WHYcast transcript episode 13

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Transcript episode 13

Nancy: Hi, and welcome to the WHYcast, episode 13. I’m Nancy. Hi, Ad. And we are the hosts of the only podcast about a Hacker camp in the universe. This volunteer-run event will take place next year, for now, in the Netherlands, approximately 42 kilometers above Amsterdam from August 8 to 12, 2025. So, Ad, what are we talking about today?

Ad: Well, people probably start to realize that we have a script with a few regular items, and this one is no different. We’ll be diving into some news. We’ll be looking to see where we can find WHY-minded people. We have another cool story with Walter. We have an interview that was recorded last Saturday, and we'll get into that a bit more in the news. We have the vacancy of the week, and we have listener questions. So, first of all, let’s start off with the news.

Nancy: Yes, we were in Amersfoort last Saturday. Yes, we were at BitLair. The in-person Orgameet. Yep.

Ad: It was very cool of the guys from BitLair to provide us with their awesome space. It’s a new space, really cool. They have nice rooms and very cool stuff there. And they were printing tiaras live while we were recording interviews for the WACast.

Nancy: More tiaras. More tiaras. Actually, we’re glow-in-the-dark as well in all kinds of different colors. So we will bring a bunch of those as well to a camp or a congress that we are going to soon. More about that later. Yes.

Ad: So, first of all, what did we do at this in-person Orgameet? Well, obviously, we said hi to each other because now we finally saw each other in real life instead of only on screen, which is always very cool. I mean, having the big Orgameetings on the ITC as well as all the teams having their own little meetings is really effective, but being together in one great room and speaking to each other is even more fun. Yeah, it has resulted in lots of decisions and quick discussions being done, decisions being made, and new volunteers welcomed because we got new volunteers showing up there, which was really awesome. So, it was a very fun and functional meetup. We had a nice meal together, a nice drink together. And, well, thanks again to BitLair for having the entire…

Nancy: I asked Henry, because he’s good with numbers—he’s seen finance—if he could count the people. So he did. There were 70 people there. Well, at the moment of counting, 67. But then more people showed up. So it’s approximately 70 people again. Yep. So it’s truly, truly amazing to see that so many people are working on creating the best camp ever. That’s very cool. And what’s also… One of the teams, Team Production House, made sure that the team updates and the introduction by Crystal was recorded and already put live on media.ccc.de. Yes. So you can find at least that part of the meeting online there as well. We will share the link in the show notes so you can hear all about the updates from the different teams who were there.

Ad: So, now that you mentioned CCC… brings us nicely into the next item on the list.

Nancy: Yeah. Because during CCC—which is from December 27 to 30—we will have a raffle. So if you buy a WHY2025 ticket during the last days of December—because we’ll just sneak in the 31st as well—you can win one of the two hoodies that we are going to hand out to two people that buy a ticket during that period. So if you buy your WHY ticket during CCC, you can win a hoodie.

Ad: Cool.

Nancy: Yes. I will give you a hoodie. You’ll be fine.

Ad: Merch store will be opening fairly soon, I think. But stay tuned.

Nancy: It’s around prices and what kind of merch we do. We don’t want… So, almost there. Work-in-progress discussions are going on within Team PL. So stay tuned. Merch will be available soon.

Ad: Stay tuned to the WHYcast. Yep. And keep an eye on the socials, also for exactly what you need to do to enter the raffle for CCC. And with that… yes. Do we do the where to hack?

Nancy: Each week, we will share where you can find WHY-minded people. Where to hack?

Nancy: Well, it shall be no surprise, right? Where will you find WHY-minded people at Congress? I know a lot of WHY-minded people will go there. I know Ned Smurf is going there. Well, I know a lot of people from the Orga as well that are going there. Also, of course, we will make use of the Angel system there. So we will do some shifts to make that event a big success as well.

Nancy: And I’m planning to make a CCC-themed episode for the first new episode in the new year, which is January 3. So if you see me running around and would like to be in the CCC episode of WHY, of the WHYcast, please reach out to me and we’ll find a nice spot to record an interview or maybe a great story to tell or something like that.

