Beest, The Netherlands

A Very Last-Minute Event

I wasn't really supposed to be at this event.

Beest was kind of a last-minute thing for me. I had asked the lead organizer if they needed any extra help with an in-person Hack Club event happening here in the Netherlands. They didn't, but he made me another offer: if I could do 15 hours in two weeks instead of the usual 60 hours, I could come.

There was only one catch: no accommodation.

That wasn't too bad though. The event was in The Hague, so I could just take the train home every night.

This morning, I woke up and still hesitated about whether I should actually go.

Eventually I decided: why not?

So I got on the train, and about an hour later I arrived at Den Haag station and started walking towards The Hague Tech.

Guess Who I Found

Before I even properly made it into the event, I spotted someone on a bike.

Euan Ripper!

He was struggling with his bike lock and told me he'd just gone to a grocery store to pick up a DHL package. He was very confused because it just looked like a completely normal grocery store.

Apparently picking up packages from random grocery stores isn't really a thing where he's from.

Welcome to the Netherlands!

We went inside together, and while I was checking in I immediately started seeing familiar faces. Alice and Emma were there, and later I found Reem as well! There were also a lot of people I'd never met before.

Then it was time to figure out what we were actually going to be doing for the next few days.

Build a Strandbeest

Unlike most Hack Club events I've been to, where everyone is working on their own project, Beest had one task for everyone:

Build a Strandbeest.

A Strandbeest is basically a mechanical structure that can walk using a bunch of interconnected legs. Euan had designed everything beforehand and laser cut all the wooden parts for us.

The plan was pretty simple. Everyone was split into teams, and each team had to build one leg. Once all the legs were finished, we'd put them together into one giant Strandbeest.

The teams had already been made by the time I arrived, so I joined Alice's team.

We started putting our leg together, and it didn't take long before we found our first problem.

One of the screw holes in a joint was way too big.

Our solution?

Put another piece of wood into the hole and drill a new hole through that.

Problem solved!

After a lot of figuring out which piece went where, our leg slowly started looking like an actual mechanism. And we weren't the only ones. Around us, all the other teams were trying to get their own legs moving as well.

Eventually, the first two legs were finished.

And that's when the original team structure kind of disappeared.

Organized Chaos

Once those first two legs were done, everyone started doing different things.

Some teams were still trying to figure out how to get their leg working. One group started working on the final assembly and figuring out how all these separate legs were actually going to become one walking machine.

And one pretty big group had basically stopped building altogether and started playing theatre games together.

So the room had turned into this weird mix of people building a giant wooden walking machine, people troubleshooting individual legs, and a group playing games in the middle of it all.

I mostly stayed around the Strandbeest and helped wherever I could.

At some point people even started asking me if I was staff because I apparently sounded convincing enough while explaining what people needed to do.

I'm not staff. But sure.

Slowly, the final frame started taking shape. We managed to get the first two legs connected and had a pretty sturdy structure standing in front of us.

There was just one problem.

We Need M8s

The final assembly needed three stabilizing rods to hold everything together. The design required us to clamp pieces of plywood between two bolts.

Except the rods we had weren't threaded.

Which makes putting bolts on them somewhat difficult.

We needed the right M8 hardware.

So Matei and I volunteered to go on what should have been a short mission:

Go to the nearby hardware store, get the M8s, and come back.

When we got there, we found out they didn't have the M8 screws we needed anymore.

So we found another hardware store and walked there instead. Thankfully, they actually had what we needed!

By this point, our quick hardware store trip had turned into about an hour of walking around The Hague.

And while we were gone, the venue closed.

Everyone else had already left and gone back to the hostel.

At least we had the M8s. We asked security to open the doors for us and left the new screws.

An Empty Venue and Some Pasta

We headed over to the hostel where everyone else was staying, and they offered me some pasta. It was delicious!

After eating, I talked with Euan for a bit about the plan for tomorrow.

Then came the unfortunate part of that one catch from the beginning.

Everyone else could stay at the hostel.

I had to go home.

So I said goodbye, headed back to the station, and took the train home.

This morning I wasn't even sure if I was going to show up. Now we've got a half-built Strandbeest. tomorrow we somehow need to turn all of it into something that actually walks.

Back to Building

This morning I arrived at the hostel and waited with everyone else to head back to the venue.

Once we got there, it was straight back to the Strandbeest.

