Episode: 1633
Title: HPR1633: The OggCamp organizers
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1633/hpr1633.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 06:07:08

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Welcome, this is Benny for Hacker Public Radio.
This is episode HPR1633 for November the 5th 2014.
In this episode I talk to the organizers of OCam.
The first interview is with Dan Lynch of Linux Outlaws.
And we talk about OCam, organizing OCam a bit of OCam last year.
And the second interview is with Fab.
Churchill also from Linux Outlaws.
We talk a bit more about Linux Outlaws.
Bless OCam and the last interview is with Mark Johnson from the UK podcast.
Again, we talk about OCam and especially organizing OCam in Oxford
because he's the man on the ground in Oxford and so let's get started.
Great, this is Benny for HPR and I'm talking to Dan Lynch of Linux Outlaws.
And I'm one of the OCam organizers.
We're here at OCam on the Sunday.
Sunday morning everyone's feeling bright and ready to go.
We've all had a lot of sleep and it's going to be good.
Right, can you tell me a bit about OCam?
What's OCam?
That is a question I hear a lot.
What is OCam?
It is a two-day unconference so it's a barcamp style event
where we have talks that are submitted by the attendees.
So the first year we ran OCam in 2009.
We ran it as a pure barcamp only format.
And that was great but a few people said one of the things they liked was
to be able to see who the speakers might, some of the speakers might be
before they book tickets and before they travel.
So we cheated and we kind of hacked the barcamp model.
We forked it.
We cheated.
So now we have some schedule talks,
a few schedule talks through the day that kind of places people can kind of look
and see oh so and so is on at that time.
We're going to check that out.
And then around that all the barcamp stuff kind of fills it out.
We're in our fifth year now.
This is the sixth dog camp.
I have to say it's a bit strange that this is the sixth dog camp
but we're in our fifth year.
So we started 2009.
It's grown pretty much every year.
We're up to about, usually about 300 people or so.
Now and it's good, we're in Oxford for the first time.
Not been to Oxford that much so I'm getting used to it.
And it's nice to see people here having a good time and having fun.
What's the reason for choosing Oxford this year?
The reason is that Mark lives in Oxford.
That's honestly the whole reason that it's here.
I can't like.
Yeah that's the reason.
So what happens is we've got a small organising team
and what we found is it's really a lot easier if one of the organ,
if you do it in a venue or in a place where one of the organising team is local
and they can do the local kind of running round to find out about venues and so on.
So in the last two years I've done that in Liverpool
and being the kind of local person on the ground.
And this year Mark, he lives in Oxford and he said oh let's do it in Oxford.
I'll find a venue and he's done that and we're all here and it's cool.
And how do you find a venue compared to what you had in Liverpool?
That's an interesting question.
For me it's a lot more difficult because I live over the road from the venue in Liverpool
so I just have to get out of bed and walk down the stairs and I'm there.
It's a bit further for us but it's been different.
We're in a hotel this year so it feels a little bit different.
We were in a university building before which was cool.
There's definitely swings around about.
The tea and coffee and stuff is a lot more expensive here.
I've noticed that.
I don't know if that's fair comment or not.
It's been good. The conference room's really nice.
The exhibition space that we're in right now is working really well.
The only thing we haven't managed to do yet is the outdoor kind of soldier in sessions which
were not too far from but we're hoping to do those today because yesterday it was really
really heavily raining, windy, not the best weather to get out with your soldier and I and
sit under a gazebo.
But today we're hoping to do that.
Skies are clear so get some people out there and do some hardware hacking as well.
It's a reason that it's in a hotel this year and not in a university building because
Oxford is known for its university state though.
Yeah, it's not like they haven't got a university in Oxford.
I believe they've got one.
I've heard it's quite good.
It's a nice little university that's starting up the train hard.
And the reason it's starting up in a university building I don't know because we couldn't
get a university building I think.
Although Mark works for Oxford University I think so I don't know why we can't go.
But yeah it's in a hotel because it was a venue we could find and we could hire and stuff.
So in the past two years we've had a venue sponsored in Liverpool.
We had sponsorship from a Liverpool Johnwall's university and they were able to give us their
venue almost free which was amazing.
So this year we've had to pay out a lot more money but it's different.
It's nice to try different places and we had to get it ready, bring our own projectors and so on.
But one of the things about doing at university is all the classrooms have got projectors
and computers and everything ready to go.
But you know our amazing crew have pulled it together and we brought some projectors and
other things and it's all hanging together nicely at the minute.
Could you tell me something about the name?
The name sounds a bit weird for a camp event like.
Yeah it's very odd.
We get a lot of people asking what we're going to talk about in relation to the
Vorbis or Ogtheora containers and formats and so on.
