OggCamp 26 was held last weekend (25–26 April 2026) in Manchester, UK. For anyone who’s not come across it before, OggCamp is an unconference celebrating Free Culture, Free and Open Source Software, hardware hacking, digital rights, and all sorts of collaborative, community-led projects.
This was my fifth time attending, and I enjoyed it as much as ever — not just the talks, but the general interaction with the OggCamp community, who are consistently welcoming and friendly. It was brilliant to see and catch up with some familiar faces too, including Martin Wimpress and Dan Lynch.
As you’d expect, a lot of attendees were Linux users, and as a member of the Ubuntu Local Community Team it was great to chat to people about how they’re using Linux day-to-day. "The “Raccoon” and I also handed out 20 UK Community-branded USB start-up sticks loaded with Resolute Raccoon (26.04), so fingers crossed we’ll see a few new (or returning) Ubuntu users off the back of the weekend.
The talks were incredibly diverse, ranging from computing to knitting, local community support projects, and plenty more besides. On the computing side, there was a strong focus on the challenges and trade-offs around AI, privacy, and how we can better engage more groups — especially Gen Z — with open source ideas and culture.
One thing I always find interesting about OggCamp (compared with more traditional Linux tech conferences) is that many of the Linux users there are non-developers. It’s a great chance to hear from people who simply want to use Linux and open source software for everyday life and work, rather than build it.
I spent a bit of time asking people about their experiences and concerns — and in particular, why they do or don’t use Ubuntu. The most common theme I heard was frustration that open source effort can feel spread very thinly across lots of projects and forks that, from a user point of view, sometimes look like slight variations on the same thing (their words, not mine!). A related point that came up more than once was the perception that some development happens in an “echo chamber”, where priorities and strategy can skew towards what developers want, rather than what general users need (again: their words, not mine!).
All in, I had a great weekend: I learned a lot, made some new friends, reconnected with old acquaintances, and hopefully helped recruit a few new Ubuntu fans along the way. Looking forward to the next one.