WHYcast transcript episode 18
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Transcript 18
Nancy: Hi, and welcome to the WHYcast episode 18. I’m Nancy.
Ad: I’m Ad. 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, or next year, in the Netherlands, approximately 42 kilometers above Amsterdam from August 8 to 12, 2025. So, Ad, what are we talking about today?
Nancy: Well, just as every week, we have some news from Project Lead. We have a nice Where to Hack. We have some cool interviews with people done by you. We have Team:Accessibility and Team Power. So, that’s a strong start. We have the vacancy of the week. We have a message from listeners. And I think that’s about it for this week.
Ad: That’s a lot.
Nancy: So, let’s just jump into the news.
Ad: We made it halfway. Woo-hoo! Yes, we sold 50 % of the tickets.
Ad: Oops.
Nancy: Yeah, kind of. That’s a little jump cut here. It’s now Friday morning—the 24th of January—yeah, a couple of hours before the launch of this episode. And I think we’ve been a bit overenthusiastic in our prognosis: we’re not yet half. We’re close. I mean, we’re really close.
Ad: Woo-hoo!
Nancy: Currently, I’m refreshing, refreshing. We’re 33 off halfway. But we were kind of hoping to be there. And we’re not.
Ad: Quite there yet.
Nancy: No, no, no. But it’s like it’s just a few. So, if you’re hearing this, just go and click things. And, yeah. But, I mean, we have good news. I think about 10 % of the tickets—
Ad: Yeah, almost 200 tickets. Yeah.
Nancy: —have been sold to people up to 16. So, we have a lot of fresh blood and young hackers making their way to Geestmerambacht. The merch sales are doing great—like 500 or something. So, that’s all really, really cool. But just not quite there yet. No, no, no, no. Almost. So, when you hear this, just go buy your ticket.
Ad: I mean, it’s always a good idea. And now, I’m going to edit this in the episode and we will proceed with the rest of the episode. So, here’s over to us from the past. Blast from the past, Nancy.
Ad: Also, what I wanted to mention is the next in-person meet with the organization. That will be on the 22nd of February. So, in a couple of weeks—mark your calendars. And it will be at the hackerspace in Arnhem: Hack 42. So, thank you so much for the hospitality, of course, to them. And please, please, please do sign up on the wiki. Because last time we had a little bit of a food issue. It was sad. If we don’t know that you’re coming, we might have a problem feeding you. And we like to have enough for everybody there. So, please don’t forget to sign up. We will probably repeat that a couple of times in this podcast and on other channels. And we would love to see you there, of course, because up to now, all the previous editions were a blast.
Ad: It was great. Yeah. So, we will see you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We will see you all in Arnhem.
Ad: And what I’ve always also understood, I mean, from the last online Orga meet, was that the CFP is a bit slow. In case you don’t know what CFP stands for, that’s the call for proposals or call for participation. I think at MCH we had around 200-ish talks, presentations, workshops, things like that. I might be wrong with that number, I will have to check it. But a lot of people will be showing up, and we would love to provide them with loads of content. Of course, not all the content on the campus is curated because villagers can have their own schedule as well with cool talks or workshops. But it would be lovely to see more content. So, if you have any subject about any topic that is somewhere related to one of the ideas that Team:Content came up with—and that is quite broad, I might add—please consider turning in your CFP. Also, because there are still volunteers that have to review the content, everything that is coming in. If you wait until the last minute, they will have a lot of work at the end. So, it would really help them if you have some plan or anything. Please, please send in your CFP.
Nancy: It is better to have your talk halfway finished but already signed in—
Ad: Yes—
Nancy: —than wait until you’re satisfied, because a talk is never done. So, just put it into the CFP and you can actually even update and change it. You can add on, you can refine your summary later on. But please, please, please send your summaries, send your CFPs.
Ad: And also, if you’ve been to another event that we share at Where to Hack, and you see a very cool speaker, please remind them that they can be a speaker as well at WHY. So, it doesn’t have to be yourself but encourage other people to do so too.
Nancy: Definitely.
Ad: Cool.
Ad: Speaking of Where to Hack: each week we will share where you can find wise-minded people—Where to Hack. Otz. Yes, I have been in an airplane, which is kind of a thing nowadays, but I have been in an airplane. And what I absolutely don’t understand is that in airplanes the sound quality is still so freaking bad.
Nancy: We’ve got this expensive machine that is able to fly itself with thousands and thousands of kilos and tens or hundreds of people on board. And then the message from the captain: “So, apparently we’re near the airport or something. I don’t know.”
Ad: And the weather is… I don’t know. It strikes me every time: I’m like, seriously, people? Can we do better than this in sound quality in airplanes? And this brings me to the Where to Hack of this week, because to me when I read it, this camp sounds like a muffled airplane captain: camp.org slash Gantt 2025. So, maybe you can tell a little bit more about it.
