Episode: 1288
Title: HPR1288: Nido Media gets Ken to go camping at OHM2013
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1288/hpr1288.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 22:59:06

---

Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon. Today's interview is with Needle Media, one of our
hosts here. Just want to make it clear before they interview that he does not in any way
represent the organization of OM 2013. He's just a volunteer like everybody else. We're
just interviewing him so we can get the feel of what to expect at the event. So set
back, relax and enjoy the remainder of the show.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to another exciting edition
of Hacker Public Radio. Today I'm talking to another HPR host on the topic that he's
just done a show on and we're talking to Needle Media. Say hello Needle. Hello, nice
to meet you. Nice to be here, nice to be here. This is Hacking of Random. From what I can
see on the website, this is an event that happens every four years. I know you did a show
about this. It started in 1989 with Galactic Hacker Party. Then we had 1993 Hacking at
the end of the universe, 97 Hacking in Progress, 2001 Hackers at Large, how 2001 is very
good, boom, boom, wink, wink, get that, get that. Then we had 2005 Hacker at Random, 2009
and then we have OM 2013 which stands for according to the website. Serve Hack and
make from July 31st to August 4th. What is this? Tell me about it. Yes, you had the history
down quite right in that regard. Well, it's an event where about 3,000 to 4,000 people
are going to meet on a camping in the Netherlands and you take your tent and you put it up and
you take your computer and you plug it in and it's basically four days of Hacking, observing,
Hacking and making. Okay, you're going to stop there. Just in case people are on some
illusion as to what camping means. You mean there's a big field in the middle of nowhere,
you take your tent, you put it down and you take out your laptop. My experience of camping
has been, well, so here has been wet, cold, miserable, damp, wet and getting it back
earlier. Please explain to me how you convinced me to go to this. That's a good question.
I think that's more a question for you because I'm not quite sure. I at least tried everything
I could to accommodate you at the event itself. You are right regarding the prospects. There
is a lot of prospects for wetness, for dampness, for backache if you're not having, if you don't
have one of those, which you call it, those beds you can put in your tent. So this is, sorry,
go ahead. But it is still an event where there will be about 3,000 people who will go there
and who will all subscribe to the concept of Hacking. Okay, but people may not understand the
whole concept of a Dutch camping. It's a national pastime to go to these big camping places,
a big field, essentially, or a doom next to the sea or in the scenic area in the woods or something,
and there basically feels. Is there going to be running water on the camping site?
Well, there is going to be running water and there already was before we arrived there,
but that was pretty much all there was at that moment before people of home went there and
started preparing. It was pretty much a field. Okay, when you say the progress and that's it.
Yeah, when you say they're preparing what exactly are they doing? Because I'm struggling to go
from a field and I looked at Google Earth and satellite photos and it is essentially a field.
The only thing around this seems to be somebody's greenhouse, which is not that strange when you
go to the sticks. And you know, 30, for people listening, 30 kilometers outside Amsterdam means
the sticks. It's in the middle of essentially nowhere, a pole or somewhere. And the pole
there is a field that's surrounded by a dike. Would that be correct? Yes, very big field,
initially. Well, it's pretty much like Sim City. You start out with a field of nothing and
well, what we're going to do is we're going to put down a power infrastructure. So once you take
your computer there or your laptop, you can actually plug it in and have some pretty pictures on
your desk, on your screen. And we're going to put up a network, a wired network and of course a
wireless network. So once you've got your computer plugged in and you've got pretty pictures,
you can download new pretty pictures from the internet. So you don't get bored.
When you say that, is that going to be happening on like day one or will that all be done by the
time we get there? That will be happening day minus seven or something like that. Okay, go ahead.
By the way, if you think you think it would be a nice thing to help put down such a power
construction, go to the site, observe on 2013.org and go participate because that's what the
event is about. Okay, anyway, it's beginning to become clear. So if you go to
OHM, Oscar, Hotel, Mike or ObserveHackMake, probably make more sense, 2013.org,
then you press the Wikipedia button and go to Teams. You'll see a list of teams.
And these teams are audiovisual, AVID, audiovisual lighting, communication, content,
coordination of color, entrance content, decoration, beautify the place, design, visually identify,
finance, first aid, go for, go fix things. Horika, IF, CAS, Libre and financial backbone,
Info and Help Desk, Kids Corner. There will be kids at home. Yes, Light Operation Center,
Logistics Network Operation Center, Broadcast Center, Form Operator Center, Power to the People,
Rehash Recording and Streaming in Cooperation with T-Moon Group, Safety and Security,
Speakers Desk, Sysadmin, Terrain, which is build up and tear down services and volunteer
coordinators. Okay, so... So physical tear down and build up. Okay, yeah. So those people obviously
will be going beforehand and staying on afterwards. The terrain people at any rate, the noke and the
power people probably as well, though if you happen to just have a vacation to some time before
home and until the end of home, there's of course no problem to only help with build up and skip out
before the end. The other way around, if you come sometime later or just at day one of home and
you want to stay and help break down the whole infrastructure, you're more than welcome.
