“The unconference at OggCamp brought out the most interesting talks.”

explaining how the Ubuntu phone app store was ‘owned’ recently. This year we heard Laura, aged 9, ask the community what she should be learning in school. A brave and topical question. Laura reflects the rise of maker skills in our schools, children are now ‘digital leaders’ helping their peers to grasp new technology.

A community has grown around OggCamp and the event organisers began actively working with it back 2013. This year, OggCamp turned to the community to help augment the organising team, which had been depleted because of other commitments and ill health. The community responded and the organising team behind the recent Liverpool Makefest, Mark Feltham and Caroline Feltham-Keep joined the team to run the successful Hardware Jam along with members of the Liverpool art community who designed the signage and merchandise for OggCamp.

This year there was no live podcast recording, signifying the shift of OggCamp organisation from the podcasters to the community. Instead, we had a live panel hosted by Joe Ressington, who hosts a number of Linux and open-source podcasts. Ressington was joined by podcasters from the community who answered questions from the audience in a similar format to Question Time but with more Linux. The OggCamp raffle was well attended with everyone eyeing up a laptop from Entroware. The raffle is an important part of Oggcamp as it generates money for keeping the event running (along with the excellent work of ‘Team Merch’ who come up with ingenious merchandise every year for attendees to buy).

At each Oggcamp there are a team of unsung heroes who battle behind the scenes to ensure that the community has a great weekend. The Oggcamp crew return year on year to help the event run smoothly and each bring their own identity to the OggCamp event: the friendly smile that welcomes the newcomer to the community; the person who ensures the projector always works; these people are members of the Oggcamp crew and they make everything happen because they love the community.

OggCamp 2015 was another successful event and a feather in the cap for all involved. Note: Les Pounder is the ‘Oggcamp Chief’ but after five years of wearing the shiny hat he’s decided to step down with hope that a member of the excellent OggCamp community picks up the reins.