Hacklands Festival of Technology happening on 14 to 16 August 2015 in a field in Kent

It has been action stations at my end, what with Swedish Beers Midsummer Edition in London last month and the upcoming Hacklands Festival of Technology happening next month. In case you haven’t heard about it already, let me tell you a bit more about my new event lovechild – Hacklands.

 
WHAT: Hacklands is a new hackathon and festival happening on a farm on the border of Kent and Surrey brought to you by Helen Keegan (Heroes of the Mobile Fringe Festival, Swedish Beers and more) and James Tagg, (author, farmer, entrepreneur, physicist and CTO & co-founder of Truphone).

WHEN: From 5pm on Friday 14 August to 5pm on Sunday 16 August 2015.

AUDIENCE: We welcome adults and children who have an interest in technology either because they like building it or because they like to use it and are interested in future uses of technology. Under 18s will need to be accompanied by an adult. You do not have to be a developer to come. We will have sessions and space for both developers and non-developers and can cater for children too.


TELL ME MORE: It is a community oriented festival where we will combine elements of a hackathon (you can code and build stuff), an unconference or barcamp (you can talk about stuff) and a festival (you can chill at our campfire by our stone circle, camp under the stars, talk until the wee hours and enjoy the music and performances).

And we have glamping too courtesy of our friends at Sleeping Bells. We actively encourage you to get involved to build something, talk about something, perform something or learn something.

Interested in doing something - leading a session, giving access to APIs, arts and crafts, something else? Please tell us when you buy your ticket or you can fill in the form here.

WHAT'S ON: We have several areas available to use for unconference sessions, workshops or hacking (that's what we call the software and hardware building bit). There are undercover spaces, tented areas and outdoor spaces. There's wifi across the site (even the fields) and part of the farm is solar powered. We have some flat concrete floors which will be particular good for playing around with robots or landing drones. We have room for camping and plenty space for parking. We can look after 100 people comfortably, and we can make more space available if more people want to come.

Weekend tickets available now with or without camping. Food included in both tickets and a pay cafe bar available outside of meal times.

Find out more at our website, Facebook page, Twitter or our Eventbrite page. You can also buy tickets by clicking below.

If you'd like the glamping option, please find out more here and contact Gavin directly to book. Prices start at £80. Festival tickets must be bought separately.  

See you in August in a field in Kent!

Powered by Eventbrite

Bloomin' Marvellous Bloom Festival

As if Glastonbury and the Electric Picnic wasn't enough this year, I've managed to fit in another wee festival in the interim and toddled along to the Bloom Festival with festipal Lisa. Lisa's done a marvellous write-up of the festival with pictures to boot. So I won't go into as much detail here but will give you a little run down of some of the highlights for me.

• Glorious sunshine - all weekend (well, ok, a little bit of rain overnight a couple of times, but that was refreshing after the heat)
• No mud - after Glastonbury mud, this was totally ay-may-zing
• The Whip
• Crazy P (this was my musical highlight - she was great)
  
• Soul II Soul Soundsystem
• Coldcut Soundsystem
• Aim
• Dancing to reggae on Sunday lunchtime to the Trojan Soundsystem
• Beardyman - the human beatbox
  
• Dancing at The Funk Bar - every night - great music, great vibe.
• Meeting loads of people especially Emily, Hannah and pals, Kate, Carla and the rest of the crew, Circus girl Lou in the White Hat, the man with the blow up hula hoop (that was hilarious fun), the man with the weird kaleidoscope thingummy (v cool), Chris - the man in the nightie, the 3 graduates from Nottingham University, Ella from Chai Wallahs, Crazy P, Nick and Jim (our tent neighbours), Simon and Alan and their useful spanner, and loads more folks whose names I just can't remember! Big up yo'selves.
  
• Fancy Dress night dancing at Beats Bubble alongside the dancing zimmer frame and various other creations
• The Lounge
• The Burrito Bus and the Choc Star chocolate brownie place
  
• And the very friendly security guards who got the tone just right for looking after us all
  

For a small festival, it punches above its weight and is great value for money and it'll be on my list for next year.

Technokitten goes to Glastonbury

Well, I survived it. It's way bigger than you can imagine, even though you've seen all the photos and seen it all on the telly, it's massive. There are more people there than you can imagine and tents and stuff everywhere you look. And then there's food and drink of every kind, art, performance, music, random entertainment, burlesque and weddings at Lost Vagueness, circus and cabaret, trapeze lessons, clay-model making, chanting, yoga, dancing 24/7, comedy, political debate, rain, mud, sunshine, wellies and smiley, friendly people from all walks of life with one common theme of being at Glastonbury and leaving behind their day to day lives for just a little while.

[The picture is of me dancing at sunset at the sacred space on Friday night (I'm in the middle with the hat on) - as taken for The Guardian by Martin Godwin]

So what did I do at Glastonbury...