The reason it became known as Ogcamp, I actually suggested that name I'll be honest.
And it's yeah we've toyed with changing it because people don't understand what it's about.
So the idea is that because we're not just about free software and open source technology,
we're also about free culture, we try and talk about we have creative commons content,
we have artists and musicians and all kinds of things, not just hackers and we like to mix them
all up. Actually to be honest a lot of the hackers are like musicians or artists or painters or
so they like to mix it up and so we wanted a name that kind of summed up free culture and free
software. So the idea was it's about media, we're all podcasters as well so the Og format was
made sense so we could call it Og it's a bar camp so it was Ogcamp basically was how it came
together. All right great thank you it's around anything else you'd like our listeners to know
where to find your podcaster anything. Yeah where to find stuff so if you go to DanLinch.org that's
my main website you can find Linux Outlaws on there you can find FlossWeekly there's a FlossWeekly
feed from Twit which I hosted occasionally and there's also Rathol Radio feed as well for
people who are into music and creative commons music and stuff so that's the best place to go all
the social media stuff's on there so you can find my Twitter feed and it's app method Dan on Twitter
but DanLinch.org's the place there's a contact form on there if you want to drop me an email say hello
I'm always happy to speak to people so come and say hello. Great great thank you what's
great talking to you. Thank you very much. All right this is Benny for HPR and I'm talking to
Fab. Fab's voice has gone for some reason sorry about that you might know me from a little show I
do called Linux Outlaws maybe not. All right could you tell me anything about this show I don't
think I already got Dan Lynch and he told me a bit about it but your name didn't come up so tell
me what the whole thing from your perspective so now if I tell you something completely different
this will be this will maybe cause a ruckus I don't know it's a show we started in 2007 so that
would be seven years ago because I came back from Australia and my English was deteriorating
and I just want to talk to somebody who was a native speaker and at the time we were on a social
network called Jiku which nobody knows anymore and then went to identical later on and well we just
talked about like he was posting about Linux I was posting about Linux and I went oh let's start
a podcast watch what shall we talk about well Linux and the funny thing is these days people
expect us really expect us to talk about Linux but actually LO was always just us waffling a lot
as well and in the beginning we didn't have that many listeners and people didn't mind but now it's
just like people people tune in the show and they're like the first first 30 minutes we talk about like
dead Hollywood stars that recently died like I don't know random crap like Dan recording music
or me writing rather the motorcycle I feel like they're not talking about Linux at all but it was
always kind of that way so yeah that's that what did you change you tell me that you grew what
did you change over time why you grew well one big thing one big thing Dan did was like obviously
we got a lot of feedback and he was always very good at including what other you know when people
write his emails or when when they know forum and they say something and Dan was always very keen
on reading that out and you know engaging with the listeners so that's one thing although that
happened quite early on we changed the format we do things a few times like we used to have segments
where we would do open-source releases and talk about news and talk about stuff Microsoft did
wrong we had a segment for that and I changed that I decided well as Dan of obviously but
we decided to change this a while ago because I noticed that just the stuff we talked about
but couldn't it was weird like we talked about a lot of news so that was the biggest segment so
like the segments wouldn't they were disproportionate and I think they didn't work anymore so
now we just mix it up and we just talk about anything really it's changed with the time like
with the things we've been doing so for a while Dan was doing a lot of music recording and stuff
doing open-source we talked a lot about that obviously I was writing for an open-source website
in the UK so we talked a lot about you know links and other open-source stuff at that point now
I'm doing security stuff in Germany so we talk a lot about security it was just because that's
the stuff I come across which obviously a lot of that impacts Linux but sometimes it just doesn't
and so the show just changes with like it changes with our lives I guess as well we had a bit of a
rough time when when I lost my job in the UK and I had to move back to Germany and then we didn't
record for like two months or something and that was weird because I don't know one of the things
I've noticed is if you don't do this like every week or every two weeks you kind of like you
stop doing it because it's a lot of work if you have a routine and you do it every week that's
kind of you stick with it like if you pause for two months like for for example winter UK
podcasts they they do seasons so they do a break over the holidays I don't know how they get the
will to continue the show after the break like I wouldn't if we stopped for that long time I'm sure
I would say this is just too much hassle I don't want to start again so yeah right you told me
you run this little podcast but probably you're one of the biggest if not the biggest Linux
podcast literary wise so how how is that for you how does it feel to be like famous in the Linux
community I don't know I really the thing is what we don't do the show because we have a lot of
listeners we probably wouldn't do the show if we had only like 10 listeners like in the beginning
we started we thought was a good idea and then we thought let's see if people listen to it and then
people's like at the point where we got like a hundred maybe 200 people listening to it we thought
yeah we keep doing this like that was enough and then you get a lot more listeners and it's actually
