now Dave had suggested, this is Dave Lee, this time as part of the Tuckstjam podcast
and I'm a member of, he had decided we should try doing our live show
in January all agreed.
I didn't believe for one minute that it would actually be voted on.
And I said, well, if we're going to a Tuckstjam show, let's be honest,
Tuckstjam for us, when we record it takes about four hours.
So we're going to have to take a double slot.
You could pick one slot or two slots.
So we slot us half an hour.
So we had decided that if we're going to do it, initially we were thinking
we'll just do it early and then we're deciding, well, no,
because we wanted to talk about the conference.
And if we did it early, we can't really talk about it.
So we decided to do it on Sunday afternoon.
So yeah, it was, like I said, that was our experience.
I did not expect, I know we're talking to audiences.
But normally when we talk to the audiences, we're recording.
We can delete the stuff we don't want to go out.
And then we have the Polish product out.
Of course, talking to our live show was something that I've never experienced before.
So that was some sort of talking to live audience on our live show, as you'll see.
So yeah, that was a good experience.
It was, what I wanted to think was quite funny was we had a feedback section at the end.
And we said, if there's any questions, yeah, if it's pressing, please feel free to shout out.
But we would rather you leave it to the end to ask us any questions.
And first of all, we had asked, this is, we thought, this is our last segment,
this is just about 15 minutes.
And nobody spoke, nobody spoke.
And we're like, oh no, thankfully, once the first question came, the next questions did start to flow.
And yeah, it was, like I said, the experience was good.
I'm glad I did it.
And would I do it again? Yes, I have to confess I would.
As far as doing a live, touch, jump show, that will be available in the future.
But I haven't got the recording, the audio back from Dave to start editing it.
Not that I'm going to do much editing, I'm just really going to add the tracks, etc. into it.
So, yeah, so the whole thing, I love the lightning talks.
The lightning talks, they're a wee bit similar to the unconference talks.
But instead of them being half an hour, they are limited to five minutes.
I really enjoyed them.
I think I listened to the majority of them.
I don't know clearly enough the ones that the one person I did miss was Andres,
my touch jam co-host, purely because I was prepping for the Shooks, right before her own show.
So, yeah, I have to say, I am a bit sorry that I missed that, but just needs must.
So, that, on the speaking of touch jam, that was actually the very first time that all four of us had made up in person.
I had only ever made album video conference before.
I had never made them in the flesh. It was good speaking to him.
The one thing as well that actually I liked was meeting up with,
being able to meet with some of the organisers, the crew.
And we went out on the Sunday evening after it had finished.
They could basically breathe a sigh of relief.
And we went out for dinner, we went to the city centre instead of,
when you turned one way, it kind of went to a student area,
I went in the other way, we went towards the city centre,
and we went down there, we found a place.
We also had weather spins in fact, where we went.
And it was good actually speaking to these guys,
kind of outside of the conference, just so that they could actually kind of breathe
and let themselves be themselves.
So, yeah, a big shout out to Gali.
You could almost see the weight lift off him.
He was clearly under a lot of pressure.
So, yeah, thanks so much.
And it was great actually hearing him on the old camp talks the other day.
So, yeah, so I'm trying to think as much else.
Overall, if anybody is thinking, I'd like to go,
then I would highly recommend it.
I really would.
I think I would actually highly recommend if it's in a hotel staying there,
because I could demand and see, I nipped upstairs for a few things.
I got a few bits and pieces, and I was able to put them in the hotel.
Either that, or bring a backpack.
And make sure that you got plenty of room in it.
Because certainly there was plenty of options, especially in the tech swap, etc.
You know, they had the t-shirts there.
The group, I'm trying to remember off top of my head now.
I actually can't remember.
Open rights group, I think, they had t-shirts.
But there was another group as well.
The union for the tech, working tech workers.
I can't remember the name of them.
But I was speaking to them very briefly as well.
They were beside the HPR table.
So overall, yeah, it was, like I said, I was really a child in Christmas.
I must have looked quite silly.
I must have looked hyper.
I was that child's never running down to open presents under a tree.
I was running down to meet all these guys.
Once I had my break for everything, it was a case of yes, ready to go.
It was, I would say, it was actually, it was quite tiring.
Because you never really stopped.
I mean, lunch was only half an hour.
And it was a wee bit tight kind of getting in there.
I missed on the Saturday.
I missed one of the talks because the bar was at full.
So we decided to nip out.
And it took about 45 minutes.
So when you've only got a signed half an hour for lunch, I missed that.
So then I managed to make it back in time for the next talk.
So that would be one thing I would say was, I would try time it.
So that you give yourself an hour for lunch just because you'll struggle always.
Unless you put your own packed lunch or something like that.
Because either if you decide to have a look at the lunch, which one do you want to go to?
Do you want to go to the half first slot before lunch or half first slot after lunch?
What could run like that?
Then make sure as well.
You leave plenty of time if it is your first ever on camera.
Leave plenty of time to actually talk to people.
Especially if you know there's people going.
You're active on things like mass to done if you're active in the podcasting community.
Then yeah, I would really recommend.
But thing is even if you're not, go over and talk to them.
Because the vast majority of people were really welcoming.
The vast majority of people it was really great.
I got to meet several people that I had done work with.
And to be honest, who I would almost consider celebrities in the open source.
In the open source, one more thing to say.
Asian movement, grouping, area, whatever you want to call them.
Community. I think we'll just leave it at community.
And it was really nice meeting them.
I also got to meet quite a few people who I had never met before.
And didn't even know them online or who I met up with.
In fact, one person who I had never even spoken to as far as I'm aware.
And he was another Scotsman.
So it was really nice meeting that.
I had met people who I hadn't even crossed paths with since then.
The old days of identical.
And that was lovely to see.
The only problem is I did, it was that good reminiscing.
I kind of forgot to ask, where are you now?
Let me catch up with you.
So there's a few people who unfortunately I had lost contact with.
Met a dog camp and I have lost contact with I came.
So hopefully I'll meet them up at a future time.
So yeah, like I said, overall the talks were great.
But to me, the talks were secondary to the people who I met,
the social gathering, and just the whole ambiance of the place.
Maybe to borrow a quote from Shane or Kendra, the crack.
It was just, it was really good.
And I thoroughly enjoyed that.
Right then.
So I think I've probably waffled on enough.
I thought this was going to take me five minutes.
And I just realized I'm now on to 22 minutes.
So I'm going to wrap it up there.
So again, I'm just noticing actually I have record this.
Boy, this calendar is very empty.
So please, if you get the time, record it.
You don't have to make a professional job of it.
Clearly not.
If you're listening to me, you know that I'm not in a professional job here.
This is just something I love doing.
This is just a hobby.
So please do start to get the show submitted.
Even if you think, no, no, no, who's going to want to listen to me?
Well, that's the point.
Yes, it's of interest to hackers.
Of course, people are going to want to hear you.
So until next time, this is Kavi.
Cheers for now.
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