hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4197.txt

Episode: 4197
Title: HPR4197: After 5 years away, OggCamp is back in 2024!
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4197/hpr4197.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 21:11:33

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This is Hacker Public Radio, episode 4197 for Tuesday, the 3rd of September 2024.
Today's show is entitled, After 5 years away, Ocamp is back in 2024.
It is hosted by Ken Fallon, and is about 18 minutes long.
If carries a clean flag, the summary is, can interviews Gary Williams about rebooting the Ocamp Meetup.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today I have a special guest on with me to talk about Ocamp 2024.
Hi Gary, can you introduce yourself please?
Yeah, hey everyone, I'm Gary, leading up organizing Ocamp 2024.
So I've kind of been around Ocamp for a fair while, host on a couple of shows on the late night Linux network,
namely hybrid cloud show and Linux after duck.
That's where I recognize the voice.
Excellent.
And tell me, what is Ocamp?
So Ocamp we like to style it as an unconference where we talk about anything surrounding free culture, open source, hardware hacking, digital rights,
and kind of any other collaborative cultural activity.
We've been away for around five years, so we last ran in 2019, and I've decided to post pandemic pick up that and get things running.
So how is, yeah, we're quite familiar with Ocamp here.
We've done some interviews, we've had boots, and we have all the tickets ready to rock.
Just need to get the actual ticket for the event itself.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Yeah, absolutely.
So we try and keep Ocamp accessible to everyone.
So we went live with tickets about a week ago now and you can get those at Ocamp.org slash tickets.
So this year's sponsors have been a little bit harder for us to find.
So we've suggested that people donate something around 40 pounds.
And we've got an early bird ticket currently available until the end of August at 35 pounds.
But we're keeping the pay what you want tickets available or pay what you can tickets available rather.
So basically all we ask there is that you cover our ticketing platform fees.
So just a minimum donation of one pound.
Equally, if you turn up without a ticket, we will have staff there on the day ready to take a donation and check you in.
If you if you somehow forget to get a ticket and find yourself in Manchester.
So that was my next question. Where is this going to be this year?
So it's actually the same venue that it was in 2019.
So it is the Manchester Conference Centre, which is in the pendulum hotel in Manchester, England.
Just a short five to ten minute walk from Piccadilly station, relatively easily accessible if you're in the north of England.
If you're in the south of England, it may be a train to London or Peterborough and then up.
But it's relatively easy to get to if you're already in the UK.
If you're not in the UK, Manchester Airport has flights to and from pretty much anywhere at this point.
Yeah, and there's a book my flights and I think I still need into Manchester.
No, actually, I'm not. We're doing something different, but that's but something for another time.
So the conference itself is in the you go into the hotel and let's set the back in the meeting rooms.
The last time I was there, there was a conference rooms.
How many conference rooms are going on typically?
So exactly the same setup that we had last time.
So we've got our big main stage and I want to say that it's three other conference rooms for the bar camp drink.
So we should probably explore a little bit what that is in a second.
We've also got we've also got our our kind of room where people can congregate and we can have stands and things.
We don't actually have any sponsors having stands this year.
So in our HPR have historically had a stand.
If you want to have something and set it up more than welcome to you.
But you might be the steady stand in the room as it stands at the moment.
That's fine. Well, we'll figure something out.
Absolutely.
So that's like a big ballroom area that and previously there are stands gone around the side.
Yeah.
Is there an additional charge for getting tables there or.
No, if you've got something cool to show off.
Yeah, more than welcome to turn up and have one.
I think our plan is to have our merch stand in there.
The bar camp style board in order to schedule talks and have people check on a talk that they're interested.
And then a couple of tables in the middle just for people to congregate.
You know, we historically had people playing, you know, board games or kind of RPGs and things.
So more than happy.
Soldering stuff in the middle here.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
As long as the hotel happy we're happy.
Yeah, we should we should probably explain to people what a barricamp what this all conference is.
And the unique angle you guys have on the barricamp aspect.
So what is the barricamp?
So bar camp is effectively a conference with no scheduled talk track.
And all camp differs slightly from that in that we do have one scheduled talk track for our main stage.
So you kind of can turn up and you're guaranteed to get.
Seven to eight solid talks a day that we have prevented and we know at the content of those this.
CFP is again open until the end of August.
You can get the details for that at or camp dog.
But we also have our bar camp track, which is at the other three rooms as I mentioned before.
And what we do is we encourage anyone who has something interesting to talk about.
Turn up with your 25 or 50 minute talk.
And we will pop your talk on a sticky note, put it on a board.
And attendees of the conference effectively then vote in real time.
As to if the your talk is something that would be interested in.
What we then do is if a talk gone as a reasonable amount of interest.
And what a reasonable amount of interest is entirely depends on how many people go up to the board and vote.
