I swear I saw photos of the Electronic Music Open Mic (EMOM) at #emfcamp but now I can't find them. Some from the DJ booth and some from the ground of the other people who played.
It took someone mentioning how delightfully weird @emf has become for me to see it.
If you took the giant potato home you were gifted a real potato. The fictional village of Bodgeham-on-Wye had a mass campaign to find their cryptid. Someone DJ'd using a pig.
@emf Back when we decided our small camping trip would actually be a cool hacker festival, I could never have predicted that my favourite thing in 2024 would be a secret escape room in a shipping container about the murder of Microsoft Clippy.
I could not be happier with this result. I can't wait to see what happens next. #emfcamp
The thing I would most like to understand about #emfcamp is how the organisers and attendees have built such a good culture. I've volunteered for events half the size where the culture boils down to "nobody cares about anyone but themselves", and EMF is a breath of fresh air.
I'd love to understand it so it could hopefully be distilled into a guidebook and duplicated elsewhere.
Just more events where people feel safe to be themselves.
Edit: I don't mean just vol' culture, attendee culture too
On my flight home, and I have written a somewhat emotional blog post about my time at EMF and how it recharges me in a way almost nothing else does: "An Electromagnetic Force" https://aeracode.org/2024/06/05/emf-2024/
Ok we’ve all had a little while to bathe in our feelings, time for an important reminder: EMF is partly made possible by sponsorship, and it fucking sucked this year. Please, if you enjoyed EMF, and you’re sharing your experiences with others now and in the future, keep your eyes peeled and arms open for folks and entities that may want to become a sponsor in 2026. Email us at sponsor@emfcamp.org and we’ll be back in touch when time comes.
Massive thanks to @emf for having us along to play, to everyone who shared their truth with us inc @coldclimate, and to @jonathanhogg for the amazing live algorithmic visuals! An incredible #emfcamp all round ✨
A fun moment at #emfcamp was getting to use one of the stage tents to fly micro drones around. We had the live views streaming to the screens so everyone could see what it's like.
I was missing a central place to keep track of all the #hexpansion that were made for #emfcamp, so I made one: https://hughrawlinson.github.io/hexpansion-registry/ - if you made an hexpansion, it would be really cool if you could add it there as per the instructions. Even better, if you're selling them (or otherwise making them available going forward), add your link! :)
Highlight #10 (of 10): I cryptically posted about this before the festival but I couldn't be more pleased to have been involved in bringing the legendary James Braddell/Funki Porcini to the festival with the Laserium. This was hands-down the most exciting thing at EMF2024 for me. It was standing room only in workshop 4 on Saturday night, so especially cool to sit next to James and watch from behind the extraordinary 700 laser setup responsible for these effects
Highlight #8: Tim Hunkin(!) and his fabulous mechanical arcade machine, Revolution. I absolutely loved walking the site with Tim and introducing him to astonished people
Highlight #6 (and we're on to the pieces that I am proud to have had a personal hand in bringing to the festival): A huge thanks to Malcolm Clark for specially bringing this teletype and getting it playing Colossal Cave Adventure for us. It fitted so perfectly with what we were trying to do with the new arcade this year and it was great seeing people being sucked into it and then tearing off and taking their adventure home with them.
Highlight #5: APPYBIRD!!! @alphabetter once again excelled in producing an absolute delight of a mechanical arcade game, which I realise now that I completely failed to take a picture of. So I’m pointing to @rc2014's picture instead:
Highlight #3: @jamesdarling's absolutely mesmerising Murmuration (slowed down here for effect). Honestly, I was not trying to baby-sit you that first night, James, I just really enjoyed sitting next to it for an hour 😂
Six years ago, I went to my first EMF Camp. The next event was cancelled by Covid. The one after that saw me come down with Covid - although I presented remotely. So I was beyond thrilled to be able to attend & speak this year. There's always a risk that you can never recapture […]
Just had a chat with a professional company about robot dexterity. I mentioned #emfcamp and Kate Devlin's sex robots talk from a few years back. Not a conversation I was really expecting to have this morning. Nor were they!
Change of plans: I seem to have caught COVID at #emfcamp :( So instead of doing a layover in Maastricht, I'm going straight home. By plane, with an FFP3 mask. All of this is not great. :/
Bit angry with myself, because I could've taken better precautions.
It's my first time – happy for recommendations on how to cope. Planning on getting plenty of rest, drinking water, taking Ibuprofen.