Wednesday, May 7th, 2025, 21:36 (CEST)

The BornHack website is a Django project, the source code can be found on Github. The website has been evolving since the inception in February 2016, but until now the only place to follow the development has been through the Git commit log. With this post we want to highlight some of the bigger changes to the website since BornHack 2024.

The BornHack Website Team has been busy! The following list of changes is sorted with the oldest change first, with the oldest being from September, only a few months after BornHack was over. In addition to the list below many, many smaller changes and bugfixes have been merged. A lot of work has also gone into the new BornHack Media Archive (BMA), and soon a seperate news post will explain what BMA is and when it will go live.

POS Data Views in Backoffice (2024-09-19)

Data from the point-of-sale system we use for HAX transactions during the events was imported into the website, and new views were added to backoffice to show the data.

We have the full history of transactions back to and including 2018, and although the quality and completeness of the data is better in more recent years having the full picture is fantastic.

Maps v2 (2024-10-01)

The website first got an interactive map in the beginning of 2020 as part of the new facility feedback system. The idea with the facility system was for teams to be able to register facilities (like toilets, power outlets and so on) on the website, automatically enabling easy printing of QR codes for feedback channels to the teams. Part of this work was a map to show where the facilities can be found.

The map has been used a bit, but the feedback functionality never really took off. Anyway, in October 2024 a big update for the maps stuff landed, and we are very excited about the many new possibilities this offers:

• It is much easier on "our end" to embed and manage maps
• You may also have noticed it is possible to place villages on the map now. You can already see a bunch of villages on the map.
• Teams can also have their own layers, which can be easily exported, edited in Qgis or similar, and then re-imported. We expect NOC, Power, and many other teams to benefit from this.

Permissions Refactor (2024-10-01)

The BornHack website in 2016 started out with one kind of permission management: there were admins and not-admins. People in orga were admins, everyone else was not. This approach worked for a few years, but stuff like managing team memberships quickly became impractical once we started having the first non-orga people as team leads.

This lead to the principle of using the Team Lead flag on team memberships to allow management of teams (members, team info pages, team tasks, and so on). This was sort of enough for a few more years. But the flaws of this very basic approach have always been clear: if we want to restrict something so not everyone on a team can do the thing we can only ever restrict it to only team leads. Stuff like editing the facilities, or wiki pages, or adding stuff to the map.

So at the same time as the big maps refactor we also reworked the permissions checking on the website entirely. We now use Djangos permissions for everything. Different actions require different permissions. Permissions are mostly granted to teams (which internally have matching Django groups) but permissions can also be granted to individual users as needed. At the time of writing this (May 2025) the 2025 teams have permissions to do stuff on the website, but at some point after BornHack 2025 we will remove the permissions from the 2025 teams and assign them to the 2026 teams, and so on.

The permissions are pretty flexible, and more might be added in the future. Currently the following permissions exist for each team:

• Team Lead (the team lead(s))
• Team Member (all team members)
• Team Mapper (map layer management)
• Team Facilitator (facility management)
• Team Infopager (infopage management)
• Team POS (point-of-sale report submission)
• Team Tasker (team task managent)

The permissions change means that all volunteers (regardless of team) can now access backoffice, with the degree of access being determined by the user's permissions.

The team permissions can be managed in this backoffice view which is available to all team leads.

Change Usernames to UUIDs (2024-10-06)

The BornHack website has always used email for signup and login. Internally, the username for your user was generated from the localpart of the email address (so if the signup email was thomas@example.com the username would be set to thomas). If that username was already taken a counter was applied. Because many of our users have their own domains for email the usernames were often something like bornhack152 because 152 people all used bornhack@ emails for signup.

It isn't possible to change the username of an account. Depending on the email used to sign up a user's bornhack.dk username might be the user's real name (which, like the email, is of course private information protected under GDPR), it might be a deadname, or best case it might be something nonsensical like bornhack17. Since usernames are just a unique identifier, and because they are sometimes shown on the website, we decided that our users would be better served with having a randomly generated username. On October 6th 2024 all bornhack.dk usernames were changed from whatever they were to a UUID4. You can see your username in the bottom of the left menu in the profile.

There might still be a view here and there which shows the username where it should be updated to show the name or public_credit_name from the user's profile. Please let the webteam know by opening an issue if you find a page where this needs to be done.

Switch to Bootstrap 5 (2024-10-09)

Since the beginning the BornHack website has been based on bootstrap 3.x, and changing Bootstrap version on a big site is quite an undertaking, so it had been down-prioritised for years. But in October 2024 new webteam member Zarya (who also did the maps stuff) did the work and finally got the website updated to Bootstrap 5.