Generally, we've just done that by people walk up and take a sharpie and put a tick on a sticky note.
We've tried various technical solutions before that have been a little bit of a hitting miss.
Success there.
So we're going to keep it simple.
If you see a talk on a whiteboard you're interested in, put a tick in the box.
And then we'll have a volunteer there, making sure those talks are scheduled in a room.
And obviously if you talk does get scheduled, more likely now.
Perfect.
And then the main talk is just like a regular conference at this time, this time, this time.
So you know what to expect.
Yeah, exactly. And that'll be in our main stage.
So what's the setup and many days does it run for when you know, is there a pre-party after party?
That sort of thing.
So the actual conference itself, we're running on the 12th and 13th of October.
So that's the Saturday and Sunday.
We're not formally organizing before and after party this year.
But what we're encouraging people to do is to congregate in the hotel bar.
And generally what we found is that people either stay in the hotel bar and talk about the things
that they want to talk about or they go off and find a venue that suits them.
Our encouragement to people during the weekend would be if you've got a larger group of people
or you've got something specific that you've got in mind, like going off to a barcade or something like that.
Absolutely, let us know.
And we're more than happy to put the word out on Masterton matrix room.
Everything else so that other attendees of the conference know.
Are there still a combination available at the hotel?
Yes, absolutely.
So the hotel have given us a discount code just of delegate.
There are still rooms available in the hotel if you want to stay there.
But being Manchester a reasonably sized UK city.
Any number of chain and independent hotels that you can stay in within, you know,
10 to 15 minute walk of the venue.
So if the hotel does happen to sell out of rooms or you've got a loyalty membership
you just fancy saying somewhere a bit different and having a little bit of a walk in in the morning.
More than happy for you to do that.
And it's a relatively central location in Manchester to get a tea.
No, it's good.
It's great that the conferences are back again after such a little feels like we're having to reboot the whole concept.
I was just explaining the other day about barcade.
You know, this is a bit like a barcade and to a room of people and they look back and think,
what's about a cuff?
Yeah, exactly.
It's kind of how far we've come.
Yeah, it's getting people familiar again with what the conference circuit is and what the different types are and what's available.
And I think for me as an organizer, rebooting old camp almost from scratch or certainly resurrecting what was left after five years has been interesting experience.
How did you, how did you volunteer yourself?
Well, so I had said that I would do it a couple of years ago.
And then we ended up having a baby.
So that obviously took priority over organizing old camp.
Unfortunately, yes.
We've also had another base again.
Yeah, we've had another one this year, but I'd already again.
I can't definitely do it.
So I have I've forgotten against my better will and said, no, I will.
I will.
I'll camp this yet.
So I basically put my hand up on the old camp mailing list.
And people were starting to talk about, you know, is an old camp going to happen?
Is it going to happen again?
If not, what should we do with the fund we've got?
Is there a decent place we should donate it?
Three.
And at the time I was working with John sprigs, previous organizer of I'll camp 18 and 17.
And he he managed to strung army in a bar at a works Christmas party into putting my hand up at organizing it.
And then when it came up on the mailing list, I thought, I did promise John I would do that.
So it's such a nice guy.
Yeah, exactly.
His name precedes it right.
So yeah, I put my hand up on the mailing list.
And thankfully, your previous organizers, Dan, John, Mark, et cetera, have been really helpful.
And people like Popeye and Lorna have jumped in with some previous organizing expertise as well.
So that's been really useful.
And we're pretty much there now.
I think our encouragement to people is sign up for tickets.
If you've got something that you should put on the schedule track, go to our camp.org.
And the final thing that I think we're currently just starting to fresh, just starting to flesh out is full crew.
So obviously, you know, I can, I can give a certain amount, but we do need people there on the day in order to help us with things like making sure AV is working or selling merch or
just walking the hall and making sure that people are generally happy.
Clean in the bins.
Yeah.
Yeah, all that kind of stuff.
We can't offer any money in exchange, but we will buy you breakfast and we will buy you people.
Because it's something on the Saturday night.
And you do get, you know, you do get the grateful thanks of the organizers, which is something that money just can't buy right now.
So it's, it's absolute heroes.
The people who go around and help out.
You go to a conference and then you're cleaning bins for the weekend.
It's, it's a great way to support the community.
Yeah.
You're trying to do is, you know, if you have a particular talk you want to see or whatever, we'll try and make sure that we can, we can sub you out of a room or whatever you're doing for a couple of hours to go and go and do whatever it is you need to do.
So I'll come to a slash crew is the place to go there if you're interested in that.
Cool, cool, cool, cool.
And just wondering about bringing little ones in called a conduct at all type of thing.
Oh, how are we doing with that?
So if you want to bring kids along, absolutely fine.
We don't have a specific kid's track this year, but if you want to bring them along, you have more than have started to organize your own kids activities and things or start a kid's track in that shared space where we've got the match stands and things more than happy for you to.
