[HacktionLab] post-OHM2013

Martin (Crypt) crysison at googlemail.com
Thu Aug 8 08:35:31 UTC 2013


I was there for the whole of the week helping out with setup and during the
event, and had a really good time.  I was heavily involved in the set up of
EMF last year, which was a similar event in england, so I know some of the
challenges in setting up an event like this, and even at barncamp, although
its a much smaller event, theres still a huge ammount of work that has to
go into it, so I have huge respect for the organisers of OHM.


I spoke with Koen Martens, who is one of the lead organisers for OHM and
its clear that the festival would not go ahead without a lot of
sponsorship, so its a difficult position to be put in.  Personally I
would't have accepted that sponsorship, but I can see the reasons for it,
and as I wasn't putting the work in to make it happen, it wasn't my
decision.

As long as they don't have influence over the program and camp in general,
which they didn't, they are easy to ignore .  OHM and the duch hacker camps
have never been overtly radical, they are more radical in the general
nature of the community, and have always accepted other points of view,
even from those on the other side of the security fence, as long as they
come with an attitude of wanting to engage with the community and learn
from us.

The other controversy was with the police presence at OHM.  Originally the
police wanted to set up a village in order to identify themselves and talk
to hackers.  This was eventually turned down, although we know there are
police at OHM, so that shouldn't come as a shock to anyone.  I think the
danger was of them trying to recruit, so them having a village was probably
a bad idea, and they were asked to come as themselves or not at all, which
i think is inkeeping with the spirit of the event.

What I found to be totally disgusting was the noisy square village asking
several of the main organisers of the camp not to come to the events at
their area because they weren't welcome due to these controversies.  I
think that showed a total lack of grattitude for putting on the camp and a
total disregard for the spirit of the camp, and how the hacker community
operates.


On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 7:49 AM, Patrice Riemens <patrice at xs4all.nl> wrote:

>
> Hi People,
>
> If any of you were at https://ohm2013.org, I'd be most curious to hear
> about yr experience. I was there only for one day on Friday and enjoyed it
> - socially, and for one day. There have been some heavy controversies both
> before as during the event regarding the role of ITsecurity companies (one
> of which was 'golden' sponsor) and the place of hackers in a situation of
> total surveillance & control in general. The outcome is largely unclear.
>
> Cheers to you all,
> patriziio & Diiiinooos!
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/hacktionlab
>
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