OHM2013 Childnode

I posted recently about OHM2013, the computer hacking conference I recently made a presentation on Open Source Food.  Earlier that day I also gave a small workshop for children.

It’s an issue in the US for example that many kids, especially in less affluent city centers, sometimes don’t know what real food looks like.  Jamie Oliver documented this in the TV series he recently made there.  It’s because some kids are so used to eating something out of a box or a slice of pizza, if you show them a vegetable they don’t know what it is.  I know from visiting relatives in the US, many kids hardly eat anything except meat, and usually very cheap cuts of meat.

Here in the Netherlands, I don’t think the situation is so serious.  Most kids here are used to eating vegetables, and know what they look like.  They don’t however know vegetables that aren’t sold in supermarkets, and they aren’t very familiar with dried beans.  I brought in some blue potatoes, and they had never seen those before.

I brought some heirloom tomatoes I bought from the local farmers market, together with some fresh herbs (basil, celery leaf herb, cilantro and parley) for tasting.  They had never seen heirloom tomatoes before, and were eager to taste and talk about them.  There was one kid there who hated normal tomatoes, but like the heirloom tomatoes.  I left his mom wondering where she could buy more, because they are not generally available here…  The herbs went over pretty well too, and we talked about the different tastes and what they were.  Even some of the adults there couldn’t identify them.

After tasting, we went on to the arts and crafts.  I gathered all the leftover beans and lentils I could find at home, and bought some more from a farmers market stand that sells them by weight in small quantities.  In total I had a few kilos, and one of the organizers also brought in some too.  We had some rice, other grains and alphabet soup pasta too.  The kids were very disappointed they couldn’t taste the beans!  I hadn’t thought to cook any of them.

Here was the results of the arts and crafts project:

Where we started

jar

The Results

mici

hand1

hand2

collection

Okay, we’re cheating a little here. The one in the middle with the house and tree was done by one of the adults…  The others were done by children aged 4-7.

Has anyone else done biodiversity projects with children?

OHM Presentation

Thank you everyone who attended my presentation at OHM, Open Source Food.

If you would like a copy of the slides, you can download a PDF here.

As soon as the video is released by the OHM people I will edit this post and embed it here.  Please check back soon.

In the meantime, if anyone has any questions about the presentation, feel free to add a comment here.

OHM2013 Underway…

Today is the first day of OHM2013 in the Netherlands.  Tomorrow (Thursday) I will talk about Open Source Food in Tent 1 at 6pm local time here in Amsterdam, for an hour.  It might be possible to watch via a live stream here, or archived videos will be available later.

The general program is here.  All events are in English.  Lots of great stuff is planned!

At the last event, 4 years ago, Julian Assange spoke and introduced an idea he had called Wikileaks.  He’ll speak again this year via a video link from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he’s hiding out.  Thomas Drake, another American whistle blower will also speak.  Expect speakers this time to again present world changing ideas!

The event has it’s own broadcasting license for both TV and radio.  The station name is OHMroep, a play on the Dutch word ‘omroep’ which means broadcasting company.  See the streams page linked to above if you want to listen in.

OHM2013

This year in the Netherlands will be a technical conference of sorts, called OHM2013. I will attend in order to give a presentation entitled Open Source Food.  3000 tickets are up for sale at €180 each, for a 4 day event.  In that time a piece of agricultural land in a remote place in the Netherlands will be transformed into a city powered by diesel generators.  Each of those lucky 3000 ticket holders will have purchased the right to be volunteers, and will help set up tents and stages, provide ‘content’ like presentations, cook food and so on.  Space for camping will be provided.

The event has it’s roots with a group of computer hackers and a Dutch language magazine published in the 1980s and 90s called Hacktic.  The event has become an ‘every 4th year’ tradition, started with the Galactic Hacker Party in 1989.  It has evolved in recent years to include free thinkers in almost every field.  One of the most striking thing about this event is the level of intelligence many of the participants have.  It’s truly a place to go to talk with intelligent people, with expertise you never thought existed.

I was at the first event in 1989, and some of the ones that followed years later.  I have not been in 12 years now, so it’ll be interesting to see how it’s changed.  I’m told that together with the other presentations, my presentation will be streamed live on the Internet and available for viewing afterwords.  I’ll post more information as I have it.

Update 17 July:  The program is now online.