This change also included dark mode support, and logged-in users also have the option to choose between two different dark themes in the profile.

New Coinify API (2025-02-16)

Our payment service provider for blockchain/cryptocurrency payments Coinify has retired their old API which means we could finally retire the crusty old vendored-in Coinify SDK code we used for their old API. We have used Coinify since 2016 with this code but from March 2025 the old API was retired. The updated Coinify code landed in our repo in February, but due to some issues getting our account KYC stuff done the code was not deployed in production until the beginning of April.

Gzipped Responses (2025-03-30)

For some reason gzip was never enabled for responses from bornhack.dk, that has been fixed now, leading to a nice little performance boost on some pages with a lot of markup.

Full OIDC support (2025-04-08)

Back in 2023 an issue was opened requesting we upgrade bornhack.dk to be a full OIDC enabled IDP. In the beginning of April 2025 this was finally done, meaning it is now easier than ever to use your bornhack.dk account to sign into other sites and services. We expect this to be used a lot during BornHack for all the stuff people run that needs some form of access control. To use it you will need the autoconfiguration link and you will also need to go to /o/applications to register a new oauth app.

BornHacks OIDC IDP uses oauth2 scopes to control access to user claims (user claims are information shared with sites and services using the BornHack IDP). We added a view in the profile where you can see precisely which information is included in which claims, when using each claim scope. We also added a new profile field preferred_username which - if you give it a value - will be served under the standard OIDC claim profile when asking for the profile scope.

If you don't understand any of this OIDC/IDP stuff you can just ignore it, if you don't need or use it it has no effect on you or your account security.

Dark Mode v2 (2025-05-07)

A second iteration of the Bootstrap 5 theme and dark mode support changes landed in the beginning of May with toggle buttons in the navbar in the top of the page, and behind the scenes greatly simplified CSS. This update means also non-logged in users can enjoy dark mode even on systems where it isn't the default.

Future Changes

We still have plenty of changes coming and issues open on Github, but summer is approaching, so the list above is probably it for big changes before BornHack 2025. If the sort of tasks described above sound fun then maybe there is a place for you in the website team. If you are interested please drop by our IRC channel to chat, it is #bornhack-website on irc.baconsvin.org (with TLS, on port 6697).

This news post marks the first time we've really shared anything about the development of the BornHack website. The intention is to make more news posts of this kind in the future.

Monday, Mar 3rd, 2025, 20:46 (CET)

The BornHack 2025 Call for Participation is out. Deadline for submissions is June 1st.

Submit your content and spread the word!

Monday, Mar 3rd, 2025, 20:44 (CET)

The BornHack 2025 kickoff meeting will be on Thursday the 29th of May at Hylkedam from 13-18. We booked the venue for the full week this time, so volunteers are welcome to show up from Monday the 26th of May, and you can stay until Sunday the 1st of June.

The days before and after the 29th are intended as a combination of relaxation, fun and team activities. We only have an official program on Thursday (and a little bit on Friday). We hope many of you want to join us for an early start on this years BornHack fun! It is a great opportunity for existing and new volunteers to select which teams to participate on, and help get those teams started.

You can choose to participate only in the actual kickoff on 29th of May, or you can grab a bed in one of the cabins or bring a tent or caravan and stay for a few nights or the whole week. Expect the whole thing to be a casual combination of team activities and relaxation.

Food

Participating in the kickoff is free. Jonathan is cooking all week. Food is free on Thursday and Friday, the other days food will cost 100,- DKK/HAX (around 14€) per person per day. Note that the kitchen in the cabin is exclusively for Jonathan and his team, the kitchen will not be available for personal cooking.

Streaming

We will do our best to make the kickoff available virtually, but the internet connection at Hylkedam is not very good between BornHacks, so no promises. If all goes well you can follow the live-stream at http://xgsobitduxv7gcc5qlveigwiku7qcjn5exf4ayusw4mwq7kfrapmrjyd.onion/ or https://live.bornhack.dk/

Tentative agenda:

Monday the 26th of May:

• 12-15 Orga arrives
• 18-19 Dinner

Tuesday the 27th of May:

• 09-10 Breakfeast
• 12-13 Lunch
• 19-20 Dinner

Wednesday the 28th of May:

• 09-10 Breakfeast
• 12-13 Lunch
• 19-20 Dinner

Thursday the 29th of May:

• 09-10 Breakfeast (free)
• 10-12 Arrive for meet'n'greet
• 12-13 Lunch (free)
• 13-18 Kickoff
• 18-20 Dinner (free)
• 20- Social / party

Friday the 30th of May:

• 09-10 Breakfeast (free)
• 10-12 Team breakout sessions
• 12-13 Lunch (free)
• 13-19 Team breakout sessions
• 19-20 Dinner (free)

Saturday the 31th of May:

• 09-10 Breakfeast
• 12-13 Lunch
• 19-20 Dinner

Sunday the 1th of June:

• 09-10 Breakfeast
• 10- Cleanup and leave

Saturday, Dec 21st, 2024, 20:53 (CET)

BornHack will be at the 38th Chaos Communication Congress, and we will have a nice assembly area where you can visit us.

