"What The Hack" is this year's international hacker get-together taking place in the Netherlands. Planning for the outdoor conference, scheduled for July 28-31, is well underway. The deadline for talk proposals is this coming Sunday, May 1st.

If you have a talk you'd like to give (or know of someone you'd really like to see speak), send an email to speaker@whatthehack.org before the deadline.

Topics in the past have included computer security, the politics surrounding the net, freedom of speech, "lawful" access technology, open source software development, wireless networking developments, and lockpicking. But the subject matter is by no means confined to these topics.

Because hacking is a gateway to so much more, all sorts of "fringe" submissions are also being welcomed. Some examples of what these might include are: military hardware, how the Internet is used in Africa, unmanned aerial vehicles, drug politics, adbusting and culture-jamming, how to become a politician and stay a hacker, bugs and wiretapping, North Korea, biometrics, economic issues regarding the Internet, renewable energy, biotech, corporate intelligence gathering, 3D modeling, game theory, earth-orbiting satellites, how to tap into underseas cables, the Titan lander, nuclear physics, mass media piracy, do-it-yourself pyrotechnics, electrostimulation of the human brain, and more.

The official presentation form can be found at http://www.whatthehack.org/presentations/presentationsubmission.

This is the fourth outdoor hacker event to take place in the Netherlands, the last being Hackers At Large (HAL) in 2001. German hackers also host hacker campgrounds every four years through the Chaos Computer Club. The last CCC Camp took place in 2003. These outdoor happenings alternate with the HOPE conferences in New York. If you attended one of our conferences in previous years, we strongly suggest doing whatever you can to make it to the Netherlands this summer. For more information, visit the official site and/or the What The Hack Wiki.