Kenya

This year the prestigious Hacker Beach event is taking place on the island of Lamu off the eastern coast of Kenya. The island is serviced by a single UMTS tower located above the hospital in the main town of Lamu City. However, our accommodation is on the other side of the island.

Our accommodation had a previously installed directional antenna on the roof to provide internet access. Unfortunately the access was very slow, with only 14% signal strength. This was complicated by strong winds blowing against antenna, causing it to be pointed in a wrong direction. This further reduced the cellular reception, sometimes making it disconnect completely.

For the uninitiated, Hackerbeach involves a group of hackers (historically 15-20) gathering in a tropical location for a month to hack on various open source projects. It can be thought of as a month-long hackathon or code sprint for nomadic open source developers. All of the code so far has been focused on the open web ecosystem.

Last year it took place on a small island of Vietnam named Phú Quốc. It was a loosely organized event with no set dates (besides the month of January). Hackers from all around the world showed up, found places to stay, rented motorbikes, and met up at coffee shops for coworking in paradise.