Nancy: It’s the Configuration Management Camp. But in the URL they decided to abbreviate—so CFGMG. It’s cfgmtcamp.org.
Nancy: They left out all the vowels—yeah. We’ll put the link in the show notes so you can just click on it. It’s a lot easier. Yeah. But it is a cool camp. It’s about open source, infrastructure automation, and stuff related to that. So, I’ve never been myself, but I’ve spoken to several people who have been there and actually also did talks there. And they all had it’s a blast because they keep going.
Ad: Yeah—and they do it right after FOSDEM. And they say with a great beer and waffles and all the charms that Belgium can bring people as well. And also what I understood for people who went there, that it is a great camp.
Nancy: Yeah.
Ad: Oh, you are also… 3, 4, and 5 February, 3 February in Ghent in Belgium.
Nancy: Which is a beautiful city in itself. So that’s always a good thing.
Ad: Yeah, if you’re there anyway, spend a few days extra and take in…
Ad: They say more value, more waffles, more beer in the best community around. If that isn’t a great sales pitch, I don’t know.
Nancy: Exactly. Exactly.
Ad: So, link in the show notes like I’ll set, and yeah. Yeah.
Ad: We didn’t prepare a history lesson for this week, and we would really love to hear some stories, to crowd-source some stories. Because, of course, we both have a job as well, and it takes a lot of time sometimes to figure stuff out and find out or invite Walter to give him some history lessons. So, if you have any cool stories to share from former camps, please reach out to us so we can use it for history lessons in the future.
Nancy: Yeah. You can share your story, but you can also send in your recording. I mean… sure—feel free to record it yourself. Feel free to reach out and schedule a video call, that’s also fine.
Nancy: Or reach out and meet us at one of the events—in person or… could be Hacker Hotel, wherever we are. We’ll have a camera so we can record, because we are quite accessible.
Ad: I think so. I think so.
Nancy: Which brings us to… WHYcast at why2025.org.
Ad: You can always send us a message. And talking about accessible, I had a lovely interview with Simon. Simon is the team lead of Team:Accessibility, and he has some serious ambitions which you can hear in the interview, and also some requests for help. So, let’s listen to Simon.
Simon: Hello, Nancy. It’s lovely to see you again, and it’s lovely to be on this podcast. Thanks. I’m Simon—he, they—and I am leading one of the 42. And 42 is a great number, isn’t it? We love the number 42. I’m leading the accessibility team, which… the reason Nancy likes the accessibility team, in case anybody didn’t know, is because she set it up, and then somehow found me in a hole somewhere in London and said, “Please run it for me.” And somehow here I am as head of accessibility for the best Dutch nerd camp in the world, which I think is kind of cool, don’t you? Anyway, so I’m Simon, I’m in London where it’s currently raining. I work for Transport for London, and as one of my side jobs I run the disability network, and I work with the wider rail industry and road industry in the UK looking at accessibility to transport. But one of the things I also do is I volunteer with a whole bunch of groups who do outdoor activities or who try and create more accessible spaces for people to take part in things like makerspaces. And that’s how I heard about Y, and so I thought, ooh, I know, I’ll drop Nancy a quick email and say hi. One thing led to another and suddenly I have a team of three—four, hopefully, according to the email I’ve just had. Ooh! And one of the things we want to look at is how do we make Y the most accessible festival of 2025?
Ad: That’s a big dream.
Simon: It’s a goal, isn’t it?
Ad: My goodness.
Simon: That’s some standards you put up there for the event.
Ad: Aim high. And then if you get partway there, then, you know, it’s something.
Simon: Absolutely. And I know it’s been hard in the past to find people who are willing, able, and enthusiastic about the subject, so I’m really… It’s really cool that it’s so closely hearted. You also have been volunteering at EMF, I think.
Ad: Yes. You came here?
Simon: Yeah, I did a few shifts during the event. He says one or two. It’s my autistic thing is that I like to help where I can, and my way of dealing with big crowds and things like that is to put a big mask on and go and do something—you know, run an event or help out or whatever it might be. So is that healthy? Who knows, but that’s probably crazy, huh? You’ve been talking to all my friends again. But yeah, I did, I helped out there, I’ve helped out a couple of festivals, and I think that there’s a huge benefit to making events like this more accessible. Because especially when we look at things like hackerspaces and makerspaces, historically they’ve not been as accessible or inclusive as we might want them to be for a variety of reasons. But when we look historically, disabled people have always been at the heart of technology, of hacking, of creating these things, partly driven by our own need to fix the world that doesn’t work for us, and partly because it often gives people an outlet for their creative abilities. And if we think about the social model of disability, for example, the way in which we want to remove barriers to people in life means that asking a disabled person how to fix something better for them is going to get you a greater outcome.