Okay, it's beginning to be clear to me. So, if I arrive there with my double-decker camping van,
I need to find somebody who owns a one of those cargo to the column winnabegos. That's what I need.
Yes, my old age. I need to win a vehicle. So I arrive there somehow. Then what happens?
Where do I go first? Well, you go to the to the desk and you get signed up and you get a nice little
pull point yet, which is a conference band. Yes. Yes, one of the things you put
anyway, so they know where you are allowed to be on the event and then basically you go in,
you put up your tent or in your case, you put on your caravan and after that, it's pretty much up
to you. So when you say, when I look at the photos, I'm seeing lovely buildings and tents with
floors and stuff. Where do they come from? Because what I see now on the satellite image is,
oh, well, I've got this with the zoos weird satellite image of a field. And I'm going to call
you to the background. I know what that looks like. I'm having trouble taking this field and
looking at the open street map overlay, which has got roads and tents and buildings and stuff.
How does that all happen? Because this all sounds very burning man to me.
Well, I'm familiar with burning men, so I'm afraid I can't make the comparison.
They go up to the middle of the desert in, I think, Arizona or somewhere and then they build a city
and do art projects and hack stuff together. And then at the end of the whatever duration of it is,
they burn, they build this big man, the burn them. And then at the end, they completely remove
everything and leave no trace that they've ever been there. That's kind of concept.
Yeah, well, let's keep with the with OMO for this one. And then maybe we can do sure and
sure about the burning man. But no, the most of tents are brought by people who have already
participated, who are already participating in the event. There are some of the groups who,
for example, the OM group in order to do some broadcasting, you need some space where you can
put down your mixer and your audio gear and sit down and actually record even if it's raining.
So they have arranged a big tent for the broadcasting stuff. There will be from, there's already some
... Hello? Yeah, I'm not editing this. I don't edit my shows. Thank you.
Now, but there's already a big tent, a lounge tent arranged or is in the process of being arranged.
And all kinds of other people are putting down little projects which they will manifest at the OMO
event. So in that regard from what I heard, it's pretty much burning man except where they have to
burn a wooden guy at the end. Burn off. And these, well, we're talking about tents. So when I
think of a tent, I'm thinking of a small poxy tent that I have, when you were talking about
the OM group tent or the tent where they give presentations, you're talking about one of those
big huge marquee jobs that a hundred people are so can go inside of our preserve.
Yes, the presentations will be done in a proper size tent so there can be lots of people inside
and listening and enjoying the talk even when it's raining, which that's the bad part of the
Netherlands, it might. But the tent I spoke of earlier, the one you're supposed to bring yourself,
that's at large or a small as you want it to be for yourself because that's the tent you use
for yourself to sleep in. Okay, and how much space does one have as a allocated to yourself?
Or is it first come first served? Well, the small tent versus a big two-story winnebago.
Well, the organization of the fields themselves happens in a structure named Villages
which means that on the website there's some, I can find it at the moment, but people are coming
together as groups and for example, there's four years ago, for example, there was a lockpicking
village, so all kinds of people who like lockpicking got together and organized the lockpicking
village and they had their own little events, lockpicking, lockpicking challenges in this case,
for example, and they got together and they arranged the part of the terrain to be constructed
in their view. If you come there and if you come there on the 31st of July and you haven't
spoken to anyone and haven't done anything, then you can still come in and join one of the Villages,
most will have no problem if you put your tent there, but if you plan to bring a big tent
of yourself, I really advise you to go in, go on to the site beforehand, find the village
and coordinate with them because in the end, there may not be enough space for a big tent
in a responsible way, so you might have to put your tent all the way on the other side of the
campsite and pretty much be outside of the whole event. Okay, from the website, what it says is
for those attending an event, the phrase village might be a known subject, they're quite rare,
they're quite correct, a village is a spot at the campsite where you and a bunch of other people
of like-minded set of interests come together, you can bring a large tent or a sort of family room
to set up your gear and work on your projects, you can even create your own workshops and lecture
for other volunteers to come to attend and of course share all the fun together. And then when
we go down to the open street map map, you see that I shouldn't have picked a hockey that
interferes with scrolling on the map, I'm assuming you're putting this one there in the show now,
I shall do, all I'm about to explain it to people, so what you see is the field, the field Katie,
has been divided up into various different sections and these sections have got like little
place markers on us and if I click on one at random, I see that it's Spanish village,
let me have 2600 village, let me have BRM lab, etc, etc, etc, so I think you get the idea. So if I wanted
to join one of these villages, what would one do? Oh here they are, underneath the whole thing,
there's a complete list of what the villages are, but in my case I would not be associated with any
of these because I, in actual fact, am a new to the festival. So where were we going camp then?