Yesterday we had only gotten part of the final structure together. Today, everyone got back to building, fixing problems, and slowly connecting everything into one Beest.

We worked on it for a good four hours, from around 10am until 2pm.

Then we got sent into the city in groups of five to get food!

Getting Lunch

We only had an hour and had to be back by 3pm.

I ended up leading a group of five, and after everyone walked into one direction towards Chinatown we decided to go to domino's pizza

There was just one small problem.

By the time we got to the pizza place, it was already around 2:30pm. Then it was 2:40pm before we actually got our pizzas.

So our relaxed one-hour lunch break had very quickly turned into eating pizza while being very aware that we were supposed to be somewhere else soon.

We made our way back, because next we were taking the train somewhere very fitting for an event about Strandbeests.

The Strandbeest Mortuarium

We took the train to the Strandbeest Mortuarium.

It was really interesting seeing the actual Strandbeests in person after spending the last two days trying to build one ourselves.

There was a huge projector showing videos of the Beests moving, but the coolest part was one of the actual Beests on display.

And unlike something you'd normally see in a museum, we were allowed to move it.

You could push it yourself and watch the entire mechanism come alive. All the different pieces and joints moved together to make the legs walk.

After spending hours staring at our own wooden version and figuring out how all its pieces were supposed to connect, seeing the real thing actually move was really cool.

Finishing the Beest

After the Mortuarium, we went back to the venue to finish our own Beest.

We added the final two legs, tightened everything down, and eventually it was time to see if this thing could actually walk.

First test: could it stand on its own?

Yes!

It was actually surprisingly stable.

Then we tried pushing it forward.

That went less well.

As soon as we tried to make it walk, parts of the frame started bending just enough for the gears to move away from each other. They stopped connecting properly and some of them basically fell off the other gears.

So technically, we had built a Strandbeest.

It just couldn't really strandbeest.

Decorating It Anyway

We didn't really have a plan for what to do with it after that, so naturally, we started decorating it.

It was pretty funny. We'd spent two days building this giant wooden walking machine, it couldn't actually walk, and now we were just making it look better instead.

At some point I also got surrounded by a group of people who started asking me about the other Hack Club events I've been to.

That somehow turned into me telling stories about Neighborhood, all the drama around how that ended, and some of the other completely crazy things I've seen happen during my time in Hack Club.

Free Parts!

After decorating the Beest, there were quite a few materials and resources left that we didn't need anymore.

So we were told we could take whatever we wanted.

Some people grabbed pieces of plywood and started getting everyone to sign them.

I knew exactly what I wanted.

Remember those M8 rods Matei and I spent an hour getting on our side quest yesterday?

I took one.

There was just one problem. It's about a meter long, and I still had to get it home.

I tried putting it in my bag, but there was absolutely no way to make a meter-long metal rod disappear inside a backpack.

So instead, I walked around The Hague with what basically looked like a giant antenna sticking out of my bag.

Carrying a Strandbeest Through The Hague

Eventually, we had to leave the venue.

Which meant our giant Strandbeest also had to leave the venue.

So we picked the entire thing up and carried it back to the hotel.

Not long after we got there, it started raining.

We had hired a cook to make Indonesian food for everyone, but because of the rain, everything took much longer than expected.

Eventually the food arrived and we all started eating together.

The rest of the evening was mostly just everyone hanging around, sharing bits of our different cultures, telling stories, and cracking jokes.

And somehow, way sooner than I expected, I looked at the time and realized I had to leave.

Again.

I said goodbye, rushed off to catch my train, and headed home.

Tomorrow, we continue.

A Chaotic Start

Day 3 started great.

I woke up way too early, looked at the time and thought:

Hmm, I can sleep a bit longer.

Next thing I knew, it was 20 minutes after I was supposed to leave.

Luckily, I was already messaging people from the event and figured out where everyone was going. Instead of trying to catch up with them, I just went directly to their destination.

Somehow, I got there before them.

Apparently the group was having some trouble getting everyone onto public transport.

For today, everyone got €27 through HCB for food and travel. The problem was that it wasn't a physical card, so people had to add it to the wallet on their phone to use it for public transport.

Except people under 16 couldn't use Google Wallet.

So getting everyone onto public transport became a bit of a struggle.

Meanwhile, I was just waiting for them at the station.

We're Meeting Theo Jansen?!

