WHYcast transcript episode 20
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Transcript 20
Nancy: Hi and welcome to the WHYcast episode 20. I'm Nancy.
Ad:I'm Ad.
Nancy: and we are the hosts of the only podcast about a hacker camp in the universe. This volunteer-run event will take place this year in the Netherlands, approximately 42 kilometers above Amsterdam, from August 8th to 12th.
Ad: So, Nancy, what are we talking about today?
Ad: Well, the same we talk about every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world? No. No, we have, as usual, the news, “Where to Hack,” a very cool interview, a vacancy of the week that’s related to the interview actually, messages from listeners—basically the usual stuff.
Ad: But let’s go into the news, because what we forgot to mention last time was that we did go halfway with the ticket sales. Yes—beyond halfway by now. Nobody won the pin, oh no, because everybody was wrong, including us. We had some thinking it would be sooner, and I think I was two days off. Booker Worm was one day off. Close, close.
Ad: So yeah, we need a new idea for someone to be able to win a pin. If you have a crazy creative idea, please send us an email at WHYcast at WHY2025 and we will consider it. Exactly. We would be happy to know from you if there’s anything you think is interesting—we need a contest.
Ad: Currently the sales are at nineteen hundred and nineteen, which is also cool because it’s a cool number—and we love numbers. At the moment of recording, so it’s possible that by the time this goes out the number will have changed. Maybe we freeze it at 2000 then. Could be. That would require a little extra drama. We’ll see, we’ll see.
Ad: The merch is also going great, so be sure to bring your black lights—because the hoodies, the shirts, everything will glow in the dark, which I think is amazing. Probably not all the shirts: the cleaner event shirts don’t glow, but the pretty ones with the full print have glow-in-the-dark elements. Otherwise, bring whatever you want and hack your shirt—there are tapes that are fluorescent under UV or black lights. If you bring a roll of tape and a black light, you can pimp your tent, pimp your shirt, pimp everything, and we’ll make it a very neon glowy party.
Nancy: I think we have enough creativity in the community to make that happen. The merch is going great—probably next week we’ll have an interview with Team:Merch. So that’s awesome—a sneak preview. We will hear all about it.
Nancy: And as of when this podcast comes out, it’s only 181 days to go. Wow, it sounds so short somehow—that’s half a year. It was just a couple of weeks ago it was a year away. Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess. I think it was episode one or two when it was a year away, and now suddenly it’s… what is happening?
Nancy: Also in other news, a lot of WHY-minded people went to FOSDEM last weekend. We really had a blast—it was cool to hear so many people coming by our stand. We brought the big neon WHY logo lights, and that worked like a charm. People actually showed up and said, “Hey, I already have my ticket,” which was great fun—to actually meet people who are coming in August.
Nancy: We’re going to do a lot of things. Also, people who had never heard of the camp before said, “Yeah, I went just to this event in ’97 called HIP, and there was this camp called Hectic—are they the same thing? Does it still exist?” That was really enjoyable. We had almost eight people from Team:Batch there—Marika, Bookworm, Robert Number3—who brought some prototype ideas and talked to people about them. We met so many WHY-minded people at FOSDEM, so we really had a blast.
Nancy: What I also found particularly cool is we brought a lot of posters—the general ones but also the CFP poster—and we talked to people from different hackerspaces all over Europe who took them. One guy from the Italian embassy said, “Give me the posters; I’ll bring them back to Italy.” People from Oslo, from everywhere took the white posters to put up in their spaces. That’s the way our community works; it gets promoted in several ways. In Brussels itself, I got photos from Crystal showing the posters everywhere—from Bornhack and other events. It was not only fun but also very useful for promotion.
Ad: So if you’ve seen the WHY light there, please give us a shout out. If you need posters or promo materials for your hackerspace, office, or wherever, reach out to us or to Team:Info. We’ll send you posters and things to put up locally—just let us know.