Well the affinities are not specifically only event related, say you are a Spanish person,
for this example, you can contact somebody in the Spanish village and talk to them and then it's
basically up to the Spanish village, how they organize themselves because well it's up to them,
how they arrange their part of the park, that makes perfect sense too. And so unfortunately it means
that we as a home or I as a person who is now representing home cannot really tell you from
this is the way you should really do it because well it can differ from village to village,
but most of the times when you go and contact one of the people in the who are part of the village,
then they can tell you well this is the way it works and well you can bring this and that and
we still need something like we still need some stuff like A and B because we're planning to do C
and if we had that then we can do it even better and that's that's also the way the great
the purple trees and the lights in the the lights in the trees, how that happens,
basically the villages which have their which would decorate next to the team decoration of course
who decorate the part of the of the event and make it look the way it looks.
Okay it's all beginning to make sense to me so you have a group of say for example hacker
public radio we we decided to make a division of them suggesting we do or anything but you would
you would have this area then all the guys and gals would set up their tents there,
say podcasters all the podcasters would set up their tents there and then we would do our own
projects and work on our own stuff, hack basically we're all together we can instead of talking
and I see we're almost the same time zone we can sketch stuff out of the map, we can develop code
blah blah blah blah and then your project moves forward or you could possibly go to give presentations
in the main hall following some of the main tracks that are going on, is this kind of what I'm
am I right or wrong? Yeah sure you're pretty much on the right track or you and your nuts
you're not you don't have to stay within your own village at the event it's perfect, you okay
to rock around to walk around and meet the Italian assembly and meet the Spanish people and
take a look at the lock picking because you thought like I want to know if I can easily open my locks
it's so makes sense now and say we uh we come together as the hacker public radio group and
we have like five six people together and we think maybe want we want to put up a table and a
parasol on top of it and then put the microphone there so we can grab people sit them down and
have them make hacker public radio interviews, nah then we allocate the space for that and we put
down the table and then at the the own event there will be a hacker public radio table.
Cool and for everybody listening we've got permission to be and we are official press coverage for
um or the event that is if I don't spend my time in the back of the namelands has been rushed to
hospital and anyway so that brings up the question really what exactly from a HVR point of view
from a podcasting point of view it would actually be cool to try and guess together
some podcasters the European podcasters and get them to come over to this event seems like
thank you good idea don't you think? Well it uh makes for well look at uh at uh at uh what what
was the last uh the the Ocamp for example it uh you can pretty much do the same thing in the
in the in the home or like how they got together itself and the same as with self you run around
grab people and they always have something interesting to say the same will happen at home you will
be surrounded by people with all kinds of projects and most of them will have brought
with them and will be happy to speak into a microphone and tell you uh or without a microphone
and tell you whatever the hell they are working on. Well they have to because we're official press
well no we have to there are fairly strict rules because uh a lot of them don't want to be
photographed or recorded without consent so obviously we will be adhering to that but okay say
so i would see the coverage i think the best thing that i can contribute to the to this event
is basically go around and show the microphone or people's noses doing the paper to the HPR
interview style and why have bad news for you? Yeah go ahead because there will also be a real
as in FM radio station and if i'm not mistaken there will also be a digital video broadcasting done
and i've already arranged a slot and if nothing else happens then i'm just gonna grab you put
you down and have you tell all people in the netless and we're listening to the stream about HPR
this doesn't bother me um that would be fine but would be should i then therefore um volunteer
myself and any other HPR person that comes along and contribute to the main broadcast thing
so actually take one step back tell me about the um the on-rope team which is in Dutch it's the
broadcast of what did they do? Yes well as i told before there are all kinds of teams who are
organizing the events and you are free to walk in and talk to the teams help them out and become
a part of them and in that sense i also became a part of the of the team on-rope um on-rope is indeed
a play on on-rope which is pretty much broadcasting association more or less and we are responsible for
uh for the for the radio coverage and the video coverage of the event and they will be broadcasting
an FM radio station will they also be broadcasting uh and what do the broadcast interviews or
music or what? We have a schedule which is still largely open it's still very much under development
and i'm only only just joined teams so i'm not 100% aware of how the whole situation is
but looking at the same the event four years ago they had a little a little fan of their own with
with all the broadcasting equipment and uh well they had interviews and talks and they had news
and if you want to read news then you can come there and say like i want to read the news for
for for time and then you can come there and we explain to you how it works and you can do the news
or if perhaps you have uh you have you want to do a show of your own you have an id then you can
also broadcast it yeah more thinking about um making sure to go around to every project show
on the mic under the nose and the recording stuff for hpr but also then give it to them
for to be played out uh the own yes that that's also possible the own loop is pretty but most of