Ad: Yep. Always cool to hear what you’re doing at WHY or what you did at previous camps or why people should visit these camps in general. I mean, it could also be a cool story from Congress or camp.

Nancy: Absolutely.

Ad: And speaking of cool stories for previous camps, we do have another history lesson with Walter. Each episode will be dialed—we’re diving into a piece of history, something special from the predecessors of WHY-2025. So that could be from the Galactic Hacker Party in 1989, Hackers at the End of the Universe in ’93, Hacking in Progress ’97, Hackers at Large 2001, What the Hack 2005, Hacking at Random 2009, Observe Hack Make 2013, Still Hacking Anyways 2017, May Contain Hackers 2021—no, Mac-Ovid happened, so that became May Contain Hackers 2022.

Nancy: So, back with us again is Walter, with some more stories from the past, stories from an ’80s hacker. So, Walter, what camp are we talking about today?

Walter: We are talking about SHA—Still Hacking Anyway—in 2017 in Zeewolde, so I was involved again. Can you keep it closer to the cam? You’re showing some… Yes, I have that one as well. I see an Angel badge, a press badge. I also do press. And I did some talks at this camp as well about physical security, which was nice. That’s very cool and awesome. Yeah, so it was a cool Zeewolde, a cool terrain with a harbor there. And what was interesting press-wise were the physical things that you could hack. There was this fire truck that you also did a thing about, but also a guy from Belgium, I believe, who took a Tesla car to be hacked. And in one of the earliest episodes we did about the WHY, I was talking about this horrible food that they had over there. But I remember from SHA that the food was really fantastic for the volunteers. If you are a volunteer and you do actual work during the build-up, you get food during the day, and the caterer was fantastic. It was also vegan, but it was really super.

Walter: And I think SHA for me was the first event where there were these huge villages. I mean, the concept of villages had been there before, but this was taken overt the top the first time. At SHA you had these villages with the Finns, the Italians, and also different interest groups, and they all brought their stuff. The Finns had a huge sauna that they brought with them. I don’t know how they got transport for it. And the Italians had a big pizza oven and they were making pizzas for everybody. Yeah, that was cool. It was really a very nice event to just walk over the terrain and see what was happening. And then you would see somebody doing lockpicking, then food hacking, then that was going on. That was going on. So to me, it had a bit of a—I’ve never been to Lowlands, but I have the idea that’s a bit of a Lowlands feel, where you’re just in the happy flow. Everybody is helpful, and there’s lots of stuff to do.

Ad: Because by now the camp has grown to be about 3,300 people.

Walter: Yeah, so it’s not like we have a bunch of friends and a couple of tents. This is seriously big. There’s a village in the middle of nowhere on a few grassy fields, and for a week there’s a hacker village. There’s a town with all the facilities that you need, including a ridiculously fast Internet and the fire department that we discussed in episode four. You can look back at that episode. I think there were three big podia, a lot of workshops, and little lecture halls here and there and everywhere.

Ad: Yeah, but you mentioned lockpicking. Were you already involved in the lockpicking village yourself?

Walter: Yeah, I’ve been the president of T.O.O.L. for many years. I was a member of T.O.O.L. I became a member in 1997. Actually, I got into lockpicking because I read about it in an article from The Key, who was doing a lockpicking workshop at the first outdoor event. But I only opened my first lock in ’97 at the HIP event where they had just started the German lockpicking group—they started in ’96—and they had a big tent in ’97 at HIP where people could try to open locks. I succeeded, and people with me also succeeded, and that was the start of the Dutch lockpicking group T.O.O.L. that was founded in ’97. After HIP we had our own tent—not every event, but there was one event, I think it was probably OHM or SHA, where we had a tent but didn’t really have people to man it. We fixed that at the MCH, but we’ll talk about that another time.