The BornHack assembly will have the usual features: Sticker exchange, arcade machines, tap beer, blinking LEDs and much more to make hackers feel at home. You can also go there to pay your BornHack 2025 ticket in cash if that is your thing. Remember to create the order in the webshop first!

This year the traditional and much anticipated BornHack party will be on Saturday the 28th at our assembly area. We start from 21:00 and it usually goes on into the early hours of the morning. There will be Sevablødda and good times to be had.

ps. BornHack people who use Signal and are going to 38c3 might want to join the Signal group "BornHack @ 38c3" - you can ask someone at the assembly for the invite link.

Friday, Dec 20th, 2024, 12:48 (CET)

BornHack 2024 is long over, and with the year almost gone the Orga team is slowly beginning to prepare for next year’s BornHack. More updates on that soon.

As the year is ending we wanted to take this opportunity to give a big shoutout and thanks to this year’s sponsors. We are almost done with the accounting for 2024 and the organisation is financially healthier than ever before. This result would not have been possible without the help and support of these fine organisations (combined with careful moderation of expenses of course).

The Gold sponsors of BornHack 2024 were:

• Jobindex
• HK Samdata
• Semaphor
• Zibra Group

BornHack 2024 Silver sponsors:

• Clan
• Epson
• Tjek
• WHY2025

Other BornHack 2024 sponsors:

• BornHolm Spirits
• Espressif
• Fiberby
• Ordbogen
• PCBWay
• Raymeon
• Roskilde Auto- og skadecenter
• Wirepas
• Tyktech

It is great that almost 1/3 of the 2024 sponsors are new. We will keep working on attracting new sponsors in the coming years, while also continuing to work with our existing sponsors.

BornHack is a non-profit, meaning nobody receives a salary, and everyone buys their own ticket for the event. This means that any profits from BornHack 2024 will be used exclusively to improve BornHack 2025.

If your company is interested in sponsoring BornHack 2025, please see our Call for Sponsors and reach out to our Sponsors Team at sponsors@bornhack.dk.

Wednesday, Jul 24th, 2024, 12:00 (CEST)

BornHack 2024 is over. It was a fantastic event full of all the wonderful, weird, talented, amazing and inspiring people and projects that we've gotten used to (but never tire of). 2024 was in many ways the best BornHack yet:

• We had a record number of visitors – 2024 was the biggest BornHack yet by some margin. We checked in just under 350 full week tickets from the webshop, and on top of that maybe 70 more as a mix of sponsor tickets, one day tickets, child tickets and such.
• We saw more new faces than ever before. Especially big groups of dutch and german people continue to invade BornHack (in the nicest possible way).
• The number of volunteers during buildup, event and teardown has never been higher. Consequently the workload on orga continued the downward trend this year.
• The economy is looking healthy, largely thanks to more participants joining us this year.

All in all it was a great event with very few mishaps and accidents. Buildup was a bit rough due to a double booking at the venue but we worked around it and the event turned out great. We are also expecting a smooth teardown.

While we are proud of our Code of Conduct and the photo policy in it, we still love to see photos from BornHack! Until the new BornHack Media Archive is ready please find other ways to share the pictures and send us a link to info at bornhack.dk. The Photo Team are working on getting their pictures online while recovering from BornHack.

2024 was the ninth BornHack, and we chose the tagline Feature Creep for this year. As usual we leave it up to the participants to interpret any deeper meaning (intentional or not) in the tagline. So many amazingly clever and creative features were added to everything as the event progressed.

Our popular food vendor Oriental Express was back again this year serving delicious Asian food. The Food Area worked well again this year. There was almost constant activity with people cooking and eating at weird hours. Like the previous years we sold out all the fridge shelves we had available for rent.

We have two ways you can submit feedback about BornHack. The general feedback form can be used for any feedback about BornHack, good or bad. We've already had some participants leave feedback, but we want more. If you can spare five minutes please go submit some feedback – we want both your positive and negative feedback, it all helps to make the next BornHack better.

