/ News Summer Camp Garrotxa in Spain. © CC - Joseba Martos

Summer of makers: where to spend your DiY holidays?

The Camps

Commons Camp (Calvanico, Italy), from June 29 to July 10

A lecture from Alex Giordano during the Rural Hub Summer School in 2013. Studio Superfluo – CC-BY-SA

There’s still a few days left to catch the Commons Camp, organized by Calvanico’s Rural Hub near Naples, for twelve intensive days around collaborative projects to create a shared economy. Three workshops are offered to makers, permaculturists, hackers and biohackers, artists and scientists, local administrations and social innovators. Just a heads up, it’s not free (375€/$412 for lodging and food).

More information on the Commons Camp website

Camp++ 0x7df (Komárom, Hungary), from July 9 to July 12

The hacker camp Camp++ 0x7df is celebrating its third edition this summer. Organized in Komárom in Hungary on the site of the Monostor fort, a military building from the 19th century which became the biggest ammunition depot of Central Europe during the Cold War, the four days of the camp will be about computer security, privacy and various hacking workshops with beer and mate flowing on the side, for 80€/$88 per person. Where does this unpronounceable name comes from you ask? Because 0x7df is 2015 in hexadecimal of course!

To buy tickets and get more information, the Camp++ website

Summer Camp Garrotxa (Girone, Spain), from July 10 to July 12

 

Green hacking during Garrotxa Summer Camp in Spanish Pyrenees. © DR

To hack surrounded by trees, come to the Garrotxa summer camp, in Spain’s Girone province. The event, created in 2008 by the free software community at the base of Garrotxa’s volcanoes natural park in the Spanish Pyrenees, is a long week-end about open source and hacking practices with lectures (“A history of hackers on the eastern Mediterranean shores“), workshops (an introduction to Guifi.net) and initiations to open hardware with Arduino and Raspberry. The courses will be in Spanish and English. For the three days, you will need 110€/$121 for lodging and meals.

Visit the Garrotxa website to register and get more information

Summer Session (Druskininkai, Lithuania), from July 18 to 25

For a studious summer, go to Lithuania. Halfway between a summer camp, a summer class and a hippie collective, the Lithuania Nordic Summer University (NSU) organize its summer school. You will find lectures and conferences covering about a dozen different topics, such as “assimilate science and technology for a societal change”, “international relations and Human Rights” and “crossing contexts: interventions through artistic research”. In parallel, the university has several cultural tours available and workshops for kids and teenagers aged 3 to 15. The price to register range from 100€/$110 to 150€/$165. Lodging and meals costs range from 232€/$255 to 407€/$451 depending on the chosen room type.

More information on the Lithuania Nordic Summer University website

PIF Camp (Ljubljana, Slovenia), from August 3 to 9

PIF Camp is a maker camp organized in Trenta in the Slovenian Alps by the Ljubljana media lab in the context of the European cooperation programme Changing Weathers. During seven days in the Slovenian wilderness, hackers, makers, artists, researchers and tinkerers from all Europe will gather to exchange ideas and hacks in the spirit of DiY, DiwO and DiTO (Do it Yourself, Do it with Others and Do it Together)! Changing Weathers is a project at the crossroads between hacking, art, technology and citizen science, especially focused on creativity, resilience and the imperative of the ecological transition.

 Practical informations about PIF Camp on the Ljubljana media lab website or the Changing Weathers website

POC21 (Millemont Castle, France), from August 15 to September 20

The POC21 (Proof of Concept) is an “innovation camp about open source ecology” and gets its name from the COP21, the 21st United Nations conference on climate change which will be held in Paris in December of this year. The POC21 gathers about a hundred makers, designers, engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs “to prototype collaborative and circular economy” at the Millemont Castle near Paris. The 5-week camp is like a environmental hackathon aimed at conceptualizing, creating and testing the prototypes of a new model of society. The two organizations at the origin of POC21, OuiShare (Paris) and OpenState (Berlin) have prepared the camp by selecting 12 projects with functional prototypes, like the Earthship energy-neutral houses or SolarFlower’s $30 DiY wind turbine.

 A video presentation of POC21:

 POC21’s official website

Open Bidouille Camp (everywhere in France), beginning September

A stop-motion workshop in Lego during Arcueil’s Open Bidouille Camp in September 2014. © Quentin Chevrier

For those of you who would like to go to an Open Bidouille Camp (Open Tinker Camp), these popular and familial fest in DiY mode, you will have to wait until September. From their creation until 2012, more than 17 Open Bidouille Camps have been organized here and there in France, but they need their summer rest.

