All was free, including the accommodation and the workshop sessions in Casas Viejas. As for the food (and what food! - vegetarian, recycled, healthy and delicious) donations were proposed to cover costs.

Probably every participant at the hackmeeting would give a different definition of it, and all definitions would be valid: a nomad annual meeting of people who use technology as a tool for social change, a space where reality is hacked, a hackers' gathering, an annual celebration of daily hacking, a space where knowledge is shared, a political space, an alternative space...

Although the hackmeeting is open to whoever can go, it helps to be involved in a hacklab near you (see hacklabs.org), and/or to participate on the list used for its preparation,  HackMeeting@listas.sindominio.net. Various organisational aspects of the hackmeeting have been prepared on this list since various months in advance.

One of the greater joys of these gatherings is that they are an unique opportunity for people who only know each other by an email address to see each other's faces, or to meet again with people that you know from previous editions of the hackmeeting, or from hacklabs of foreign lands.

Those of us who know each other a little bit are, more or less continuously, in this and other networks of groups dedicated to the struggle for social change: alternative media, self-managed occupied social centres... It may be for this reason that I see the hackmeeting as a gathering point for these struggles, and also as a celebration of them. It is as if, year after year, our lives wanted to melt with each other for a few days to celebrate their happy defiance which, latent for the remainder of the year, needs this special weekend to manifest itself in its full splendour, and to recover energies.

The social centre Casas Viejas started to receive people on Thursday. People from very far away arrived a week before. By Friday there were people all over the place, even on the roof! From there, you could get the “privilege” to see a misery that is not so obvious at street level: the building where the majority of us slept is only one part of a squatted complex, and the “other” part of this complex is occupied by very poor groups and even families. The squatting/hacking collective had provided them with electricity and water so that they could live in a little bit more dignified housing.

During daytime, the hackmeeting consisted of four days of workshops and mainly talks, where a person shared her know-how on themes more or less related to technology.

A different activity was prepared for each night : Friday 29 there was a copyleft concert, which more or less means that nobody can accuse you of theft if you record it for non profit purposes, on Saturday it was the Big Brother Awards presentation night, where people and companies that have been prominent in the violation of privacy this year were awarded, and Sunday saw a tecno-pagan festival with no precedent or explanation.

After these organised events, an apparently chaotic sessions of image and sound took place until the small -and not so small- hours of the morning. These are called 'pure data' parties . This more or less consists of an orgy of real-time improvisation of image and sound, produced from one or two computers.

General meetings took place throughout the whole of the hackmeeting, in order to organise the different aspects, like the projectors, the spaces for the different activities or the recording of the chats. The last day, before cleaning, we had the final assembly where they were put in common the good and the less good things about this hackmeeting, improvements for the next one were proposed, and many and very juicy thoughts.

Some said that there must have been about a thousand people at the hackmeeting this year, between those who have been every day and those that have passed for just a day, or a chat. Each one of these people could probably tell a different account of the hackmeeting. Mine is of a political space where principles like horizontality, equality and social change have been put to work.

Some people may see technology as a neutral tool. However what is perceived in the hackmeeting is that technology, like knowledge, is not neutral: it is either free or it has an owner, it is either shared or exchanged for a profit, either open closed.

A feeling that was shared in the last assembly was that the hackmeeting is not a neutral space, but a political one, where we use free and open technology that is made available to all, where we practice the model of society that we propose, where we do not compete with each other but rather collaborate with each other, where there is equality not hierarchy, where there are comrades not bosses, an open space to every person whatever skills or knowledge level they have, and with a clear option for respect for all.