EMF 2016 Retrospective

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Naturally I procrastinated too much to write anything about EMF 2016, but since I’m going again in 2018 I though I’d write a little of what I remember for comparison later.

My friends had been to EMF 2014 and convinced me to go with them in 2016, and I’m really glad they did. It was an awesome 3 days!

What is EMF?

It is hard to describe what EMF is, I generally just refer to it as Nerd Camp.

More broadly EMF is for anyone interested in technology, making, hacking, bodging and those who are generally inquisitive. Throughout the weekend there were various talks and workshops on such a variety of topics it’s hard to list them all.

The talks and workshops were done by people visiting EMF and a few well known people, some were experts in their chosen field and some were just people that had an interesting story to tell or idea to share. There was also an ad hoc arrangement of ‘villages’, run by EMF attendees.

Villages are normally a group of friends or some outside community who setup their tents and what ever else they need, let people know where they are and do what they do. Again, they cover such a massive range of themes that its hard to list them all.

Minecraft Village

We ran a Minecraft themed village, complete with light up Minecraft swords, a robotic creeper and a Minecraft server for people to play. It was a hit with kids who had been brought along to EMF, with parents asking where they could get one of the swords. (These were custom made with laser cut acrylic and 3D printed parts, so we ended up giving them away). Fortunately no one was hurt by the not so sturdy robot creeper either.

Highlights

Looking back, EMF 2016 was a bit of a haze (possible due to the drinking). Some of the highlights were:

  • Talks on making the EMF badge and the EMF site infrastructure
  • Simon Sing’s talk on his book, The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets
  • Mains power and Gigabit internet TO THE TENT!
  • The flame thrower tower (yup,that was a thing)
  • Eating undercooked burgers with some guy at 3AM
  • The awesome badge TiLDR Mk3

It was a seriously awesome 4 days. Bring on 2018!