Please also remember to submit program feedback by pressing the feedback button on each individual event page. It helps the Content Team make informed decisions about what content worked and what didn't.

The next BornHack will be from the 16th to the 23rd of July 2025. Tickets for BornHack 2025 will go on sale as soon as we get around to it.

Thank you to everyone who was a part of BornHack 2024, both participants and volunteers. A special thanks to the volunteers who stayed on site until we were completely done with teardown. You know who you are. <3

Until next year, take care and all the best from Orga!

Thursday, Jul 18th, 2024, 10:48 (CEST)

As of yesterday, July 17th 2024 at noon Danish time (12:00 CEST) BornHack 2024 is finally underway!

Preceeding the opening we've done a week of build-up with between 20-50 volunteers to get everything ready for you. The volunteers have been nothing short of amazing during build-up, we are extremely grateful for all the help. We will pay back the kindness by continuing to organise the best event we can.

We are ready:

• We have running water. Toilets and showers are clean and working well, they will be cleaned twice daily.
• The Food Area is operational. It has gas powered barbeques as well as regular gas cookers (for pots and pans) available. We have fridge shelves available to keep the food cold, but there are only a few left in the webshop.
• The food vendor is open every day from 10:00 to 20:00. They are called Oriental Express and will be serving a combination of Asian and Danish foods. They accept HAX, cash (DKK) and MobilePay.
• The program starts today (apart from the Hello World talk yesterday). Streams are available on live.bornhack.dk.
• Network and power is operational
• The bar is open! Please support it.

If you have questions the infodesk or the Info Page can probably answer them.

If you want to help out by doing a couple of shifts during the event it would be appreciated. The teams that still need members are:

• Bar
• CERT
• Info
• Video

See the teams page for more info.

We have been looking forward to this moment for months. We can't wait to see everyone! Welcome!

Tuesday, Jul 2nd, 2024, 14:48 (CEST)

We are now ready to take preorders for this years merch clothing in the shop.

As the merchandise is produced to order, be sure to complete and pay for your order, as you won't have a reservation until payment is registered.

If you chose to pay in cash on site, please do so as soon as you arrive, and be aware that your merch order will not be ready in the first production batch.

The clothing model and sizes are almost the same as the previous years, though there has been a small revision change in the slim fit t-shirts from our supplier. It's the same series, but has gotten a new product number, though it looks very similar.

All the merch will feature this years logo on the back and a smaller one on the left chest, like the visualisations below:

If you are interested in making your own "special edition" BornHack merch, keep an eye out for an upcoming workshop on the subject and bring your own t-shirt or similar. The transfers stick best to new and unwashed clothing, and stuff with a lot of synthetic materials can be tricky as they tend to melt easily.

Monday, Jul 1st, 2024, 12:56 (CEST)

The last chance to order tents, tables, chairs and other village gear is Thursday 4th of July at 20:00 CEST / 18:00 UTC!

We had to move the deadline a day up, in order for our supplier to be ready with the tents, so be sure to order as soon as possible.

Friday, Jun 7th, 2024, 15:17 (CEST)

A participant suggested we make it possible to rent tent floors in the webshop without getting the tent itself, for people who have their own village tents but need a floor.

This is a good idea and we have today added individual 1x2m floor boards to the shop. It is up to you to figure out the right number to cover the area of your tent.

Please include in the order comments where you want the floor placed if you want it to be built when you arrive.

Friday, Jun 7th, 2024, 14:41 (CEST)

Remember to get your tents, tables, chairs and other village gear in the webshop. If your village needs a big shared tent and you would like the tent to be built and ready when you arrive you can consider renting it.

We have also added hack packages to the webshop. As usual we have three diffent packages (small, medium, and large), and they all have some full week tickets, some one-day tickets (valid for any day), a tent, some tables and chairs, and some HAX (the local BornHack currency). Packages cost about the same as the sum total of the individual items they contain, so they are not a "deal" they are just an easy way to go to BornHack in style - sometimes useful when the employer is paying.

Village gear and packages must be ordered by Friday the 5th of July 2024. The tents will be ready for use no later than July 17th at noon (12:00 CEST, 10:00 UTC) when the event begins, probably a few days before. Rented tents must be clean, empty and ready for teardown on July 24th at noon (12:00 CEST, 10:00 UTC) when the event ends.

Tents will be placed in General Camping unless you want it somewhere else. You can help orga by communicating where you would like your village tent placed in good time before buildup. You can put the information in the comment of the order, or write to our info email and tell us your order number and where you want the tent built.