been going down again I think it peaked at about I don't know six seven thousand downloads kind of
it's kind of hard to track but that's like kind of the downloads I can track there's a lot more
torrents and stuff and they're not all listeners because lots of people just have their
podcast on download and the one thing that changes you get a lot more feedback and you get a lot
of more people saying well you should talk more about Linux you should talk about more but this
and that and well we we took some of the stuff on board but some stuff we're just like no like
this is hello we we waffle we talk about random stuff we don't want to change that and I always
been very much the on the on the fence of like if you don't like the show listen to another show
like I air on the site I want to do show that I have fun with versus I want to have the maximum
amount of listeners because then I would have to change the show a lot like I swear a lot so a lot
of people say you swear I can't listen to this and then yeah there's like a lot of other Linux
podcasts and we've always mentioned them like there's lots of podcasts where they don't
mention other shows and we've never done this like because we were always like okay if you like Ubuntu
it's probably better to listen to Ubuntu UK podcast because they talk about Ubuntu all the time
or if you like Mint you probably should listen to Mintcast or something like that so yeah as for
the famous bit I don't know it's it's kind of funny we used to go to like radio live obviously
this is Okcamp which came out of when they stopped doing like radio live and I can remember the
first like radio live when Dan and me went there we had a table and nobody knew us we were sitting
behind this table and people were coming to the table and asking what are you doing like what is
this and we had to explain that and that went away the year afterwards like the year obviously
and then after that I don't know when that was that must have been 2009 2008 something
after that we obviously got a lot more listeners and then everybody started like I started to be
at a conference standing next to some like I was at first them which is a huge conference and as
I was talking to somebody and the guy next to me turns around and said are you fat I recognize
your voice and that was that was cool like that's that's fun but then on the other hand like people
always say like how does it feel to be like famous is like this is the Linux community the Linux
community is incredibly small like when you're around for in five years you know everybody and you
know just like the people what like what job they get and what company they go to and then switch
around everybody knows everybody it's amazing so I actually do not consider that famous it's kind
of nice you know you're in the bar everybody buys your beer that's cool um yeah it's actually
it's just cool it's not like I think if you're really famous it's annoying like if your Bruce
Bringsie and you walk down the street that's being famous everybody comes up to you it's like
it's not on the level of being annoying but you get what beers at conferences so I think it's
best of both worlds really so you talked about the feedback did the feedback ever reach a level
where you have problems to cope with it like to answer to everything or mention everyone
well well yes I mean we can't read every email we get but like Dan that's the thing Dan keeps
takes care of amazingly and he takes care of like mentioned even if we don't read out the email
he takes care to just mention people's names and so no I think never went to a level where
I couldn't cope with it like I've got too much email anyway so that's hard but we have a thing
where we like either we answer email directly and then maybe if it's an interesting discussion
we are having an email with a listener we'll mention it on the show or we'll just mention the name
and say that they wrote us and we obviously wrote back so we can it's it never reached a level where
you can't engage with people like on Twitter sometimes it's it's hard to do because you just get
ad replies and stuff but no not really I mean there was some sometimes you get like difficult
feedback but I'm I'm very hard to like shock or like I'm pretty like if somebody sends me like
incredibly offensive email I'll just send back you know go fuck yourself you know like listen to
another show which actually works really well it does work well the people go away you know
like I'm never gonna listen to you you used to God's name in vain yeah it's what I do get used to
you know it's that but that takes a very special kind of mindset and I think people always ask me
like if you want to start a podcast what's the things you got to be aware of and I would say
one thing is if you start it starting a podcast incredibly easy keeping it going beyond 20 episodes
and I speak as somebody who started several podcasts that died after like five episodes it's
incredibly hard to keep it up and the other thing is you got to be prepared if you put yourself
out on the internet you got to be prepared with people like shouting you know I think that's not
only if you do a podcast I mean if you if you do a Linux distribution you know this people if
if you do something people use you create an app or whatever you will get feedback and you will
also get like just incredibly stupid mean feedback and you're just gonna I mean I can deal with
that very well and dance funny enough dance very different for me but he's he can cope with it
in a completely different way I just go fuck off and then goes well it's not a valid point whatever
I'm not bothered so yeah that's yeah I hope that answered that question because I forgot the
question by now all right great what's great talking to you can you tell our listeners if they
want to find you or your podcasts where where do they go well if you go to sixkan.org you find
the podcast if you want to find me I'm fab FAB at sixkan.org or you can go on Twitter at fabge
you can find me that's Fox dot alpha bravo's yara hotel right great thank you what's nice
talking to you worries let's go right this is Benny for HPR and I'm speaking to Mark Johnson
I'm not supposed to say something more than that well you can but you don't have to because