Walter: What I also did was, just as with the previous event, I was involved in the radio, but then it was called BinaryVoice. Again, I did a graveyard shift—four nights of radio in the wee hours, which was fun. The radio was quite central in the field. Again, I talked about this when I talked about HAM, about joining hands with an event that came after us. So in this case, there was an event before or after us—the Jamboree, I believe Scouts. And we talked with them. What struck me was that the Jamboree’s security guard said they had a lot of work trying to stop fights and deal with incidents or improper conduct or whatever. They were just before SHA—that was just before—so they were still hanging around. They were amazed to hear that we had so few security people walking around. But yeah, it shows that it doesn’t need that much security if you give everybody the responsibility themselves; it can turn out very well, even with over 3,000 people on site.

Walter: And we had a nice terrain with some places where you had water, some woodland, some grassland, this huge family terrain, and then the harbor. It was a very nice setup there.

Nancy: Yeah, I think it’s the power of having a volunteer-driven event where pretty much everyone attending also has their own input. That makes it your own event as well.

Walter: Yeah, but it’s getting a bit harder with the sheer number of people coming in. There will be people who think, “Well, I’m just here to consume, so let me have it.” But of course, there are so many people walking around who really have a hacker ethic and want to cooperate and learn from each other. If that’s the majority, you’ll influence these people to also start cooperating. And yeah, that works really well.

Nancy: Definitely. There were also a lot of interesting whistleblowers. I recall from that time because I was a herald at that camp. The herald was someone who announced the speakers. While all of the talks can be viewed back, I highly recommend people watch the talks from people from the NSA and the CIA. It was really interesting to see and hear those stories.

Walter: And of course, I’ll show you a picture. I see Manduca, who you’ll be interviewing later, hopefully. But there was also a shift going on in the first events. We had Jolt Cola, and I remember still at the hall we had people selling Jolt Cola, which is an American cola with a lot of caffeine. That was really the hackers’ drink of choice. For some reason, I still don’t know what made the change happen, but everybody suddenly went to drink Club-Mate. Here you see a picture of a big truck with Club-Mate being delivered to the bar at SHA, and that is still a thing. I don’t really like Club-Mate—maybe—but… And there’s a picture of the food we had, which was wonderful.

Nancy: So it’s good to hear that we will have the same caterer next edition because it’s crazy good food. Shout-out to Mälzfragen again. Very cool.

Ad: You can actually still watch a lot of the talks on the YouTube channel, because the WHY2025 YouTube channel used to be the SHA 2017 channel, so all the videos are still there. If you want to watch the talk about whistleblowers and how safe they were at different events, you can still look those up. All their camp videos are on media.ccc.de; we’ll share links in the show notes.

Nancy: So I think that was almost the final episode of history lessons with Walter—nicely planned, actually—because the last one will be the final episode of this year. We’ll hear his MCH stories next episode. One of the people who also decided to join a team last Saturday—though he’s been working hard behind the scenes—is Robert, aka Number3. I asked him to tell us what’s going on today at the live Orgameet.

Nancy: We are here today in Amersfoort—very important: it’s Amersfoort and BitLair—and here with us today is Robert, aka Number3. You’ve been here all afternoon working on Team:Info things; can you tell us about the live Orgameet and what happens on this day?

Robert: Wow, yeah. We started on time… not. That’s the first thing. We ended on time—or early—so that’s good. Not all 42 teams actually took their minutes, so it didn’t take three quarters of an hour. We opened the meeting and Bookworm shared updates from PL; I was transcribing everything during the session. So we have minutes—you can go to the wiki to read what happened—and you can watch the video online.

Nancy: Yeah, I just heard from Bix at Team:Produktiehuis that the recording of this afternoon is already available at media.ccc.de. This is why I always need the Adfluencer with me, because I tend to forget links in the show notes.

Nancy: You can view it back there. But okay, what do you think about the atmosphere—what was going on?

Robert: The atmosphere is really Christmassy because we all have our Christmas sweaters, and it’s buzzing in the room. I think all the teams are talking to each other. It’s only—what is it?—about 200 days before the event now, so people are getting ready. I joined Team:Info today to help them out. I saw a lot of new people who weren’t volunteering before; they watched the WHYcast—shout-out to Jasper—and came here to help Team:Volunteers. A lot of people are meeting in real life and talking; that’s really good in the prep to the event.

