Nine reflections on EMFCamp 2018
Sep 3, 2018 · 2 min read
EMFCamp is a glorious mixture of makers, hackers, musicians, and general purpose geeks gathered in a field to variously talk, make and dance.
I’ve never been before but since they brought the festival to little old Herefordshire it seemed rude not to. Here are my reflections from the weekend.
- I was WAY out of my comfort zone and it struck me that I really never interact with physical objects. Everything I do is virtual. It was probably 30 years ago that I wielded a soldering iron.
- There is so much to know that I do not know.
- The talks that I found most fascinating were “How I got into making X” type talks.
- I gave a talk about how the Internet has changed emergencies and I rather regretted that I had not just talked about OpenStreetMap.
- Combining 3 & 4 I have resolved to focus on some geo-based projects that will involve making (VERY SIMPLE) things as a way into the weird world of the makers.
- How great would it be to have a geo village at the next EMFCamp? Villages are (I now know) basically self-organised mini-exhibition/workshop/discussion spaces within the bigger event. We could run map-a-thons and I really think a lot of the makers and hackers would get a lot out of projects like Field Papers and Mapillary.
- I refuse to attend any festivals in the future unless they too can provide me with mains electricity and high speed Ethernet to my tent.
- That said I may be too old for camping (I have been searching Autotrader for camper vans since my return… and daydreaming about creating awesome hacks in my hypothetical camper van).
- Thank you to everyone involved in organising and running this event which is really quite unlike anything else I have ever been to.
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I work at The Satori Lab we also host ODI-Cardiff.

