WHYcast transcript episode 11
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Transcript episode 11
Nancy: Hi and welcome to the WHYcast episode 11. I’m Nancy. 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 in the Netherlands, approximately 42 kilometers above Amsterdam, from August 8 to 12, 2025. So Ad, what are we talking about today?
Ad: I’m Ad. Well, as per usual, we have some news from Project Lead. We have some updates for you, very exciting news. We have a Where to Hack, which is a very important one this time, I think. We have a cool story from Walter. We have an interview with the one and only Bert Hubert. I mean, we got famous people on the WHYcast. What else do we want? Well, we want people for the vacancy of the week.
Nancy: It’s coming to be a nice one, I think. Yep. Great. But first, let’s start off with the news. So those of you who have been in the Orga meet already heard a little bit about some turmoil in the UI Orga community. In the online Orga meet last Wednesday, the 4th of December, I read a short statement. The gist of it was that in the last few days, a lot of messages, emails, and other communication about a situation between Team Project Leading and a few members from Team Batch came up. It may have come to your attention; we would like to de‑escalate the situation. Of course, I think all the parties are not happy with the current situation, and we would like to ask everyone for a little bit of patience on further news. It would be a bit weird to not mention it on the WHYcast, so that’s why I wanted to share this.
Ad: But!
Nancy: In other news, something else happened last Wednesday as well.
Ad: During the Orga meet, the ticket sales went live. And not only that, they went through the roof.
Nancy: And actually, the first ticket sold was announced as well in that online Orga meet by someone who was in the last episode. So you’ll spot his first ticket. Congrats.
Ad: Congratulations!
Nancy: There were 512 early bird tickets available—early nerd tickets even. Oh my goodness! And they sold out in record time, I think in 45 hours. I went to sleep eventually after F5‑ing for hours. But… there were eight early nerd tickets left, and this morning—or at least the next morning—they were all gone. And not only that, because we’ve been checking it out, I think we’re heading to at least 800 by the time this goes out. Yep. So if you wanted to take your camper, I’m sorry—I hope you already have your tickets for your camper then. Yeah, that went fast. Within 24 hours even, the early nerds are gone. So the nerd tickets are still available, of course, until February 28. It’s going so much quicker than former editions of this crazy cool event. I think when I looked, yeah, it’s about 16 days last time to get to 750—and now it was within 24 hours. That’s wild. It’s really, really cool to see, and of course this would not have been possible without all the volunteers who put in so much effort and work. Of course, especially we will start with Team Sysadmin—they did a crazy, very good job. I’m really thankful to them, Team Tickets and Entrance, Team Merch, House Style, Promo, Team Finance… and did we mention Sysadmin? I think we didn’t, but okay—they did an awful lot of work. Thanks to all these volunteers that made it possible to release the ticket sales on the 4th of December, which is almost a month earlier than earlier editions. Congrats to you all—I think you did an amazing job, and thank you so so much.
Ad: Yeah, which brings us right into the next segment, Where to Hack.
Walter (intro): Each week, we will share where you can find why‑minded people: Where to Hack.
Ad: If you want to meet some of the people who made it possible that the ticket shop went open on the 4th of December, you could meet them on the 14th of December at Bit Layer in Amersfoort—so that’s next week Saturday if you listen to the WHYcast on the day it’s published. It’s going to be great fun. You’re all allowed to bring your ugly Christmas sweater, of course, and it’s in the new location of Bit Layer. You can find all the details on the WHY‑wiki (link in the show notes), and also on the wiki, in the little menu on the left, there’s a direct link to the Orga meet for the 14th. Please register yourself on the wiki so we know how many people to expect—because things with food, yes, yes.
Nancy: I also heard that there’s a very special edition of a very special event coming… You’re wearing the Hacker Hotel hoodie.