Simon: So I’ve been looking around lots of different makerspaces, and lots of them have started thinking about how to make those spaces more accessible. And so when Nancy and I were talking about this, we were thinking, well, how do we make Y more accessible? Is that things like, do we have toilets which are easier for people to use if they’re in a wheelchair? Do we make sure that the information that we put together before the event is accessible? Then we think about how we can make sure that the information we put together before the event can be read in colors that are OK for people with color blindness. How do we make sure it’s done in language that people more natively understand? I mean, obviously I don’t speak very much Dutch—I can order a beer now, so I’m getting better. No? Perfect. We sort of start thinking about little changes we can make which are simple and straightforward to be able to say to people, “When you come here, you will not just be welcomed, but you will be included, you will belong here.” And I think there’s a really powerful statement to how we can do things like this, and a lot of the work that you and Bookworm and PL, for example, have been doing over the last few months that I can see has been about building up the teams so that we can create a space where people feel they belong. And that’s so powerful, I think. That’s what I really love as part of this huge team of misfits and nerds and queer people and wonderful people that makes up Y. It’s great, and it’s also so interesting to see the variety of people who are there. Oh yeah, and what I know from—because I may or may not have told in this podcast that I’m also an avid volunteer for the Special Olympics. So that’s a sport for people with intellectual disabilities. If you make an event more accessible to people with disabilities, it’s also so much nicer for all the other people there.
Ad: Definitely.
Simon: Because easy language—I’m not a native speaker in English which you can hear very well—but that’s okay, that’s what it is. Easy language also helps me. Of course I’ve got my quirks as well, but yeah, it’s for the greater good. It’s not just for someone who is impaired in any way or needs to have any disability at all, so that’s also very powerful, I think. And we have to think about this in terms of more than just visible disabilities. When we think about like 80 % of disabilities are invisible, that could be someone with a long-term health condition. So one of the first things we did, we talked to first aid about, “Are there sharps bins so that if people need to use injections for insulin, for example, or anything else, is there a place where they can get rid of their needles safely?” And that’s just—we start thinking about all these little things across the event. Then we talked to the production house—AV production—like, “Can we make sure that people with hearing disabilities can more easily take part in those talks?” Is that things like using an induction loop whereby if you’ve got a hearing aid you can tune into it, or putting closed captions on a screen? And lots of those little things that work for them, but also if you put captions on a screen lots of people like that will benefit. I mean, my hearing’s fine, but I like to see it because I can follow along better. Do we make sure that at the bar we have at least one section that’s a bit lower so that people who might be in wheelchairs or just are shorter can more easily get their drinks without spilling them everywhere? It’s little changes that we can make which just make life a bit better for everyone. What are the things that you’ve been talking to other teams to help them out and give them tips and tricks?
Nancy: Definitely. Cool—so if anyone can help, please do. What are the things that you want to get your hands on but haven’t been able to, or need help with? Is there anything people can do for you and your team?
Simon: One of the things I want to do—and I might need to talk to the transport team or need other people’s help—is figure out: can we put together a list of how to get to the site from various big cities around Europe, with a recommended itinerary? So if you’re coming from Berlin, what’s the best way to get there; if you’re coming from Amsterdam, what’s the best way to get there? Let’s try and make sure people use public transport rather than driving because carbon, the world is on fire. And possibly this is where I might need some help: understanding how people can both get to and from the site, and how they get around the site because I don’t know it at all. I know we’re going to go and visit it and that might answer some questions. Also, I know very little about programming and development and computer stuff, so I probably need someone who can help me understand things like how can we make the website more accessible? Because I can look at it and go, “How easy is it? How difficult is it?” Someone who understands programming, development, web accessibility—yes—because that’s a closed book to me. I can tell you how to build a bridge and how to build railways across the continent—that’s easy—but digital engineering is a bit more difficult.
Ad: Your cup of tea, okay. So if anyone has any knowledge in that department, your help would help a lot. I think we have loads of people in our community who have knowledge about that, right?
Simon: Yes, and I think the best way of building up and understanding what people need is to crowd-source the question: “What one thing—think about an event you went to before—what one thing would have made it more accessible for you?” We can maybe use the mailing list for that.
Ad: Exactly.
Simon: I’m writing down things while doing the interview—that’s kind of what happens: I come into places and just ask questions and people go, “Yeah, perfect.” I’m not an expert, but let’s crowd-source ideas.
Nancy: Yeah. You can pick them off the tiny task list on the wiki, or meet us at Hacker Hotel, or video-call. We’re quite accessible.
Ad: Which brings us to WHYcast at why2025.org. You can always send us a message. And talking about accessible, I had a lovely interview with Simon. So thanks again, Simon.
Simon: Thanks so much—and take care.
