Italian Hacker Camp 2018 - I was there - Daniele Mte90 Scasciafratte

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A hacking camp with friends, what more do you want to do in the summer?

Well also do a little presentations and a few hours of car of course!

I started organizing the event for Mozilla Italy from March and this allowed us to be in 5 + 2 for the Mozilla stand. With the + I mean the two groups, those organized and sponsored by Mozilla and others added later.

In any case, a large number compared to the ESC, that we were only 2.

As we arrived we conquered the tables and placed our headquarters, set up the area and also the rest of the camp.

Yes, with the set up I mean our posters and flyers for the whole camp that would promote what we did and Mozilla’s mission.

We have promoted Internet Health Report and Common Voice with various topics of the presentations we have made: Addons, Rust, DevTools and About:config.

Feedback

I met people and spoke, I would say that it was the main thing. We have had the opportunity to speak from developers to enthusiasts who with the occasion of Common Voice contributed.

We had several people who spent time taking walks with the phone and recording their voice in Italian in an attempt to collect specific gadgets depending on the volume.

In fact, after the first day we had to double the number of recordings because we had already distributed 5 shirts that were unlocked with 100 registrations.

At the end of the camp we distributed 16 shirts in total (then 5 to 100 registrations and 11 for 200), including new and archival, 4 backpacks that were unlocked with 200 (then 400), 14 posters for 50 (then 100 registrations), a shirt with 300 recordings and much more.

We have also collected some interesting feedback for Common Voice: the sentences must be short for the dyslexic people because otherwise it is difficult to participate, there are those who recorded only the void or noise to make number (with the revision we will verify the volume and if it is ignored), different on the usability of the site and of course the profile system that does not work very well. I have already been confirmed that some of these things are planned or in progress.

I leave you some statistics on what has been done, considering that the Italian officially arrived at July 5th, and we could not do great promotion on a national level.

Apart from these important numbers for Common Voice for Italian, I personally finished the voice Friday night after 4 talk during the day plus one support (the day before I had already done one).

We can therefore say that our presence has been noted in the camp, perhaps due the gadget awards, perhaps because many gadgets, perhaps caused so many presentations, perhaps because we were so many and covered various topics.

Of course all this without the support of the group and the camp itself would have been very difficult. The freedom of action they gave us allowed us to achieve these results and to experiment how to improve communication.

What we have learned

During the gadget prize we decided to make available an archive of stickers or various for those who downloaded Firefox for Android or Firefox Focus.

In this way, we were able to make stickers with just the Firefox logo available to everyone without sound recording.

Give the opportunity to newbie in our group (I mean the people who have never participated), guys who had never attended an IT event, especially then of this kind, has opened his eyes on many things.

Also, to these novices the freedom to be able to do autonomously to do not only the online activities but also those live, this is then reflected when you will resume with life online.

The comparison and also the possibility of discovering other topics outside the community always opens the eyes but I can imagine the effect with new eyes.

I forced 3 of the group to follow some talks on Git and how to use it in order to contribute better to Mozilla and I hope that some result will bring it.

The first is as pictured, Giovanni who made his first commits and also a pull request to the Common Voice for the Italian language overhauling the sentences.

Making activities to do by others during the camp allows you to make everything more enjoyable and nice, especially then if there are specific gadgets up for grabs.
All this takes time to prepare and support human during the event but it is feasible.

The factor of assigning roles to each person about the knowledge and which team represents has allowed us to distribute the load during the days.

An organization well in advance, as we have done, is tiring but it brings results, but we must always be ready to adapt.

Having then a great store of gadgets makes its difference in these events, the case has wanted this time we had so many but this thing is uncertain for the future.

What we need to improve

Organize the equipment better, for example the monitor does not need us. With the sun and outdoors it’s just something delicate that you do not use (and you can not see).

Electronic material in the end there was no way to use it as the lan party because in the end we were tired and taken from another.

We have to make leaflets for any clearer and explanatory prizes, in any case they work!

We must be an even more open group and not make groups between us, this excludes the participation of others.

What I liked

Speaking of web technologies at this event I thought it was difficult, given the public, but this camp proved more open to these things (compared to SHA for example).
The program after all consisted of 4 tracks including an unregistered laboratory.

The topics were from hacking, activism, security, journalism, rights, development and technological curiosities. All this then created discussions during the days allowing to know other people and to discover new points of view.

The contamination of this event is the main factor. Very different from Fosdem or Merge-IT, which are conferences and there is little chance of it happening. Here, however, it was inevitable!

As I said people have contributed to Common Voice, indeed many. One of the usual comments was “if I can help” or “if I can easily contribute I do”.

Zanshin tech then hit me, I already knew him but the approach is very interesting. As a student I suffered bullying at school and so these issues are close to my heart and their way of dealing with nerds, martial arts, cybersecurity and management tactics are very interesting.

The common living in an apartment was useful to save and organize, in fact we did some meetings after the day in the evening before going to sleep. Something new that we had never done but allowed us to update and adapt as well as making assessments.

The fact that the talks have been recorded and that will soon be available, so I can recover all those that I lost.

Conclusions

650 participants out of 850 registered (mainly Italians), crazy numbers for an event organized by a community and purely Italian. With 4 tracks and many talks to follow.

We were there, and we worked hard, the results we see and we will see them in the future for sure.

We are already preparing for other events but in the meantime we will improve the internal organization to be even more effective. Do not forget to enter Telegram, @mozitahub awaits you.