Ad: And if you took a picture of the WHY stand or the WHY people who consented to the photo (we did!), share it on socials and tag the WHY accounts on all the big platforms. Please do that—it helps us a lot with promotion. So, I guess that was what we did last week.
[Announcer]: Each week we will share where you can find WHY-minded people.
Nancy: Where are we going to hack? Well, we are going to hack at Hacker Hotel.
Ad: And there will be almost 400 friends joining us—unfortunately that’s the maximum, because it’s already sold out. Twenty-five of the visitors are newcomers. I love to debunk the myth that it’s an in-crowd party—it’s possible to get to Hacker Hotel for the first time. I know Dimitri gets a little sad if people say, “Oh, it’s an elite party”—that’s not true. Just a shout out to Dimi.
Ad: Maybe you could go to FIT—no, you can’t. Alternative: I don’t know, is there something wrong with love in the hacker community? Everybody goes to festivals and events on Valentine’s weekend—maybe because Valentine’s Day is commercial shitty stuff and we don’t want that. Or people take their loved ones to a hacker event like we do. I mean, you are bringing your better half and I am bringing mine, so we celebrate Valentine’s Day at a hacker event—geeky love for you.
Ad: And if you know a cool event over a weekend or a week—maybe Valentine’s weekend—send it to us. Send an email, tag us on YouTube or social media, perhaps. We could use more on the agenda. It seems the festival calendar has a little pause in March and April. If you know of a cool event, tell us.
Ad: And if we look further into the future, there are more events coming: WeekOn is coming, ETH0 is coming at the end of October—October 31st to the weekend of November 2nd. It’s an old event being revived, which is cool. I think it was one of the first events I visited regularly—very nice. This time it’ll be all the way down south in the Netherlands, so maybe easier to access from Germany and Belgium as well.
Nancy: Yeah, and I spoke to the organizers at Bornhack last summer—they’re really trying their best to make it a cool event. When I checked ticket sales this afternoon it said 93 tickets available—and now only 85 tickets are left. I guess people are very, very interested. They’re also looking for sponsors, by the way, and so are we. Maybe we can pass people on to them. Let’s give these nice organizers a little boost and get your tickets for them too. It’s shorter and smaller, so it’s a bit cheaper than WHY—that’s a good thing. They also have a construction “low on funds” theme, which we will explain on the WHYcast in the near future. It’s available to everybody, which is great—so good job, go for it people. It’s lovely to see this event revived.
Ad: Definitely. But if we talk about events, someone who is always at them is Konmei—and she had a very cool interview.
Nancy: Yes, I did. She’s best at introducing herself, of course. She’s very active in the CCC community and in the Dutch community as well. She does amazing things and is in two teams for WHY, which we’ll talk about later. What I interviewed her about this time was Chaos Post, because I love the idea. She gives a great explanation of how, what, where, and when. Let’s listen to her. Here with me today is Konmei—I’m so happy you could make the time, Konmei.
Konmei: Hi everyone. You might have seen my face around Chaos Post—that’s where I spend most of my time at recent events. I’ve been in the Chaos Computer Club for over 15 years. I’ve been with Team:Villages for the German camp, and also with Team:Villages for WHY—doing that for MCH and SHA. I’m also supporting Team:Parking and traffic guidance at previous events, and now helping out again for WHY.
Nancy: That’s awesome. We’ll meet each other again in a couple of weeks at Hacker Hotel, where you’ll also be with Chaos Post. Can you please tell me a little bit about the background, the history, and what Chaos Post is? Some people still don’t know what it is yet.
Konmei: Indeed. On the other side, we also have a lot of new people joining events—that’s awesome. The idea goes back to 33C3, where Nick Farr suggested people at the event could write a note to someone else at the same event. Someone else, not knowing either person, would deliver the note. That encourages physical interaction and offers a different perspective on the event.
