2000 hackers turned up at a campsite near Amsterdam this weekend for the Hacking in Progress (HIP) festival. Hackers from many nations gathered to pitch their tents, exchange the latest technology and meet people from the electronic world face to face.

This was not your typical geek-fest. Computer networks were spread across the camp. Mornings awoke with the chirping of birds and the booting up of windows95. One tent held lock picking classes. In another a group of astronomers had set up telescopes linked to computerized data-tracking equipment that you could print out. Surreal nights were spent chatting at the campfire while someone sitting beside you played Doom on their notebook.

Lectures on a variety of subjects including computer security, the legalities of hacking, anonymous re-mailing and cryptography were held in the main marquee. There were also smaller more interactive workshops. Most of these were computer related though I did attend one on how to yo-yo which was pretty hilarious as the head of the Dutch Computer Crimes Division was also in attendance.

A video conferencing link was set up to hear speakers from a similar hacker event in New York City, but crashed and had to be abandoned.

The public telephones mysteriously malfunctioned on Sunday and could only be used to dial the emergency services. However if you dialed the Dutch equivalent to 999 you got a dial tone, so you could dial anywhere in the world for free. I was assured by the festival organizers that this was a 'programming error' on the part of the Dutch telephone company.

This was the second time the festival has taken place. HIP was a follow up to HEU, 'Hacking at the End of the Universe' which was held at the same spot in 1993. Not only have the numbers increased since then but the hacker scene has also changed.

One difference that struck me straight away was the fact that there were just as many females as males. And these women weren't just the coder's girlfriends but women like Rena Tangens from Foebud, who was actively involved in the setting up of communications networks in the war zone in the former Yugoslavia. Tangents brought the final version of software her group has developing to make the Internet accessible to people in countries where there are no ISP's and the phone systems are too expensive to be able to 'surf the web'. Foebud has been working on this project for the last 4 years and it has finally come to fruition.

Holland's hacker scene has grown up. Much of this is due to access. Back in 1993 there were no internet service providers in Holland. There was no access except through Universities and big business. You had to hack into systems to be able to get access to the internet. So back in 1994 Hack-tic decided to make a big change in Holland and start a public provider. Xs4all is now the 4th largest ISP in Holland.

Rop Gonggrijp, the driving force behind the event and founder of the now defunct hacker group Hack-tic told me that 'Hackers from 1993 are now the Internet's technicians, there's no more culture of hackers breaking into systems period'.

Felipe Rodrigez started Hack-tic along with Gonggrip back in the early days of Holland's hacking scene. He has always been active on the political front and believes that hackers are a great asset to computer security. "For us things have changed. They used to call us criminals and think of us as terrorists. Now we advise the Ministry of Justice. We're the only ones who know the technology here."

When Rodrigez first started hacking there were no laws in Holland against hacking. He believes hackers are a great asset to systems administrators. "When hacking became illegal, from that moment on systems became more insecure. The hacker has stopped but the criminal doesn't care."

Rodrigez also believes that hacking is still a very useful tool in countries like Peru or Serbia where the state is unfair and citizens need to "defend themselves." This view has made him unpopular with some of the establishment in Holland especially the secret services consider the former Hack-tic more dangerous now that they have power in the business community in Holland.

Though things may have changed since the early days of hacking, the European scene seems to have become something more grown up. "The hacker scene is now pockets of culture. There's alternative media, the old hacker culture, the Unix hackers, irc, even astronomers who are into their own computer culture. It's now for all of the people, which is why we call it Hacking in Progress, we have progressed".