My name is Adam, I am an electronic musician and hardware hacker, and I’m also the director of Music Tech Fest’s 24 hour Hack Camp. Music Tech Fest is the free festival of music ideas, which travels around the world hosting three-day events combining musical performances, talks & presentations, installations and a music technology hackathon. I like to think of it as being somewhere in-between TED Talks and a music festival.

The hack camp is a fundamental part of what we do, and in preparation for our next event in Ljubljana, Slovenia from 18th-20th September, I’m seeking hackers, makers, designers, programmers, artists & musicians to take part. We have received European Commission funding for our events thanks to our MusicBricks project, which for one thing means that attendance is completely free, but also means we have scored exclusive access to some amazing new tools including hardware and APIs from some of Europe’s leading research institutions, such as IRCAM, Fraunhofer, Technische Universität Wien, and Music Technology Group at UPF.

In standard hackathon style, there are prizes for hacks in various categories, but in addition to this the best projects presented at the end of the Hack Camp can even receive funding so that their development can be continued. At our recent event in Sweden, four teams each received 3000€ and ongoing assistance and mentorship from our advisors, so that their amazing projects could have a life longer than just the 24 hours of the event, and everyone’s been so pleased with the results that we are going to do it again in Ljubljana. If you’ve got a crazy or ambitious project you’d like to fund, this could be your opportunity.

Some of you will know all of this already, as I’ve been hopping around IRC channels spreading the word, but whether we’ve spoken already or not, please consider this an official invitation to join us. If you, or any of the members of your hackerspace/collective, or anyone else you know would like to come along I would love to have you there. At our last event in Sweden, we had Hack Camp participants from 14 different countries and the collaborations that came from such an incredible international selection blew everyone away.

Registration is now open at http://musictechfest.org/hackmtfcentral/ and due to the popularity of our events and the fact that they are free, the available places can sometimes fill up quickly so if you’re interested, please go ahead and sign up! If you could circulate this message on the mailing list of your hackerspace or share it with anyone else you think would be interested, I’d really appreciate it, and if you have any questions about the Hack Camp, or about Music Tech Fest in general, please send me an email and I’ll get right back to you.