the own loop is uh i think it's twenty four seven but it's uh it's all alive it's all happening
right there so i'm not really sure if we want to broadcast the uh or maybe we do i i don't know
where we need to see but we can save them for the heck of public radio at the very least yeah it
could be live if there's network and all these locations surely it can be broadcast or
surely there's networking we already got the distribution system uh ready awesome excellent okay
are you aware of rfc two three two two i think so for the listeners at home i recommend you
just put the rfc number into your favorite search engine and check out what it is i tell you it's uh
hypermetic to uh assign ip addresses peg dhcp and the back of the phone
so the rfc disguised as a protocol to dynamically hand out ip numbers on the fields network
and small events that don't necessarily have a clear organization of body it can also provide
some fixed additional goals for all clients like netmasks and even auto proxy convegs it does not
particularly depend on a particular ip stack okay so have we missed anything i think it is
beginning to be clear to me obviously if this is a dodgy camping event you'll see multiple people
walking around with toilets rolls in the middle of the night it's a it's a hacker event so you
pretty much see all kinds of people walking around talking to each other doing stuff so
vacation or all of toilet papers not gonna look all that odd i mean uh i can't the first time i
went to one of these events was first four years ago and i arrived at uh noom
ish and i came up to the desk and i got my card and i got in and the first thing i saw when it was
inside was a purple tree so there's a lot of surrealism going on within such an event
excellent excellent 3000 people going out of the way to make technology do beautiful things
sounds definitely like somewhere we should be all right needo thank you very much i have a
thousand of one questions for you but i think that's about it for now do you have anything else you
want to add and not really well on 2013 dot org it's from july 31st to august the port so go check
out the website see if you want to go there and go check out hackers on the plane if you're in
america and you want to go go here but you're not really sure what this whole camping thing is and
it scares you or something go find the people of the hackers on the plane hackers got a plane that
info is the website but they're still in the process of getting it updated so it's it is gonna
happen even though the site at the moment says it's lost the lost it's lost pay as it's lost
post in 2011 i presume most of the stuff is in english am i correct you mean at the event itself
for the site yeah the event itself the site is entirely in english except for a Dutch and french
um pay call um press material um well the event itself is mostly in english um of course if
you're going to the spanish village you'll have a chance you'll walk into a few people talking
spanish to each other but something which always stood out to me at these kind of events is that
when you walk there and there's two people talking spanish to each other and they notice you're
trying to be part of the conversation then the automatically turn out to english so you can
join into the conversation then later one of the person's leaves and you're talking to the other
person and after a while you find out you find out you're both german people and you need some
german words to express yourself better they automatically turn over to german and then when
the third person joins they go back to english so you can you can survive very well and even enjoy
yourself very well even if all you understand is english no problem with that yes the key is not
to be scared it's uh i think we can assume everything will everything uh everybody will be able to
participate in english at least so to worry about just want to run down their looking for a call
for papers in the traditional lecture theaters but not limited to traditional lectures whatever that
we have the heading security hardware software networks and telecommunication privacy
legal science and research people on society rebooting civilization art and fun with a pH
and some of those odd ones i'm not gonna go over security hardware software networks privacy
is tour darknet certificate authorities alternative identities post privacy etc legal
hacker ethics forensic law enforcement's drems offer patents etc science and research
DIY spaceflight biotech dna energy particle physics room what gold people censorship politics
future visions etc rebooting civilization preservation of technology knowledge arts and craft
decentralized technology something for dude man art topographical folding fractals
demo scene wearable like electrics ooh sick club fun hacking food which is basically everybody on
the on the HPR new year show car hacking meditation uh medication art anecdotes retro gaming
entertainment etc and if you have children um coming to this there is a complete anime total
complete list of uh you know those dear care for babies including provisions for uh breast milk
for food for uh activities for the kids and you're asked to volunteer for those as well if that's
sort of thing that you do me i may still be coming home to enjoy the pleasure of a hot shower
and a comfy bed every evening but then again i may not we'll have to see
anything else need or did i lose you halfway through that uh no i'm still here and uh i don't think
i have anything to add to that okay so here's the plan we go we rock join us now and share the
software you be free sing it with me um yeah let's do that in real life because the latency on
member is not gonna make this any pretty yeah all righty okay folks that's it's
tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of hacker public radio
you have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does our
we are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday on day through friday
today's show like all our shows was contributed by a hbr listener like yourself
if you ever consider recording a podcast then visit our website to find out how easy it really is
hacker public radio was founded by the digital dog pound and the economical and computer cloud
hbr is funded by the binary revolution at binref.com all binref projects are crowd
sponsored by lunar pages from shared hosting to custom private clouds go to lunarpages.com
for all your hosting needs unless otherwise stasis today's show is released under a creative
commons attribution share a life lead us our license