WHY 2025

What Hackers Yearn 2025
The NL camp
Start date	2025-08-08
End date	2025-08-12
Location	Geestmerambacht

About

What Hackers Yearn is the dutch camp organised by IFCAT.
WHY is the successor to MCH, SHA, OHM, etc.

Recent News

• We try to attend all WHY Orga meetings, you can read our notes on these here.
  
  • We attended the Fieldday (weekend) on June 14-16. Be sure to take your time and read our notes on this as they're quite extensive!
• The first Milliways orga meeting for WHY is on 2024-07-07

Communication

Chat Communication for Milliways at WHY 2025 will be in a bridged room between irc and matrix. Both rooms have the same information.

   IRC: join #milliways-why2025 at irc.hackint.org
   Matrix: join #why:milliways.info (and of course the milliways space: https://matrix.to/#/#milliways-space:milliways.info)

We will attempt to keep this wiki page up to date with event orga changes and announcements as well as milliways updates and announcements. The chat will have @room and/or @here notifications when large announcement \ updates are made to the wiki.

Further, there will be recurring jitsi meetings that will rise in frequency as time to the event ticks down.

Travellers Info

Add yourself as a participant on our Participants page.
This list helps us with meal planning for our kitchen, guaging space needed at the site and feasbility of our wild ideas!

Meetings

Pads can be created under https://cpad.milliways.info/ Please link here when done.

when	where	Type	description	notes
June 4 2024	emfcamp	meetup	a first meeting of interested participants
June 14-16 2024	Geestmerambacht	field day	first WHY2025 field day	read our notes
7 July 2024	jitsi	orga	first WHY2025 kickoff meeting	pad for the meeting

There will be monthly meetings in January, February and March 2025.
There will be bi-weekly (once every two weeks) meetings in April, May and June.
There will be weekly meetings in July and Aug.
There will be daily meetings during WHY.

Teams

Call for Engagement - We want you!

We currently have a CfER (Call for Event-Reiseleitung) open!
We are looking for:

• one or two more Archangels
  • Organize volunteers in/around our village (and possibly stage)
  • Link up with WHY orga Volunteer Team
• Bar manager
• Logistics team
  • Truck from Weeze to WHY
  • Loading \ Unloading
  • Perhaps local pickup/dropoff of groceries/materials if scheduled delivery unavailable
• Buildup team (optional: Mgr)
  • Be onsite, from latest Day 0 - Thurs 7th Aug (prefer Day -2 Tues 5th), helping with Milliways buildup (Dome, Kitchen, Rummery, etc)
  • Understand what needs to be built, where and how.
  • Help unload Storage truck
• Teardown team
  • Be onsite, until latest Day 6 - Wed 13th Aug, helping with Milliways teardown (Dome, Kitchen, Rummery, etc)
  • Understand what needs to be packed up, where and how.
  • Make sure everything packed is at least clean (can't promise dry, that is weather dependent)
  • Help load storage truck
• Treasurer
• Social Media Manager
  • Keep our Mastadon up to date with events (Talks/Worksshop/Entertainment)
  • Retoot interesting orga, sub village, individual stuff, boost mentions etc
• Music!
  • We need DJs for evenings!

Event Reiseleitung

Find yourself in need of someone kinda official to talk to about something Milliways specific for WHY? Look no further than this list!

Name	Role
Obsidian	WHY Orga contact
Zornem	Archangel
SleepyEntropy	Archangel
Hanemile	Infodesk
Junglerot	Constructions
boreq	Deco (Art \ Light \ Interactive)
cqc	Power + Midnight snack
McFly	milliways cyber circus \ Content Team
emerson	Content Team
Erik	Content Team
Cy	Content Team
kraln	Stage Team
firel0x	Stage Team (Technical)

infodesk

Headed by Hanemile Like at CCCamp23, have an infodesk with info on Milliways content, lost&found, directions, weather, mealtimes, volunteer signup, coins, stickers, music and more!

HowTo Camp

Some are for the first time on a hacker camp so we try to give some help on how to actually do that

what to bring - packing

Struggling with your pack list? Checkout Columbia19's excellent camping list and MacLemon's amazing Congress Checklist.

Don't have camping gear for yourself? Watch this space - we may have something to offer for you!

