JSCraftCamp
We have been part of it for ten years: first in the audience, today on the organizing team and as a sponsor. Because the best ideas don't come from stages, but from the gaps between sessions.
Ten years, nine camps
- 2016 October The first edition, at Virtual Identity
- 2017 July The open space rules go up on the wall
- 2018 June
- 2019 June Last camp before the pandemic
- 2020–21 Break
- 2022 July Restart after the pandemic
- 2023 June
- 2024 June At MaibornWolff
- 2025 June
- 2026 June At TNG in Unterföhring
“Juniors teach seniors and seniors learn from juniors.”
-
01 October 2016
A meetup without a stage
On 8 and 9 October 2016 the first JSCraftCamp takes place, at Virtual Identity in Munich. The idea is simple and, for a tech event, fairly radical: there is no agenda. No keynotes, no tracks, no speaker selection in advance.
Instead, in the morning everyone who brought a topic stands up, pitches it in one sentence and sticks a note on the wall. Whatever draws interest gets a room and a time slot. Within an hour there is a plan for two days, and it is different every year.
Welcome, 2017: the chalkboard at the entrance. 
The plan takes shape in the morning, note by note. -
02 Since 2017
Four rules that still hold
Since 2017 they have hung on the wall as hand-drawn posters: the principles of open space. They sound playful, yet they are the reason the format works. Nobody has to sit through a session out of politeness, nobody has to fill an hour just because it is on the plan.
Law of two feet
If you are neither learning nor contributing in a session, move on. That is not rude, it is explicitly encouraged.
Bumblebees
Wander from room to room and carry ideas from one session into the next.
Butterflies
Take a break without feeling guilty. The best conversations often happen at the coffee bar.
When it's over, it's over
A session lasts as long as it carries. No longer, no shorter.
-
03 2020 to 2022
Break and restart
In 2020 and 2021 the camp does not take place. A meetup that lives on people standing in the same room and sticking notes on the same wall cannot sensibly be squeezed into a video call grid.
In July 2022 it returns, and it shows what a community is: it was there all along. Registration works as always via a pull request to the camp's GitHub repository, and the spots fill up quickly.
-
04 Today
From the audience to the organizing team
We have been part of it for ten years. First as participants with our own sessions, then as a sponsor, and today Michael Zoidl sits on the volunteer organizing team, together with around ten other developers who run the camp in their spare time.
The camp charges no admission. It is carried by companies from Munich's tech scene: twelve in 2026, covering everything from coffee and breakfast to pizza, T-shirts and the venue. TNG Technology Consulting hosts it in Unterföhring, alm is one of the sponsors. Every euro goes straight into what the participants need.
Marketplace: sessions get a room and a time slot. 
Opening in front of a packed room. 
Shortly after: a crowd at the wall. -
05 The Monday after
What we take home
We don't expect anything from the camp that you could measure in a funnel. We go because that is where we hear what the scene is dealing with right now: which tools are gaining ground, which problems everyone is facing, which approaches have proven themselves and which have not.
A good share of the ideas we take back into the code on Monday comes from conversations at the edge of a session, on the terrace or over a pizza box. A software shop that only lives in its own bubble eventually only matters there. JSCraftCamp is one of the places where that doesn't happen to us.
The session after the session. 
Pizza & networking on Friday evening.