History

ScoutLink officially came into existence about 1995. Many scouts/guides had used the #scouting channel on Undernet for approximately a year before this, but external messages were beginning to be a hassle, and it was about this time that they were asked by Dennis Brocken to come across to what is now ScoutLink. The Swiss & Germans also had their own #scouting on Efnet and merged in about two years later.

All #scouting channels had participated in JOTI with #scouting on Efnet being the “official” network of the World Organisation of the Scout Movement. This changed, however, in 1997, the first year ScoutLink was the official network for JOTI.

In about 1998, a little experiment called KwekNet (QuackNet) was conducted, for kids only, which attracted Dutch users and lasted approximately a year.

Globalbridge was a camp which was born out of a maverick idea of Daniel Saxer. Only one camp, held in 1997 occurred, in the Netherlands. Mr Saxer tried to set up a website with the Globalbridge name and Scouting Spider. It was him who owned bit.com the original host of Scoutlink. He unfortunately went bankrupt and the projects died. It was at this point that Scoutlink began to farm out to host servers.

For a few years a server in Basel, Switzerland was the ScoutLink hub. It is now a server in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. Scoutlink now consists of approximately 20 servers and several hundred users. JOTI is ScoutLink’s main event, and preparations are constantly underway during the year. It is over this weekend that ScoutLink attracts its highest numbers.

In 1998, the first NorthAm, an IRL (In Real Life) meeting/camp for North American users of ScoutLink, was held. A similar camp for Australian, Asian and New Zealand users of ScoutLink, called OZANZ, was also held the same year and has been held several times since. IRC camps in Europe started with Waddecar (UK) in 2000, and have been held every year ever since in different countries across Europe. The UK ScoutLink term also organise ‘New Years’ Bash’ annually, which rotates around locations in the UK and which all ScoutLink members are welcome to attend.