Friday, Jun 7th, 2024, 14:40 (CEST)

We have added the first 50 fridge shelves to the webshop, some more will be added once we actually receive the fridges and see how many shelves each fridge has.

We have also added 10 additional caravan tickets to the shop. A regular car parking ticket is not included so remember to get one of those as well in case you are bringing a caravan and will be parking your car in the car park.

The CFP is still open, please submit your content as soon as possible. The program is already taking shape!

A bunch of villages have appeared on the website, remember to go register yours!

If you want to help building BornHack you can consider showing up a few days early for buildup or even better: staying a few days after the event for teardown. No special skills are needed and you only need to work as much as you want to. If you want to join a team you can check the list but you can also just show up and offer your help.

Tuesday, Feb 20th, 2024, 13:01 (CET)

We are again having the BornHack 2024 kickoff at our venue Hylkedam from Wednesday the 8th to Saturday the 11th of May. We hope that a lot of our volunteers will drop by to help shape the 2024 event. It will be a good opportunity for new volunteers to select which teams to participate on, and help get those teams started.

The main kickoff meeting will be on Thursday the 9th of May, we expect people to show up during the morning for meet'n'greet, then we'll have lunch and begin the kickoff. The 10th is for more planning of the years team activities, and extra hanging out/socialising. We plan on leaving the venue on 11th after cleaning. You are welcome to show up in the evening on Wednesday the 8th, but please let someone from Orga know if you plan to do so.

Tentative plan:

Wednesday the 8th of May:

• 16-18 Orga arrives
• 18-19 Dinner
• 19- Kickoff preparations

Thursday the 9th of May:

• 10-12 Arrive for meet'n'greet
• 12-13 Lunch
• 13-18 Kickoff
• 18-20 Dinner
• 20- Social / party

Friday the 10th of May:

• 10-12 Team breakout 1
• 12-13 Lunch
• 13-15 Team breakout 2
• 15-16 Break
• 16-18 Team breakout 3
• 18-20 Dinner
• 20- More socialising

Saturday the 11th of May:

• 10-12 Cleaning and leaving

Participating:

You can participate only in the actual kickoff on 9th of May, or you can grab a bed in one of the cabins (or bring a tent) and stay for a couple of nights. Expect the whole thing to be casual, but in particular the evening of the 9th and all of the 10th will have plenty of social and relaxation time.

Participating in the kickoff is free, but it is appreciated if you can chip in around 100,- DKK/HAX (around 14€) for food per day. We will do our best to make the kickoff available virtually, but the internet connection at Hylkedam is not very good between BornHacks, so no promises.

See you! Or follow the live-stream at http://xgsobitduxv7gcc5qlveigwiku7qcjn5exf4ayusw4mwq7kfrapmrjyd.onion/ or https://live.bornhack.dk/

Monday, Feb 19th, 2024, 15:00 (CET)

It is now possible to register your BornHack 2024 village!

Registering your village is an excellent way to make sure people can find you, advertise your interests, and attract new people to the village.

Villages are clusters of tents typically built by a group of friends, a hackerspace, a group with a shared interest (like the best programming language in the world, or the niche operating system you run that everybody else should switch to ASAP, and so on.) It is not a requirement to stay in a village when you place your tent at BornHack, but it can be an excellent way to meet new people.

You can see a list of villages from BornHack 2023 here.

Remember that our Code of Conduct applies to village names and descriptions.

You can register your village here.

Monday, Feb 12th, 2024, 14:48 (CET)

As some of you have already noticed, the webshop is now open for tickets for BornHack 2024!

The usual ticket types are available: full-week tickets for adults and children, one-day tickets, caravan tickets, car park tickets, and cabins. Tents, fridges, and other village gear are unavailable and will be announced later.

A standard ticket is 1337 DKK. If you can pay more than the standard 1337 DKK for a ticket, please do so; it is highly appreciated. It allows us to have cheaper tickets available in the shop for hackers with smaller budgets.

Sunday, Jan 7th, 2024, 15:39 (CET)

The BornHack 2024 Call for Participation is open!

We are looking for talented, humorous, inspiring, and/or provocative speakers to host talks, workshops, and other events to make the official program at BornHack 2024 live up to the high expectations set by previous years. If you have something interesting to say, we want to hear it! Read our Call for Participation to learn more and submit your content today.

We prefer submissions as early as possible to have more time to plan the final program and coordinate with speakers. Please submit it sooner rather than later.

Please note that BornHack now takes place in July rather than August, as it has in recent years.