I'm going to ask you questions okay all right but what's your role in Okam because you're you've
got a crew batch so well this year I've I have been sort of the man on the ground doing a lot of
the organizing in terms of booking the venue and you know scoping out the local area talking out
the schedule stuff like that I mean my my role over the past couple of years has been focused on
the schedule booking the scheduled speakers working out how we're going to run the on conference tracks
this year it's been a bit more full on I've been doing bits of pretty much everything this year
great so this year you've you have been the local local man here from Oxford right yeah exactly
so the last couple of years we did it in Liverpool which was just down the road from Dan's house
so Dan was the man on the ground that time at this time it's in Oxford because it's just down the
road from me so that's generally how it works in terms of choosing our locations where is there
someone who is willing to take on that role and do sort of the groundwork so how hard was it to find
a venue in Oxford to to for Okam to take place well there's a lot of venues in Oxford but the trouble
is they tend to be not quite the right size they either have one very big room or lots of very
small rooms but not a big room and then some small rooms which is what we need to fit everybody in
and fit in the various tracks that we do so in fact it really did come down to the venue we ended
up in there may be others which I hadn't heard of but it's actually amazing how few venues get
back to you when you inquire you'd have thought they'd be more eager for your custom but maybe
they didn't like the sound of us so did you try to get like like last year in any university
place or was it just hotel what they were there there is like a sort of conference service that
the university provides so all of the Oxford University colleges have conference facilities
partly the time of year we did it made it a bit trickier because the students just coming back
so means they don't have a don't have as much capacity but also the way that the Oxford University
is organised is quite different to the way that most other universities are organised in that
they tend to cater for much sort of smaller more focused groups of students rather than
enormous lectures with like hundreds or thousands of people so it's a lot easier to do it in
another university rather than Oxford I did also look at Oxford Brooks the other university and
they do have more of the sort of facilities that we had last year but unfortunately they weren't available
right now we're at the end of all camping Oxford so did it turn out the way you wanted it to
or are there things to say I'll do that different next time there's always things which we
say we'll do different next time I mean this time you know quite a few things didn't quite go to
plan our scheduling system broke down before we started which is a good time for it to break down
because it meant that we could switch to the backup we had planned I mean I'm not sure about
specific things at the moment which I do differently because I think I have to you know we need to
sit and digest what's happened and how things went and the feedback we've received from people
throughout the weekend and have a think about you know what we might do differently next time
all right but there will be a next time if you say next time I hope so but at this point we
can't guarantee anything I'm afraid because it involves a lot of things in terms of you know
finding a venue finding someone who can liais with the venue finding enough sponsorship that we
can cover the costs things like that so and if there is a next time do you plan to do it in Oxford
again or do you prefer to switch the venue I think I'd prefer to switch the venue purely because
I don't think I've got the energy to do it another year in on the truck they're not saying that
I wouldn't do it again but I don't think I would do it again straight away because you know I've
got a job to do as well and other things going on and it is quite a big commitment to to
organise something like op camp because it's you know it's a big event and there's a lot of even
though you know it's an unconference so you think oh well they just put the venue people turn up
but because I think because we're more than just the unconference we've also got the schedule
track we've also got you know merchandise in the raffle and we've got the exhibition and like
social events going on it makes it there is actually you know it's like organising a full event
all right right well it's great talking to you is there anything you'd like our listeners to know
like where to find you on the internet or where to find your podcast or anything oh yeah
I also do a podcast the Ubuntu podcast that's podcast.buntu-uk.org thanks for asking
in terms of op camp stuff though op camp.org is our website we're also op camp on Twitter
I think I'm going to try and set up some sort of more permanent online community because at the
moment we don't have anything like a mailing list or four and four members of the op camp
community to communicate outside of the event which I think is a shame because I think that we
could do a much better job of sort of leveraging the community's knowledge and contacts and
energy to help us organise our camp without it all requiring like one or two people to take
on most of the work I think there's a lot of scope for I think there's also going to be the
willing as well for the people who come to our camp and enjoy it and want it to keep happening
to help out so I'm going to be looking to do that and will we publishing details of that on the
website and on Twitter all right great thank you what's nice talking to you I'm looking forward
to next.com thanks very much cheers all right those were the interview thank you for listening to
hpr if you try to contact me you'll find me on stf that's Benny on stf.org or you'll also find me
on stsnet on fractf that's now we give him at micro.fractf.com so it would be great to hear from you
and of course you could always record your own episode and leave a comment there thank you for
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