In terms of code of conduct, it's exactly the same as in previous years.
So I guess the TLDR is just be excellent to each other and don't discriminate against people for for anything.
We've also added a kind of health and safety section to the COC this year.
Just because we know that certain attendees might be a little bit concerned about coming on with COVID and everything that's happened in the last four or five years.
So we've put in a kind of health and safety section of the COC would encourage people to read that.
But the bottom line is that, you know, if you've got any kind of symptoms of respiratory illness, please don't come along.
And we've got free FFP two masks will be available at the conference for anyone who wants them.
And again, lateral flow, COVID tests available for anyone experiencing symptoms.
And as best we can, we'll keep the rooms ventilated.
But we've got a bear in mind, it's October in Manchester in a conference center.
So we'll do the best we can on that just to make sure that, you know, we've got free, free flowing air in the rooms and things as well.
Yeah. Fantastic. I'm just going down through my list.
I'm super excited, absolutely super excited. I even submitted a call for papers.
Did you get my brown envelope stuffed with cash?
It arrived in the past this morning, actually.
Yeah, lovely.
But even if it doesn't go ahead there, the beauty of this, if you just do submit a talk and, you know, it doesn't pass mustard, then you can just put it on the board.
And find a room and filling that you can just talk to yourself in the, in the hallware track.
We love it.
We had cool, but we've absolutely had talks and things done like in the, in the foyer of the hotel before.
I think John's breaks did an infamous one on TLS and got absolutely hammered by somebody who understood a bit more about TLS than he did.
It's just good fun.
Oh, poor guy.
But we love recording the whole way track. You really get to talk to a lot of amazing people and hopefully, hopefully people won't be too afraid to come back into the, into the community.
Yeah, absolutely.
So have I missed anything? Let's go down the list. We all know what our camp is.
Place for actually, did we really cover that? What sort of stuff you're likely to hear?
Yeah, we can cover a little bit of it.
So it's pretty much anything related to FOS or free and open culture.
So we've had talks from various different people in the past.
I think Stephen Fry actually spoke at one point, the importance of FOS in 2012, which is a little bit before my time.
But if it's to do with, if it's to do with FOS, if it's to do with hardware hacking, free and open culture, digital rights.
Creative commons.
All that kind of stuff is our things you can expect to hear at camp and say it's really the place to be for kind of anyone who's interested in FOS or Creative Commons or digital rights stuff in the UK.
And how has been, how has the response been for places? Yes, it's very early.
We've been asking this because this show was supposed to be telling people to go and book your tickets.
So silly question, ignore me, have a cup of coffee yet.
Yeah.
So far it's been really positive actually.
I think people are glad that something is coming back that we have a FOS event of this size running in the UK again.
That's a little bit more community focused.
So we've had a reasonable number in ticket sales so far.
By no means enough to fill out the venue.
So, you know, our coach would be, you know, keep coming along, keep telling us you're coming.
But, but so far, you know, we're doing pretty well.
What's the, the twitters and the social media's handles and email contact information? How can we spin the event?
So our main, main social media this year that we're trying to use is mastodon just because we've seen that most of the community have moved over there anyway.
We are opcamp at mastodon.social.
We do have, we still do have the Twitter running.
So that's just at opcamp.
We're putting out all the communication we put out on mastodon goes on there, but we're seeing much less engagement.
So whether we continue to use Twitter in future years or not is is another thing entirely.
And if you want to get in touch for kind of any general questions, contact at opcamp.org is the email there.
We've also got a couple of telegram channels. We've got a discord room. We've got a matrix channel.
I think there's even still an IRC kicking about somewhere that we're still using in a few of us and monitoring.
So all those details are just on home page at opcamp.org.
Super.
Great. And if there are people out there who want to sponsor, I'm sure you'll be more than happy to take that on board.
Yes, absolutely. If you want to get in the last minute sponsorship, just sponsor opcamp.org.
And we'll be in touch.
Great stuff. We're really looking forward to it.
There's a lot of people have already said they're turning up that normally wouldn't.
So we're doing a road trip, putting the team to get put in the band back together, so to speak.
Amazing. Yeah.
I'm looking forward to seeing everyone there.
Lovely stuff. And also Gary, thanks a million for taking the time to have this interview at a ridiculous hour of the morning.
And yeah, looking forward to putting a pint in your hand or whatever beverage you feel appropriate.
Once we meet up in Manchester.
Excellent. Thanks for having me, Ken. Look forward to seeing you.
Okay, that's it folks. All the information that you need for this will be in the show notes for this episode.
And indeed, we'll be on the agcamp.org. That's Oscar golf golf.
Charlie of Mike Papa does Oscar Romeo golf on camp.org.
That was more painful to say than it was to actually type out. But anyway, tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of hacker public radio.
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