Thursday. Arrived, after a 6 hour journey, and wondered what on earth we'd let ourselves in for when I saw how busy it already was. We trekked for ages to find a spot to pitch our tent (all the maps we'd been given were worse than useless), were directed to Paines Field eventually and pitched tent, had a recce (is that how you spell it?) and some food then trekked back to get more stuff from the car. You soon learn that when someone at Glastonbury says something is about 5 minutes away, they're on Glastonbury time!

Then we went back to the tent and waited for Sarah and Lozza who were massively delayed due to National Express uselessness, I was wiped out so I skipped the Stone Circle and had a relatively early night instead awaiting Sarah's text message to tell me when she'd finally got through (it came at 5.30am).

Friday. [6 hours sleep - see I said it was a relatively early night]. Breakfast (smoothie and apple crepe for me) with Sarah, Sheila and Lozza. Sunscreen sharing with a lovely lady on the same bench as us. Found Merrell's (the trainer people where some pals were) and clean loos (oh, how wonderful that was). Then lunch and hot cider and brandy (a wonderfully warming drink when it's bucketing with rain). A bit of leftfield stage and walking on water (at least that's what it looks like inside the leftfield stage).

Then I went off and did random things for the rest of the day. Wandered over to see Trish at Youth Music. Met up with Joh and Ed from Brighton and had rum punch and mead, saw the trash city statues, had a bit of a lie-down, rocked at the circus stage and then silliness at Lost Vagueness - dancing to a fab clarinetist, the insect magic show and a wedding, as you do. Then hung with Adam for a bit (life is a miracle boy), met his mate Alex who was much better looking and spent the rest of the evening with him - dancing at the stone circle, a bit of Bjork, a wander through the Glade, very late night tea in the healing fields listening to a techno remix of Bright Eyes whilst watching the film Watership Down on an outdoor screen, catchin' up with Whatley Dude, Big Al and Caterina from Norway (Alex's sister's friend) at the stone circle, getting cold feet (I realised that at least 3 pairs of socks are essential with wellies now) and returning to my extremely cosy, more or less mud free (internally) tent at about 4.30am.

Saturday. 4 hours sleep. Breakfast with Sheila - a very large smoothie and a cake. Then off to the Leftfield and a long sit-down at Trish's as it was raining and she had deckchairs under cover. Then Sheila and I did the random thing together. A sonic art installation. The band in a caravan. Wading through mud and nearly getting completely stuck. Making clay models. Shopping for festi-gear. Lost Vagueness and another wedding and competitive wedding bouquet catching (I caught the bouquet this time!). Costume sourcing and customising for Lost Vagueness (using the bouquet). Back to Merrell's for food (all the best food stalls were near there) and then off to Lost Vagueness with Pimp Daddy, Eh Hombre and Lady Russell to see Madness (it was rammed) and The Beat and then all night dancing in mud (the mud was pretty bad in the LV field) finally leaving at around 6am.

Pimp Daddy was da man and was getting the love - the fake polar bear coat was a real hit and everyone wanted to touch the coat and the bling. And my hat was the biz - just need a better outfit to go with next year. I'm thinking I might finally get round to doing something with all the material sitting in my spare bedroom.

Sunday. 4 hours sleep. Got up around 11am. I think. Random wandering around and being very disorientated due to extreme tiredness and general dazed and confusedness. Food. Met up with Alex briefly. Watched Shirley (she was great and revived my flagging spirits for I was very very very tired by this stage), back to Merrell's for food, water and clean loo stop. Kaiser Chiefs, a walk round the back of the pyramid stage and random high fiving with Who fans. Random wandering with an off-his-tits scouser in a silly hat, helping him find Lost Vagueness via a bit of dancing at The Glade. Bought a flare and watched the end of the chemical brothers. Met up with the fab Merrell's crew and headed to Trash City where I met Random Mike, Welsh Alex, two mermaids, a very cute pirate and danced all night long and absolutely didn't want to leave.

Monday. No sleep. Finally headed off to my tent to pack it up at 7am, skipping and singing all the way. Got in, got changed into dry clothes, packed up (fortunately, most of it was already packed for I knew it might be a large one on Sunday night), trudged back to the car with Sheila. Got very wet and cold and miserable as I'd had to stand in the driving rain for what seemed like an eternity as the car was stuck in the mud and I was stuck with both our bags. I eventually got to the car and changed clothes again (not that anything was particularly dry but my Lost Vagueness PVC skirt came in very handy) and we had to be towed out of the first car park.

Waited, waited some more, waited again and one more bump later from the tractor to nudge us through another field and 5 or more hours later, must have been more like 6 or 7 actually, we finally got out of the car park and on to the road. I got home at about 8.30ish in the evening.. Happily exhausted.

So a big up to *everyone* I met there. A big up to Sheila for getting me there and back safely. And a big up to the whole Glastonbury vibe. Yes there was mud and it's evil and really hard work but I'll be back nevertheless.

Bring on 2008.

For more Glastonbury tales, then head over to Lisa's and Whatley Dude's blogs and check out Bluejoh's pictures too