Ad: It seems logical to talk about the vacancy of the week right after this interview, because we already discussed it a bit: Simon loves bridges, railways—all the things civil engineering—and he really needs help with web accessibility, all things digital. So if you can help Simon out or know someone who can, please go to the wiki to Team:Accessibility, find his email, and reach out. That is our vacancy of the week: help Simon make WHY as accessible as possible.
Nancy: Last time you spoke a little bit about power thingies, yes you did and you spoke about the power as it was at previous events. So my predictions for WHY are that it would be arranged similarly—but I understood you had a talk with Team Power to see if I said everything correctly.
Ad: Yeah, so he never listens to the podcast, which is fine.
Nancy: Oh, this is so evil to say, no, but there are more people not listening to the WHYcast than that they are—just not yet. Maybe he starts to listen now.
Ad: No, but I had a lovely chat with Glenn about all the power things and the weird little playground that we’re building together. So let’s listen to him.
Glenn: Well, my name is Glenn Pinderberg. I’m the company owner of an international service company for mostly emergency power installations, most of them for hyperscale data centers throughout Europe—Madrid to England to Finland and Frankfurt, and a little bit in the Netherlands. Besides that, I was captain power or team lead power together with some other guys for the CamSon events in the past for the last 18 years, just before it stopped—before COVID. Our first edition was at MCH. We stepped in quite last minute, about four or five weeks before the event, because Alger gave me a call: “Can you please help us with some water issues and sewage issues?” We sorted that out; we had materials in stock. We didn’t have any CamSon events, so we stepped in. We have a hardcore team of 15 to 20 guys and girls who are just a phone call away. For us, safety is always our main perspective. In Team NUTS—which pronounces from the Dutch word for supplies from local government—we handle water, sewage, electricity, some gas, normal water. We do all utility-driven specialties. We have volunteers building and designing the utility layout. We fixed late deliveries, solved emergencies so that on the event day everything runs smoothly—and nobody knows that anything ever happened, hopefully. Afterwards I was asked if I wanted to join the team and eventually become team lead this year. Yes, this year’s event is already coming up. Team:NUTS comes from nuts—the supplies from municipality. We provide the infrastructure. It’s fun to watch how “structured chaos” evolves. In my day job, everything is boxed off, planned, on budget by a deadline. Here it’s more loose: bring what you like, we’ll sort it, within safety boundaries. We do it differently: it’s more camping + hacking. You can bring red-plug equipment, just give us notes, we’ll integrate it. The event is a bit shorter, but the scale is huge. We met on site six years ago to tour and see how it works; it taught us how open events can run. It’s interesting to see how it evolves. It’s a big playground—maybe a lot of cat herding at times but that’s life and it’s fun.
Ad: Very cool. If people on the field encounter something interesting, you’re happy to sort it out?
Glenn: Sure—safety is top priority. Everything within boundaries is fine. I love every perspective; my field is completely different from someone who makes PCBs, but it’s the same expertise. Everyone can help with anything.
Nancy: What have been the biggest challenges up till now?
Glenn: Getting used to how the organization works. Normally we fix a planning and a budget; here we say “what happens, happens.” Last week I met a battery supplier volunteer who said, “We have a 10-foot container battery system you can try.” I would never think to call them for that—but they said yes. This event gives us a chance to experiment in a “control playground.” Normally we can’t try new things on expensive client equipment—but here we can. So many people want to join but it’s really the same team from CamSon who stepped right in. It’s fun to see.
Ad: Final thoughts: if someone has never been to an event like this, why should they come?
Glenn: If you’re into technology and want boundary-less creativity, this is the coolest event. People bring equipment, try wild experiments. You can talk to experts from every field. It’s a “controlled playground” for tech. You won’t see this at a standard fair.
Ad: Love it. Glenn, thank you so much for contributing to WHY and making time for this interview. Looking forward to all the amazing stuff you’re bringing.
Glenn: Thank you, and take care.
Ad: As you can hear in the interview, Glenn is really looking forward to this little party we’re organizing here. He’s not the only one. We did have some messages from listeners as well.
Nancy: And there were questions like “Are there tables, places to sit, hack on your badge?” The answer is yes. There’s a lounge, food courts, villages. Most villages welcome people to hang out, share stories. There will be a hack tent. Team Badge may have their own tent or join the hack tent. If you run your own village you can arrange for a tent with tables, chairs, even a fridge. When registering for a village, reach out to Team Mobile House; they’ll help equip your space.
Ad: So you don’t have to bring everything yourself if that’s difficult. I think we’re at the end of the page. On the next page it says if you want to leave feedback you can do that in the comments down here if you’re watching on YouTube; otherwise you can send us an email. Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe and do all the social media things. Thank you very much for watching and listening and hope to see you next Friday. Bye!