Plans

Cyber Circus

Would be great to see mc.fly's dream finally realized: A very special Milliways content stage, Firma Traktor's Opticum tent.
Now, this idea is contingent on some other decisions that need to be made by WHY-orga but the most important one which should not be underestimated; this would mean we run our own content like at CCCamp23 and take this off the hands of any central content team. This is currently not discussed at all and may not even happen - but they might be open to this idea as they have already made small comments about this internally (can be read in official minutes of orga meeting with liquicity orga). There is even a competing nd possibly better idea from WHY-orga than our own for the tent; re-using Liquicity's Mirror Palace tent.

• We need a quote from Firma Traktor ASAP.
• We need to talk to MiFareLady (head of content team for why) about running our own stage and pitching the cyber circus idea.
• We need to talk to hp197 about submitting a quote before June 19th for the stage

Setup

We could add a round 3-4m wide and 0.2-0.5 meter high podium in the centre of the tent with multiple screens pointing in different directions towards the audience above the speaker. The audience will be placed all around the speaker, just with small gaps for the entrance and a bar.

Speakers

We aim at attracting high quality or very entertaining cyber security content presented by speakers who know how to engage with the audience. The circus is not supposed to be the only cyber security stage on the camp since there might be good submissions/speakers that would fit better on a traditional stage.

We would like to be part of the core WHY2025 schedule and CFP and let speakers decide whether they would like to present in the circus or whether they would prefer a traditional stage. Besides that, we would like to actively contact potential speakers and ask them to submit something to the stage. Submissions for the circus should be reviewed by Milliways, while other submissions stay with the MCH2025 core team. Acceptance can be based on the quality of the content and based on the ability of the speaker to engage with the audience and to make proper use of the special stage. Both teams may recommend to shift a submission from one stage/team to the other stage. A shared Pretix instance would be very beneficial for that.

Content

Seen in a few workshop tents at EMF, have a printed schedule in large type size taped somewhere visible for visitors and volunteers so they can easy spot and check schedule. Where applicable, have additional info about content taped next to schedule. Sign up links/QR, workshop provider contact details, more info/reading qr links etc.

Kitchen

The difference in having our own dedicated dishwashing station (at at least, access to freshwater and waste through rotating IBCs or similar) at CCCamp23 vs using public facilities at EMF was apparant and frustrating to all. We hold up the dishwashing queue for individuals, families and smaller villages which is not a great experience and we can't efficiently or correctly clean our equipment because of lack of space, warm water etc. It would be great if we could have our own dedicated space at WHY 2025.

Instead of relying on volunteer kitchen managers, have a professional manager.

Whiskyleaks

Milliways' famous Whiskyleaks event; Self organizing, repeating, turned into a legend. Many bottles arrive, none leave. Bring a bottle of your favourite whisky (or other spirits) and share it with other passionate drinkers. If you can’t bring a bottle, come along - bring one next time!

Suggestion; Sunday 10th Aug

WOPR

Let's re-imagine NORAD's War Operation Plan Response (WOPR) SuperComputer from the beloved WarGames film as a theme befitting bar in the Milliways village at WHY!

Deco \ Art

We need to do a CfP for deco and art for our village.

Infrastructure

Heaven

Getting the right volunteers in the right places at the right times has proved challenging in the past, which creates absolute chaos.
Chaos is fine and all every now and again and certainly, it's to be expected at these events, but; in the one area we are known for, the one area we strive to deliver properly, our wonderful kitchen that provides delicious food by hardworking volunteers - is suffering due to this chaos.

How can we make this better?

• With our own heaven using something like the Engelsystem? other ideas?
• Perhaps we can even link into and use or have volunteer shifts available in WHY's volunteer system for kitchen and - if we do our own stage - the heralding etc?
• Have a big whiteboard / blackboard into which people can add themselves. Pro: is super present and people can directly see what is still needed, best even if it's in the queue for the kitchen, so people can see the current status and spontaneously add themselves.

Stage

• Do we want to run our own Pretalx if we have our own stage/workshop/entertainment/whatever? Is it even needed or worth it?
• Could this be built to a default template so it's easily recyclable for other events?
• What benefit does this have above using existing infra at each event?

Dome

As we learned at EMF, A new tarp can be ruined after several strong gusts of wind. We need ground ankers and 200m of high tensile rope for each dome to prevent this from happening again + improved plans on setting up the dome and adding a tarp so it's clear for newbies.

History

Milliways has attended several hackercamps in NL;

• 2022 May Contain Hackers
• 2017 Still Hacking Anyway
• 2013 Observe. Hack. Make.
• 2009 Hacking At Random
• 2005 What The Hack