OggCamp is an unconference celebrating Free Culture, Free and Open Source Software, hardware hacking, digital rights, and all manner of collaborative cultural activities and is committed to creating a conference that is as inclusive as possible. If you’ve got a story to tell, no matter your background or current status, whether it’s your first talk or you have loads of experience, as long as the talk is connected (somehow) to our theme then we want to know about it.
We’re super excited to open the doors next Saturday for OggCamp 2024 and welcome you back after 5 years! Since the organisers and crew are still finding our feet after some time away, we thought we’d share with you some key information to bear in mind for OggCamp this year.
In case you’ve missed them, we’ve posted a number of updates on the OggCamp website over the past few weeks:
If you’d like to hear more as a preview of the event, you can also tune in to the most recent episode of FLOSS Weekly.
Schedule
Doors will open at 10am on the Saturday for registration. Please be sure to have your ticket PDF, or email address you used to purchase the ticket available for our crew at the registration desk. We’ll kick off with a welcome talk somewhere around 10:30am. Missed the ticket sales? Don’t worry! You’re still welcome at OggCamp. Just please do consider making a donation (to help us run the conference next year), which you will be able to do at the merch stand.
We have a wide range of scheduled talks available on JoindIn, but as always, there’s plenty of space on the grid for you to come with your own talk on the unconference tracks, or if you’re someone who prefers to be more concise, in the lightning talk slots on both days. Don’t have an idea for a talk yet? No worries, feel free to get inspired throughout the weekend and bring your own talk, following our guidelines if you’re unsure what to expect.
Merchandise/Raffle
As always, we have OggCamp merch available for you to remember your weekend by! Both t-shirts and mugs will be available at our stand in the ‘Pioneer Room’, where you’ll also find tables to socialise, play your favourite tabletop games, do ad-hoc demos of your projects, or just chat to our friendly team and sponsors. If you’ve pre-ordered merch, please make sure you have your ticket ready showing you’ve pre-ordered, and we’ll be sure to get it to you from the stock we’ve set aside!
We’ll also be selling tickets for the OggCamp raffle with plenty of great prizes on offer including a BeeLink mini PC, PiCar, Android tablet and more! Raffle tickets will be available using cash only, so please make sure to bring some along with you!
Social events
We don’t have any ‘official’ OggCamp social activities this year, but our encouragement to OggCampers is to gather in the Pendulum Hotel Bar, where you’re sure to bump into lots of like-minded folk for a nerdy natter, a board/card game, or some food and a beverage! There will definitely be folks around on Friday evening before the start, as well as on Saturday; we expect many people will be leaving after we wrap up on Sunday, but feel free to arrange your own meetups beyond OggCamp if you like. Special thanks to Richard Shortland-Neal for providing us with a list of local vegan and gluten free options for those who are interested.
Code of Conduct, Health and Safety
All attendees are reminded that you must follow the OggCamp Code of Conduct at all times. As mentioned in the CoC, we have a limited supply of FFP masks and COVID-19 tests available for those who need them. Please contact a member of the crew to access these. While we really do want to welcome everyone, the health and safety of attendees remains our top priority. Please do not attend the event if you are experiencing any of the known COVID-19 or Flu symptoms
As a reminder, if you see a CoC violation, or need help, grab a member of crew, or call the OggCamp crew phone number (+44 (0)7735 211096) which will be kept held of by a member of crew at all times during the hours of the event.
Stay connected
Finally, be sure to follow OggCamp at our social links for updates leading up to and during the event. You’ll find these on the homepage of ogg.camp. Got questions? The channels we are most likely to see first are Mastodon and Telegram.
Please also make sure to use #OggCamp2024 on your own posts, so the team can see how much fun you’re all having and use your photos to help promote future events! You can see a wall of Mastodon updates related to the event here.
Thanks for reading, and we look forward to welcoming you next weekend!
The Swap Shop is a way for you to get rid of those parts you bought for a project that never went anywhere, and/or find new things for a future project that might go somewhere interesting!
Likewise if you’re a FOSS project or friend of OggCamp who have some stickers you’d like to bring for people to take, The Swap Shop is the place to bring those!
Donating
Bring your items to OggCamp with you, and then bring them to the table.
Important! Be prepared to take home anything you bring that does not get picked up by others by the time we wrap up on both days (we cannot store it overnight) - we are not a general tech waste disposal service, and will not have a means to store or get rid of items left over.
What to bring
Things likely to appeal to OggCamp attendees that you wouldn’t typically find in a local charity shop, for example:
Specialist books
Small tools
Electronic & mechanical components
Portable hardware, networking gear, spare parts (that old Libreboot ThinkPad from the stack could surely use a new home!)
Items don’t necessarily have to be working, but should pass the test of “it’s reasonable to imagine someone salvaging/repurposing/reusing this item”, Nothing that’s ready for the e-cycler.