Nancy: Absolutely. I asked Henry from finance to count the room—he’s good at counting—and more people joined later. It was 66 people already. That’s a pretty vast amount of people working on this, and they’re still—well, it’s almost 7 p.m., and they’re still talking. I saw people figuring out details between Team:Terrain, Team:Bar, Team:Food, where stuff is being set up. That’s a really good thing.

Robert: Listening to the buzz, it’s really good right now.

Nancy: One thing I also like is that you always bring your son.

Nancy: Ever since he was this big—now he’s larger than me—but he’s still here, helping out in the orga. So that’s good.

Robert: Start them young.

Nancy: Start them young—because we’ve gotten a bit grayer in the last decade.

Robert: He complained there weren’t many 21-year-olds volunteering. Like, “Well, tell me how to get more of them.” And yeah, we’ll try to find them.

Nancy: Yeah, because in the WAC community…

Ad: Well, this was a great afternoon. Anything else that stood out today?

Robert: I saw some cyber stickers coming along—many colors—so I think we’ll see a lot of them next year. And the new BitLair location is beautiful. It’s very nice, more spacious, with different rooms. So that was really good that BitLair hosted the WHY orga team. Shout-out to BitLair.

Robert: I also talked to permits; they’re getting ready to secure the permits, which is important to do long before the event.

Nancy: Long before. Yeah.

Robert: So good to hear.

Nancy: So you had a lovely afternoon?

Robert: I had a great afternoon.

Nancy: Enjoy all the volunteers here. You can find out more if you follow the links in the show notes to get a taste of what happened today.

Nancy: Very good. Thank you so much, Robert.

Robert: No problem.

Nancy: Thanks also for all the effort you’re putting in to make this a great event.

Robert: Let’s keep up the work.

Nancy: Thanks.

Ad: Well, it’s always great to have help like Robert on your team—and in the organization in general. Bringing in his offspring to join in is also a nice thing.

Nancy: Team:Info family.

Producer: Yeah.

Nancy: So what is the vacancy of the week? This week?

Ad: This week we’ll be looking at Team:Party Area. That’s a fun area to be in. They’re still looking for people who can help with stage building, audio, video, lighting—buildup and turnaround on the stage and perhaps during the event. For more details, contact them. The contact information is on the Wiki at wiki.WHY2025.org, link to Team:Party Area.

Nancy: And last Saturday, I spoke to someone preparing the bar area; there will be karaoke.

Producer: Yes—but we can’t play the songs here because of content matches and stuff. But just come and sing.

Nancy: Karaoke always makes me happy. I know a lot of people hate it, but karaoke fans abound.

Nancy: Yes—so much party going on.

Ad: Yes.

Ad: And this is both in preparation and maybe during the event. That leads me into messages from listeners: I got a question about the Angel system. In short, it’s a system that lists many tasks—often not very difficult—that need to be done. It could be helping out with AV, pointing a camera at the speaker, helping in the parking lot, pouring coffee at the bar, sitting at the info desk, or washing dishes in the kitchen. At some camps, it’s mandatory to do a shift. It wasn’t mandatory for WHY or previous camps, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be mandatory for WHY2025. It’s much appreciated, of course. If you do a volunteer shift or two, you get food as a reward—not only a warm, fuzzy feeling but also a cool T-shirt that says you volunteered. Team:Volunteers is working on that right now.

Nancy: Awesome. It’s very helpful.

Ad: It’s only a couple of hours—it’s not the whole day. If everybody does a little bit, together we have an awesome camp. Meet new people, get that warm, fuzzy feeling, and get food for it—what’s not to like? That’s the Angel system in short. If you want to hear more, let me know. Put a comment below on YouTube or send us an email at WHYcast@WHY2025.org with questions or remarks. Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe—ring the bell, blah blah blah.

Producer: Blah blah blah.

Ad: Thank you for listening and sticking with us to the end of this episode of the WHYcast. We’ll be back next Friday—because every Friday is a WHYday.

Nancy: And with the holiday season upon us—have fun, people.

Ad: It’s time for holidays. Yes. Bye.