The future Legends image by Sean Allum. The face of Kalki avatar has been replace with an image of Mitch that has been deep dreamed into the style of the image.

Voyages

🌎 Hacker Sailing, with Mitch Altman

This May 26th - June 2nd 2019 Astralship went on a very special week-long voyage under the expert leadership of Mitch Altman. Deep in Snowdonia, we will go on a journey of deep-tech magic and innovation. The crew will hack together, learn together, have fun in the Snowdonia spring-shine and work on innovating some new systems that might help keep our civilization going.

The retreat was privately organised for committed Astral pirates, hackers and makers. A max-creative peak-performance deep-dive into the Astral with Mitch.

"Our voyage will collectively be created by the synergy among all who join. We will all learn a lot. We will all make new friends. We will all grow. We will all leave with motivation, encouragement, and inspiration for moving forward in our lives."

--Mitch Altman

a map with deep-dream effect making it consistent in colour with the header image

Where will we sail? - #unvoyage

The ship will sail where the crew takes it and your unique skills and contributions will ultimately decide where we get to. Currently there are 3 broad areas members of the core team are interest in exploring. Utimiately anyone can do whatever they want, we're adopting the one rule code used at Noisebridge, "Be excellent to each other!".

a sprouting leaf with a complex image of our planet covered in network behind

1. Sustainable Tech, Smart-Agriculture and Energy.

We’re not sustainable, despite our achievements the planet that gave us life is dying fast. Humanity's future will be decided soon so there's not a day to waste. It’s for ‘us’ to make sure we have sustainable systems and not for 'the system' to do it for us. So let's amp up our creativity and performance and find ways to show we're not done yet.

Tyddyn Teg organic farm is just down the hill from us, we can arrange site visits. The farm has been involved in projects like the Weedinator (EMF Camp 2018) and the farmers are passionate about innovation.

zoom of cyber character from the future legends image

2. Geo-spacial gaming for Health and Wellbeing

We can also take advantage of the beautiful Snowdonia-scape. With Arduino, wifi, GPS and some creativity we could design and prototype fun games to encourage players to get out, get fit and enjoy the mountains.

Snowdonia is the setting for many tales from the Mabinogi, Britain’s oldest folklore. Perhaps a fusion of old stories and new tech will capture imagination, maybe there are NFTs to be traded or captured? VR mission control or autonomous vehicles? Unlimited possibilities involving tech and hiking in the mountains.

VR image from Astralship project on VR language learning

3. Pushing the boundaries of VR

Astralship has plenty of space that we can use to play with VR.

We have a couple of HTC Vive sets available, and looking into other kit. We could involve theatrical performance, language learning, or interaction with arduino devices.


🌍 Voyage Structure

Sailing involves the agile adjustment of sails to reach a destination. Here we're co-producing the voyage structure dynamically with our emerging crew. Getting us all to paradise island; an intense creative interactive-learning adventure that enriches us all.


picture of mitch soldering with a space cartoon t-shirt and orange and blue hair

Learn soldering and Arduino with Mitch

Everyone should know how to solder and some electronics skills. Early in the voyage Mitch will run some sessions sharing how to get started building projects with Arduinos and learning to solder. Mitch will be on hand as we hack new solutions together, when technical problems and questions arise.

There will be plenty of time to get to know all the crew, including time to chat to Mitch about soldering, electronics, projects, or any subject. Mitch has an enormous wealth of experience from inventing and manufacturing the open source TV-B-Gone to starting Noisebridge hackerspace and organising Hacker Trips To China.

a pirate flag in the astral style

Onboard Devops clinic.

Does your project lack the proper technical rigging to set sail? Does your ship have a good beam but needs some devops magic to get it out of the doldrums?

The crew for the voyage includes first mates with many years of experience in low latency, highly scaleable environments, master serverwrights and codewrights availble to help crew mates with any devops issues. Send your best pirate to represent your project!

a girl doing a Yoga pose in front of the Chapel Window

Activities

Peak performance comes when mind, body and spirit are in optimal condition and regular breaks from soldering and staring at screens are a good idea

There'll be a daily yoga sessions. Social evenings, with music (do we all love psy-bass?) and whether it's to test out some prototype devices or just to get out and explore Snowdonia, we'll get out and find some magic spots in the mountains around.


Wiki

Many of the details of the voyage will be organised dynamically via our Wiki in the lead up to the voyage. Self organised sessions! Yes, of course. You will love the ambient spaces we create for intimate reciprocal learning on the ship.

Dates

The official voyage is 26th May to 2nd June. There are also opportunities for hackers to come early to help set up or stay on to go deeper with Mitch. Get in touch.

Cabin and Spaces

Cabin spaces are limited on Astralship. We’re looking to fill 8 Cabins (4 single, 4 double) for this voyage to the future. We may also add some Hammocks or other sleeping spaces. If you want to sail on this voyage, the first of its kind, then get your name on the roster early to avoid disappointment.

Day Trippers: Hackers from the local area will be invited to join us for day trips.

No experience necessary, only a love of technology and a desire to see human prosperity.

Costs

Astralship voyages do happen by magic, but there are physical costs and we need your contributions to make this happen. Single Cabins for the week, including a wonderful selection of Vegan food prepared by our resident Chef, are £450. Double cabins for 2: £600. Non-cabin spaces (very limited) £250.

We recognise not everyone can make it for the whole voyage, if you want to come for a few days that's fine and you can contribute to costs on a day rate. Full day rate is £60/ day for those with ample means and less for those who a less economically successful.

We'll make sure there are a few non-vegan options available -- though we know that everyone will thoroughly enjoy our vegan food offerings.

keywords: Hacking with: Psybass, flowathon, art works, innovation, Nature 2.0, Engedi 2.0, pirate ship, inter-galactivism, automation, synergy, solder, VR, live music, yoga, mediation, biofeedback, hikes in the hills, and trips to see 2000+ year old Druid relics.