Craig Fox had worked as a carpenter his entire life until the economy took a turn for the worst and he found himself without work. Craig combined his newly acquired free time and his love for jailbreaking iDevices to conceive MyGreatFest (MGF), the world’s first iDevice Jailbreak convention. Craig’s motivation behind this convention is to alter the world’s perception of iDevice jailbreaking.
Individuals unfamiliar with jailbreaking see it as a medium for piracy, but Craig hopes that MGF will show the world “jailbreaking is not about piracy, it is about having the freedom to customize your [iDevice] in anyway you see fit.” In fact, Craig feels so strongly about the jailbreak community’s anti-piracy efforts that he would support future jailbreaks that block popular piracy sources.
More importantly, Craig hopes that this event will help stabilize the jailbreak community, which he believes began strong but has recently become more divided. He thinks MyGreatFest can have an uplifting effect on the community because it will show jailbreak users that “developers are real people, spending dozens of hours to produce free jailbreak tools and tweaks.”
The event will take place in London on September 17th and feature presentations from top jailbreak developers, such as: @p0sixninja, @pod2g and @limneos. An interesting note is that @p0sixninja, Joshua Hill, could not initially attend MGF due to the high cost of travel, but Craig began taking donations for Josh and quickly raised enough money to bring him to London. Craig believes this is another example of the jailbreak community banding together. Jay Freeman (@saurik), the founder of Cydia, will headline the event with a 1 hour talk and 10 minute question / answer session.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4vWwcKFefY]
(Craig giving a tour of the MyGreatFest Venue)
Craig is hopeful that MGF will continue to grow over the next 5 years. His goal is to have an United States and Great Britain event next year. In fact, he already has @Musclenerd, a well-known iPhone hacker, confirmed as a speaker for the Spring 2012 US event. Craig’s goal is to have the event in 3 different countries by 2016.
Tickets for MGF are on sale now. Adult tickets start at just £27 and can be purchased from the mygreatfest.net e-Store. If you can’t make it to London this fall, you can support MyGreatFest by purchasing branded bracelets and iPhone cases from the e-Store. Furthermore, anyone who purchases a MGF rubber bracelet will be entered in an iPad 2 giveaway.