The next ones will be held on September 12 and 13 in Bourg-en-Bresse during the environment festival, and on October 3 in Auxerre with the participation of the Atelier des Beaux Boulons fablab.

 Every upcoming OBC are announced on the association’s website

 

Festivals

Lotville Utopique (Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, Lot, France), from July 5 to September 20

The collective raumlaborberlin opens a provocative discussion on the future of our life outside of big cities. In residency for the 10-year anniversary of the Maisons Daura in Saint-Cirq Lapopie, the Berliner collective, composed of artists, architects, and city planners will work to experiment on an utopian city. Lotville deploys the structure of a fictive city in the form of installations, exhibitions and interventions during the 10th Parcours d’art contemporain en vallée du Lot (Contemporary art route in the Lot valley), from July to September 2015.

 More information on Lotville’s website

Balkan hackerspaces caravan, from July 20 to August 8

You’re in for a Kusturica mood with the very first Balkan hackerspace caravan. This great road trip around hackerspaces and makerspaces in the Balkans, in Bulgaria and Greece, Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania is scheduled to end in Serbia for the trumpet and gypsy music festival in Guca. You can join the caravan at any point, as long as you can find its location. The best way to do this would be to join the organizers beforehand, via the Facebook group of the event.

Dublin Maker (Ireland), July 25

The prestigious Trinity College in Dublin is lending its Irish lawn for the third edition of the Dublin Maker festival. Mini forge, toy customization, urban farm, retro robots, VR headsets demonstrations and neurohacking experiences will be among the fifty or so activities proposed during the day placed under the sign of hack, craft and make which is happening during the Festival of Curiosity, the science festival of the Emerald Isle. Free admission.

Video presentation of the 2014 Dublin Maker festival:

 Full program of the Dublin Maker festival

Maker Festival (Toronto, Canada), August 1 and 2

Huge maker week-end in perspective in Toronto. Organized by the Toronto Mini Maker Faire team inside the Toronto Reference Library, the Maker Festival will be surrounded by loads of satellite events during the previous week (July 25-31). Watch out for the crowds! If admittance is free, reservations are strongly encouraged.

 The whole program on the Maker Festival website

Apple II Festival (Castéra-Verduzan, Gers), from August 3 to 9

The legendary Apple II e. Wikimedia Commons

If you are one of the lucky fews to own an Apple II e, c or c+, this is for you. The first edition of the Apple II Festival, home brewed by die-hard fans not supported by Apple corp., arrives in France. A pretty cool schedule from a software point of view (how to use ADT Pro with a cassette interface, August 4 à 5 PM) and a hardware point of view (workshop on how to repair Apple II power sources, August 4 at 6 PM for the “phase” aspect, August 6 at 5 PM for the “ground” aspect). On top of the workshops, the festival will offer film showings and conferences as well as a retro LAN party on August 6 at 9 PM. Another great idea: during the whole week, a flea market will be held, where fans will exchange and discover Apple II hardware.

Exact location and full programme on the official website

Chaos Communication Camp (Zehdenick, Germany), from August 13 to 17

Laser show at the CCC en 2011. © CC BY-SA 3.0 – Nicohofmann

The event hackers can’t miss. Somewhere between Burning Man and a hackathon, the quadrennial gathering of the (in)famous German Chaos Computer Club is what resemble the most closely to the Pirate Party summer days. The program: culture, politics, making, computer security… Anything the participants have to offer, plus a few conferences yet to be announced. The ticket’s price is what you can expect for a festival: 220€/$232. But there’s an option for smaller budgets, who can choose to get a pass for 180€/$198. This is financed by “supporters” ready to pay up to 300€/$330.

 All the details about the event on the Chaos Communication Camp wiki and blog

Amsterdam Maker Festival (Netherlands), from August 20 to 23

This year, the Amsterdam Maker Festival is placed under the theme of sailing and the ocean’s ecology. It shouldn’t be a surprise, because the event will take place during SAIL Amsterdam, a giant gathering of old ships and high tech vessels from around the globe for the jubilee of the city’s 700th birthday.

Complete schedule on the festival’s website

 

And of course, the great world conference of fablabs, the FAB11, driven by the MIT, will be held this year in Boston (USA) from August 3 to August 9. Makery will be there with a live coverage from the MIT.

 Heard of a maker event happening this summer that’s not on the list? Don’t hesitate to tell us about it!

Next week, learn everything about DiY holidays for your kids and the summer classes and activities of the labs.

 

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