[Projectleiding] Fwd: A parting message to those wishing to dance on the edge of the volcanoe

[Walter van Holst]

Since the unsubscribe from the ORGA list got processed faster than the parting message sent to it before:

Hi,

Having been with ORGA for OHM2013, SHA2017 and MCH2022 it felt better for myself to sit back and relax for WHY2025 and maybe just go there and be a trash angel or do otherwise useful stuff as an angel in the background. And definitely the plan was to hold my opinions on ORGA stuff to myself since it is rather bad form towards the people actually doing stuff.

Some of the past drama put some doubts on even that plan, but the clinker for me is the last blog post:

"Every hackercamp is unique because its vibe is created by its visitors, but here’s basically what you can expect:
🌐 Stages & Workshops: 3 stages hosting all sorts of talks & several tents for workshops like lock picking
🎧 Party Stage: DJs and artists so you can dance, sing, jump, sing or whatever you like to party
🎨 Art & Creativity: From fire breathing metal sculptures to unicorns, neon and other cool stuff
💡 Lights & Lasers: Blinking lights everywhere and an awesome fire & lasershow at night
⛺ Tents: everyone just sets up their tent wherever they like, there are no specific camping areas (besides silent camping and campers)¨

The rather tepid writing and poor spelling aside, it feels like someone is taking a sledgehammer to what Dutch hacker camps have been for decades. So the pretty lights are worth mentioning more than talks about society, technology, information security, politics? We are living through a real-life fascist take-over of the USA and the very possibility that this may happen in Europe as well? Partying is more relevant than the world being pretty much literally on fire, both climate-wise and geoolitics-wise? You want to be like the famous dog in the room on fire that says "This is fine" while sipping their coffee?

Also, no villages anymore? Do you have any idea how much of the sense and vibe and strength of community-organising derives from having the villages look after themselves to a large extent? Sure, HEU93 did without, but HEU93 was hardly larger than an Eth0:Summer edition.

If I want to go to a damn music festival, I will book tickets to Lowlands or Down the Rabbithole, thank you very much.

Hope you all will be having your fun, you can call it a hacker camp if you want to. It does not make it one.

Bye,

  Walter