Konmei: It escalated quickly: people asked if they could send postcards to friends or family at home. We said, “Sure—here’s the donation box for the stamp fee, we’ll take care of the rest.” That’s how it started. At the last congress, we used over 50,000 postcards—10,000 postcards is about five kilograms, so you can imagine the logistics operation!
Konmei: We actually sent 110,000 postcards worldwide. We have over 200 different postcard designs, most made by our creative mastermind, Goofy. The basic concept remains postcards and messages, but we’ve added services. For example, people wanted pre-designed greetings they could just sign and send. We created cross-off greeting cards for that.
Konmei: We also built a photo booth service: you take a photo, print it immediately, stick the address label on the back, and send it as a postcard right from the event. We tested it thoroughly—paper type, label size, durability through postal sorting—all worked out. This time we handed in about 3,000 external postcards a week late because we ran out of stamps—it was our highest ever.
Nancy: That’s amazing. Besides the CCC events and WHY, you also attend Hacker Hotel and GPN, MRMD, Easterheek, and other camps.
Konmei: Yes, we set up our big Chaos Post office at every congress, all the camps, GPN in Karlsruhe, MRMCD in Darmstadt, Easterheek, Hacker Hotel, and some smaller events. For events we can’t personally attend, we offer a “post office in a box” service—self-service, you pay postage, set it up, then send it back.
Konmei: We also store internal postcards for future delivery. Right now we have roughly 600 postcards waiting for events like WHY, C3, 50C3, Easterheek, GPN, and cross-event sends. Some people write to their future selves at the next event—I sent myself a card to Hawai’i’s clothing ceremony, and it will show up soon.
Konmei: The essential fun is delivering postcards. You often don’t know the recipient, so you look for villages, teams, or hangout spots to find them. It’s a special way to contribute to an event. People shy about deliveries challenge themselves—and everyone loves getting a postcard.
Konmei: For Two years ago at one congress we even handled a wedding proposal and acceptance via Chaos Post—and got a thank-you note from the actual wedding. That was pretty cool. At WHY we’ll have a special event stamp alongside our Chaos Knoten and Fairy Dust stamps—and a surprise or two.
Konmei: Thank you for listening. I hope this was the number you have for today, and I hope all your events will be very appropriate. I’ll see you soon—bye-bye.
Nancy: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Konmei, for your time and all the effort you put into WHY.
Ad: Going from Chaos Post and all the cool community stuff, we can jump directly into the vacancy of the week. Go for it.
Nancy: Vacancy of the Week: Team:Parking is looking for a Dutch-speaking team lead. Gonne B. has loads of experience, which helps a lot, but she’s not Dutch. She’s fluent in Dutch, though. It would be beneficial for Team:Parking to have a Dutch team lead. If you want to step into that role with a great backup behind you, please reach out to Team:Parking and they’ll tell you exactly what needs doing.
Nancy: Please also reach out to Team:Permits if you can help—they need information about parking, and you’d be in a team-lead role there as well.
Nancy: And that’s our vacancy of the week.
Nancy: Now, messages from listeners. A while back, we got a long email with all kinds of questions from Pink, which we decided to split up over episodes and answer gradually. At FOSDEM, someone recognized my voice and said, “I’m Pink—I sent in that email.” We made a selfie, which I won’t share without her consent, but it was really cool.
Nancy: I have to send her another email now because she pointed out I only got to the last question this episode. If more people have questions, remarks, or stuff to share for the WHYcast, please send an email at WHYcast at WHY2025.org—or leave a comment below if you watch on YouTube. We’d love to hear from you.
Nancy: It’s always fun to know people are listening. I still get surprised—someone corrected me on “approximately 42 kilometers above Amsterdam” at a random table. They said, “It’s exactly 42.42 kilometers.” It’s fact-checked this time—42.42 kilometers above Schiphol Airport. True story.
Ad: And with that, we’re at the end. Thank you very much for listening and watching, and I hope to see you next Friday—WHYday!