Items must also:
Fit in a backpack - think something like a laptop, gadget, or Raspberry Pi / dev board. Not a CRT, dusty old mainframe, or piece of 2x4!
What not to bring
Items that are illegal in the UK/EU
Items that would be difficult for our attendees to take home in hand luggage
Weapons/knives
Anything with non-obvious hazards (for example asbestos, chemical, or explosive hazards, Ionisation Chambers, Radioactives (no orphan source events a la Electromagnetic Field / #emfcamp, please!)
We are thrilled to announce that the schedule for the scheduled track at OggCamp 2024 is now available! This year’s event promises to be packed with exciting sessions, insightful talks, and plenty of opportunities to connect with fellow open-source and free-culture enthusiasts.
The schedule includes a variety of topics ranging from the latest in open-source technology to hands-on workshops and panel discussions. Whether you’re a seasoned OggCamp-er or this is your first year, there’s something for everyone.
Talk didn’t make this list, or you’ve got something cool to talk about? Remember we’re an unconference. There’s two rooms just for you available all weekend, turn up with your idea and let the attendees decide!
Although we strive to make attending OggCamp as accessible as possible, it does cost a considerable amount of money to put on. Each year we pay for venue hire, technical equipment, food, transport, stationary and a whole host of other random things. In order to do that we rely on the support of some wonderful sponsors. This year, we’re happy to welcome Nexteam, Collabora Online and Codethink as Gold-level sponsors for OggCamp. Special thanks go to United Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW), our Pinnacle sponsor this year. Thanks to them for helping make OggCamp happen!
OggCamp would like to thank UTAW for being our Pinnacle sponsor this year! United Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW) are a national branch of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) formed in 2020. We are the UK’s only union specifically for all workers in the tech industry, and we're proud to represent more tech workers than anyone else.
The CWU campaigns nationally for workers in tech, telecoms, post and communications - offering legal support amongst other benefits, and providing a collective political voice for 180,000 workers.
Nexteam is a network of technology professionals who passionately deliver successful outcomes with a fixed price agile process. We work to short iterative statements of work. Ensuring that we provide you the best value, the greatest flexibility and the least risk. Think of it as your on demand development team, who are always up for a challenge.
Collabora Online is based in Cambridge, and is a long-time supporter of the Open Source community and solutions. We are the largest contributors to the LibreOffice codebase, and are very pleased to be sponsoring OggCamp2024.
We provide a powerful collaborative Office suite that supports all major document, spreadsheet and presentation file formats, which you can integrate into your own infrastructure. Collabora Online provides data security and sovereignty, and is ideally suited to the demands of a modern distributed working environment. Delivering a familiar look and feel, Collabora Online represents a real alternative to other big-brands solutions, giving you control and flexibility.
Codethink has established an international reputation as a world-class provider of software engineering and consultancy services. Codethink delivers critical, high-performance software projects for international companies in a range of industries. We provide expert teams to help our clients tackle their most challenging software problems.
Tickets for OggCamp 2024 are now available! Join us on October 12th and 13th at The Manchester Conference Centre for an unforgettable weekend celebrating Free Culture, Open Source Software, hardware hacking, digital rights, and more.
Secure your spot today at Eventyay. More details at our Tickets page.
We’d like to thank the Pendulum Hotel and Conference Centre in Manchester for hosting OggCamp once again this year. As a reminder, OggCamp attendees can get a discount on the standard room rate using the code ‘DELEGATE’, using the instructions below:
OggCamp is an unconference about free and open source topics; software, hardware, culture … we love it all! Except that this unconference also has a scheduled track, to get the ball rolling. We have a fairly geeky slant, but that’s more about the people than the topics: if it’s free like freedom then we’re very probably interested. OggCamp is the ideal home for both talks and attendees that are “too quirky” for another conference - we’re unashamedly inclusive!
If you have been to a BarCamp or an Open Spaces event, then you have an idea of what lies ahead. If not: the event is made by the people who attend and who participate. We’re pre-arranging a small portion of that participation by inviting advance talk submissions that will feature on the “scheduled track” at the event.
Talks will be 25 or 50 minutes long, with or without questions (you decide). Past events have had an eclectic mix of talks, which perfectly suits our equally eclectic audience. If you have a project, idea or anything else to share - please pitch it to us!
Here are some real talk titles given at the event in previous years: - ColorHug - The Open Hardware Colorimeter - CCHits.net - Promoting Creative Commons Music - Forking Hardware! - Open Publishing - GPIO Zero - Physical computing with Raspberry Pi - Building a LED Disco Dance Floor - Intro to TLS - Build your own Mobile Network
And remember: it’s an unconference, so if we somehow overlook your brilliance during the CfP process, then bring the talk idea and see if anyone else is interested enough to vote your session onto the schedule anyway! Many of our most memorable talks have arrived this way.
Got an idea for a great talk? Submissions are open now here
