I am still surfing the wave of “omg #emfcamp was simply an amazing experience”

A friend’s response after hearing a fraction of what we got up to: “that’s incredible. How can you go back to your day to day life now? Isn’t it really boring in comparison?”

This is an excellent question, if a little terrifying to think about. I don’t have an answer. So I must conclude… the status quo is not enough: we need to make it our mission to make the real world more like EMF.

An installation which nicely sums up one part of what #emfcamp was like: the random midi keyboard left quite literally in a grassy field, vaguely facing null sector (where the party is at). There’s no sign. It just silently SCREAMS “play with me”. Turns out this keyboard controls the lasers which go out across the whole site! Deeply satisfying to play with.

We can make the world a little more like this. We can reward people for being curious.

If there’s any one thing I’m determined to bring more of to the real world, it is SIDE QUESTS. There were so many. Some were puzzles, others were treasure hunts. I still haven’t managed to find adequate words to capture that on saturday I didn’t feel like doing the “main story” and so instead spent a day quite literally walking around a field doing side quests. In real life. #emfcamp
For example, here is the start of one side quest #emfcamp

I quite enjoyed the gchqnet treasure hunt. We had to find the “hexpansion” chips that had been scattered around site. #emfcamp

Particular highlight was finding Dan, one of the organisers of this quest. After I chatted to him for a bit he said “now that you’ve met me, here’s a hidden hexpansion” and offers me a secret one from his pocket. Mindblowingly cool - I’ve only ever experienced something like this in a game.

We can make the world more like this. We can reward people for being curious.

(It’s important to clarify that when I say “gchq” I do not in fact mean the government entity, I mean the EMF village name inspired by some guys who discovered in the pub one day that the domain gchq.net was vacant and purchased it for a tenner. Delightful.) #emfcamp

All of these side quests demonstrated a really beautiful thing: literally everyone who was there brought something with them which contributed to the experiences of everyone else. Sometimes as humble as a random interaction which sparks an idea. This is really quite a beautiful thing.

Sometimes/often it’s easy to feel powerless: that our voices can’t change anything. But that’s not true: we can. We all can. #emfcamp

(Omg I’ve just realised this thread mentions gchq a bunch of times and I forgot to tag them! @GCHQNET #emfcamp)

@herdingdata No problem. As your local friendly non-government agency, we monitor communications for all staff and targets. 😜

(We’re following you on a couple of personal accounts)

@GCHQNET @herdingdata ... somehow the second bit sounds more sinister than the first!