Our newbie perspective on Electromagnetic Field 2026

On our particular Mastodon instance, Electromagnetic Field (EMF; #EMFCamp on the socials), a festival held every even-numbered year, is not something you could miss becoming aware of. Hence, we (that is James and me) have known it exists since its last outing in 2024. But it’s got to be the ultimate of fediverse influence to actually take that one stage further and buy tickets. And then some imposter’s syndrome started to set in about it. To back up a bit, EMF isn’t a music festival, although there’s plenty of music; however, what it is notoriously defies simple explanations. I eventually settled with saying a hackspace/makerspace festival, and that you really need to visit the festival website to understand more! You might say a nerdy festival, where nerd is only ever positive, or perhaps it’s a festival of “beautiful queer techno hippies” who “like computers and camping” (as per John Robertson; see below). It’s also entirely (and I do mean entirely, from the organisation to the…