Ad: I am. That’s last year’s edition of the Hacker Hotel hoodie. Hacker Hotel is coming again—again! It has been 10 years since the first one, so there’s a special design on the new merch. I’ve seen a sneak preview, and somewhere this weekend the merch shop will open. Reminder: only people who already have a ticket for Hacker Hotel should order merch, because you have to pick it up at the event and you can’t get in if you don’t have a ticket. Tickets are already sold out. It’s also a nice way to meet Dimitri, who is going to build a physical firewall at WHY2025—so if it’s important to meet him earlier, either come to Bit Layer next week or catch him at Hacker Hotel. Well, I think if you go to Bit Layer any week, you’ll probably find him there anyway. So this weekend, Hacker Hotel merch will go on sale. That’s also very cool to know.
Nancy: Since we’re talking about anniversaries and things like that, it might be a nice time to talk about a little history lesson right now.
Ad: Sure. Each episode, we’ll be diving into a piece of history—something special from the predecessors of WHY2025. That could be Galactic Hacker Party (1989), Hackers at the End of the Universe (1993), Hacking in Progress (1997), 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, MacCovid happened so that became May Contain Hackers 2022. And this week, we will be taking a look at…
Nancy: So with us again is Walter. Walter, let’s hear some more stories from the old days of Horror.
Walter: I think of Horror FM, but we’ll talk about that later. Horror, yeah, 2009—that was in the Paasheuvel in Vierhouten. It was a bit different than the other ones because there were already facilities. So there were buildings where the lectures were held. And I still have my original wristband. I was, at that time, doing press stuff, so I have my Horror press hat. Very cool.
Nancy: And you’re also doing press this edition, right?
Walter: Yes. I’ve been doing press since 2009, so that was at Horrorium. For some reason or another, I don’t recall much of Horror—I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But what I do remember is that the sales went very, very well. All the tickets were sold in advance, I think. Then there was a little bit of money left that the organizers thought, “What can we do to make the event even better?” And they decided to put it into awesome lighting. That was really awesome. This was the best lit festival. If you walked there at night, it looked really, really beautiful. I actually have a picture of that as well—sorry for the people listening to the podcast. That’s a picture of some trees with nice lighting all around the terrain.
One of the other things I did was radio. I think this was the first event where there was event radio—where there was live radio broadcast over FM with an official permit: 106.8 FM. Ah, that was Horror FM. We had all kinds of jingles that are still in my head somehow. I did a radio show there, the Graveyard Shift, between two and four at night. I did four shows every night, sitting almost alone, waiting for random people to walk into the studio and have some fun. And that’s also cool—you get the opportunity to do crazy stuff like that in normal life. At the camp, there’s so much possible that you can try and do. That was a nice experience. Other than that, I can’t really recall anything super special.
Nancy: I know it was my first DNH camp, and I think that was the edition where Tim Kuik from Stichting Brein was on stage. He was very big against piracy—music piracy, movie piracy… People from The Pirate Bay were in the audience. So that was very interesting. Also, it was a normal campsite: outside our camp were families having their holidays, and sometimes they got lost and ended up on the hacker camp. They were like, “What is going on here?” But the people from the OpenBSD village were very willing to talk to them. “We’re not that scary.”
Walter: Oh, we like to talk and understand.
Nancy: That’s also why Tim Kuik was there—it was controversial, but nice of the hacker community to invite him, and nice of him to accept.
Ad: And I think this was also where Julian Assange was… Was he physically there?
Walter: Yes, he was—before all the trouble hit the fan. I was too busy brewing beer… not beer, beer.
Nancy: War stories from Horror.
Ad: We will find other ’80s attendees who might remember—send us an email at WHYcast@WHY2025.org, and we will mention it in future episodes. If you want to tell it yourself, you’re welcome to join our call and share your war stories. Walter, thank you very much, and hope to see you in the next episode with more cool stories.
Nancy: Yeah, so we are a little bit undecisive if it was the first edition with DECT coverage—whoever knows more, send us an email.