While waiting, I also met someone completely new to Hack Club. They had only learned about Hack Club yesterday and we're on vacation here so were already a havkclubbers with us today.

Once everyone finally arrived, we walked towards the beach.

Because today we weren't building our own Strandbeest.

We were going to see the person who invented them.

THEO JANSEN!!

The Real Strandbeests

Theo started by demonstrating an older Strandbeest powered by a big sail.

But by far my favorite was one powered using compressed air and pneumatics.

The compressed air itself comes from the movement of a sail. As the sail waves around, it pumps air into bottles made from PVC pipes, storing that energy for the Beest to use later.

And these things aren't just moving forward.

Theo somehow designed one where he could pinch one side of the Beest and make the entire thing change the direction it was walking.

Another Beest had an anchoring system.

A large piston could push the entire frame upwards, lifting its legs off the ground. Then another piston would move a big static anchor down to stop the Beest from moving.

And keep in mind:

All of this is made out of PVC pipes.

I even spotted a barcode on one of the pipes and looked it up.

I actually found where some of them came from:

Store link

It's literally regular 16mm electrical installation pipe.

Rain!

Eventually Theo went for lunch, which reminded us that we should probably find some food too.

Then it started absolutely pouring.

We ran for shelter and eventually ended up with everyone squeezed underneath a tent.

It was actually pretty cosy standing there together waiting for the rain to calm down.

Once it settled a little, we made a run for the pizza place next door.

And we didn't just order some pizzas.

We ordered pizza by the meter.

Around five meters of pizza for the entire group.

I ended up with two slices and a Fanta.

By the time we finished, the rain had disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived.

And we got back to Theo just in time for his presentation.

Pneumatic Logic

This was probably my favorite technical part of the entire event.

I learned that Theo only does these demonstrations around four times a year, at a location that isn't publicly disclosed.

He started explaining how the pneumatic systems inside the Strandbeests actually work.

One of the things he created is a valve that behaves like a NOT gate.

Theo calls them liars.

You put one value in, and it returns the opposite.

Even better, if you connect an odd number of these valves together, the system starts oscillating between states.

That oscillation can drive an engine.

And using that pneumatic "engine", Theo can create these huge movements with a surprising amount of torque.

The complicated walking and anchoring systems we'd seen earlier suddenly made a lot more sense.

No electronics.

No microcontroller.

Just air, valves, PVC pipes, and some incredibly clever engineering.

Leaving the Beests Behind

After the demonstration finished, we anchored the Strandbeests to the beach for the day and started walking back towards the trams.

But the event wasn't quite finished yet.

One Last Side Quest

We got back to the hostel for the closing ceremony and realized we were missing two things.

We wanted flowers for Euan.

And we wanted a card that everyone could sign for him.

So while the staff were gathering all the merch, Matthias and I went on one final side quest:

Find a printer.

We ended up going to a local library to get the card printed, then made our way back to everyone else.

Eventually we all gathered outside for the closing.

And the staff still had one surprise left.

LEGO for everyone!

Their reason was pretty simple:

"We want to make sure everyone continues building cool stuff."

Honestly, pretty fitting.

And Then Everyone Left

After that, the group slowly started splitting up.

Some people had flights to catch. Some went to Amsterdam. Others went to get food for their journey home.

I didn't have to rush anywhere yet, so I stayed behind with some of the staff.

And that's actually where I'm writing these last edits right now.

Sitting in the cushion corner of the hostel.

Three days ago I almost decided not to come.

I'm very glad I did.

Something About This Event

One thing I want to end this blog on is Euan.

He reminded me a lot of Thomas Stubblefield during Juice.

Thomas had this ability to create an environment where people didn't need to be told exactly how to have fun. Give people the space, give them something to build around, and then let them make the event their own.

I felt that here too.

After dinner on the first day, Euan basically just told us:

"You're free to do anything."

And we were.

People played theatre games. People kept building. We went on random side quests for M8 rods and printers. We talked, shared stories, made jokes, decorated a Strandbeest that couldn't walk, carried it through The Hague, and somehow all of that became part of the event.

Nobody needed to schedule those moments.

They just happened.

I think that's what I liked so much about Beest.

It gave us something really cool to build together, but enough freedom around it for everything else to happen organically.

And for me, that's when Hack Club events are at their best.

Thank you Euan, the staff, Theo Jansen, and everyone else who made these three days what they were.

I'm really glad I got on that train.