Ad: I wasn’t there, so I can’t tell. But I do have my DECT phone right here—it’s still white, which is impressive. It took some elbow grease. Grass leaves are remarkably resilient stains on white plastic.
Nancy: A couple of weeks ago at WICCON, we interviewed Bert Hubert. I was amazed by his passion and love for the Dutch hacker camps. So let’s listen to him.
Bert Hubert: So the first hacker camp I attended was 1993, Hackers at the End of the Universe. And for me it was a huge thing because I was already a big nerd at the time—people around me were not nerds, so I was in high school. And for me, that was the event where I had to gather the courage to go there because I never met any of these hackers and these nerds. And I went there and I was home. I arrived and I was among my people and they were also weird—this is my crowd, and I was also weird—and they were like, “Hey, it’s great that you are weird too.” I had my little tent and I slept there. I was 17 at the time, and it was an emotional experience. At the time, I was not yet very good at this stuff; I was always the best nerd in my own environment. Then I arrived and there were all these wonderful people around me who were far bigger nerds than I was and who had achieved far more, and it was almost like a religious experience—“Oh wow.”
When I see young people arriving at hacker events now, because the hacker community is getting old, but if you look at these hacker events there are all these 18-year-olds, I hope you have as wonderful a time here as I did. I see it as one of the main ramps for the hacker community—otherwise it’s getting a bit gray.
What would you say to a young person who’s still a bit hesitant, “What’s in it for me?” To a large approximation, you can just consider it a normal camp—like a music festival—because we have the beer, we have the substances, everything is there. So you can just go there and assume it’s a normal music festival with a lot of computers. Once you’re there, if you have these hobbies—if you ever wanted to know everything about the GPS system, or how your mobile phone really works, or how people hack WiFi—there are tents where they do that live for you on your own stuff.
The other thing I cannot stress enough is everyone is so friendly. Maybe that is a difference with a normal music festival: if you try to get something stolen, it will be returned to you 25 times. If you leave your bicycle somewhere, someone will bring it back to you. As an example, last time around I was super tired and my tent was not set up correctly. I went off to give my speech, and when I came back my tent was set up correctly because other people noticed, “Bertie looks tired—let’s fix his tent.” I was like, “Yeah, these are my people.”
For speakers: this is one of the most welcoming places ever to do a talk. There will always be someone interested in your weird hobby—it doesn’t matter how weird it is. People want to hear about your WiFi insect sensor or whatever. A key thing is thinking about your audience: what do these people want to hear? Turn it into a story. Our camps have talks on biodiversity in Africa and energy efficiency on the moon—no hobby is too weird.
Doing a good talk requires practice and a little preparation. I’ve written blog posts with tips for presenting at hacker camps—search for “Bert Hubert 2017.” The bar is not that high: show up, have a story, speak audibly—no mumbling. Practice a bit in front of a mirror or your local hackerspace. That will pay off.
One more story: after every camp, when I help clean up and leave, I cry every time—little tears—because I get in my car and leave all the grand stuff behind, and I think, “I need to come back.” But I can only come back in a few years—it’s hard.
I’m already so much looking forward to next year. That’s my take.
Ad: Thank you, Bert. Anyone who wants to be a speaker and needs extra help, reach out to Bert. And don’t forget: submissions for the CFP are open at cfp.WHY2025.org or via the website—make sure you bring something proper to the stage, and with Bert’s tips, you’ll do great.
Nancy: Although we have a lot of lovely volunteers making cool stuff happen, we still have vacancies—and here’s the vacancy of the week. Team:Deco, who were on the show early in the episodes, are working on the deco for the entire event but could use help focusing specifically on the silent lounge. If that sparks your creativity, contact Team:Deco—contact Moon—and make something pretty and nice. If you’re unsure which team is responsible, email me and we’ll sort it out.
Ad: If you have any questions or comments, put them down below on YouTube or send an email to WHYcast@WHY2025.org. We’ll read your mail on air.
Nancy: Thank you for listening to us, and we hope to see you again next Friday—WHYday.