Off-grid creative cluster · Lac-Saint-Jean, Québec
A selected community of experts pooling what they know to design the projects and startups of the next decade. The forest isn't the backdrop: it is what sparks creativity and pushes our limits.
The manifesto
Nobody teaches from above. You arrive with what you have mastered, you pass it on, and you leave with what the others have mastered. A problem raised in the morning has three people around the table by the afternoon.
A hunch crossed with an AI model and surrounded by experts. We deliberately mix fields that never speak to each other elsewhere, in the same room, because that is where the things that would never survive a boardroom come out. And it only works out here: with no notifications, no commute and no going home at night, ideas actually get the time to cross.
Sovereign AI, autonomous energy, electronics designed here. We work on things that will still exist in ten years — and that will belong to the people who built them. Everyone also leaves behind a mark that grows: their tree, planted on the site before heading home.
Unplug
A place chosen for what it does not have: no neighbours, no street lights, no background noise. And in winter, no road. That emptiness is a working tool: it is what widens the thinking and tightens the group.
The camp sits by the lake, at the end of a road that stops being maintained. The first thing you notice on arrival is the silence. The second is how much better you think inside it. The silence isn't a perk: it is what lets the ideas a boardroom flattens rise back up.
From December to April the road is no longer plowed. We meet at a roadside rendezvous point and go up together — snowmobile, backcountry skis or ATV depending on the season. That trip is not an inconvenience: it is the first moment the group becomes a group. You reach the camp having already helped each other out once.
Up with the daylight, morning circle, long stretches of work without notifications, shared meals, an evening talk. No conference agenda, no three-minute pitch. Time to get to the bottom of a problem.
100 %
of the energy produced on site
0
trees planted by participants
6–8
seats per cohort
5 months
a year with no road access
Figures for the current site, updated every cohort.
The infrastructure
The GPUs are here, in the building. The power feeding them is produced on the roof. Training data never leaves the site. It is the most concrete version of digital sovereignty available: unplug it from the wall and see.
30 kW of solar panels and 300 kWh of lithium batteries, sized to carry the compute load, including through the short days of January.
A GPU cluster in the building to train, fine-tune and run models without going through a foreign cloud or an hourly bill.
400 Mbps to talk to the outside world, never to run critical infrastructure. If the link drops, the work continues.
Nothing produced on site is copied elsewhere without an explicit decision from the team that produced it.
It sits away from the main building — compute has its space, people have theirs. Pool table, bar, collaborative desk: this is where you get off the screens, and where half the ideas come from.
The chain, from sun to team
Sun
30 kW on site
Batteries
300 kWh · 72 h buffer
GPU cluster
Local training
Teams
Cohort projects
No outside connection
Digital sovereignty
« The question is no longer who writes the model. It is what land the machine runs on, and who owns the current that feeds it. »
Digital sovereignty is about to become the issue of the decade. We would rather treat it as an engineering problem than as a panel topic: build the whole chain, run it, and train the people who can reproduce it.
Datasets, model weights, schematics: what is produced here stays under the control of the people who produced it.
From solar panel to rack, the chain is visible, repairable and owned on site. Nothing you cannot open yourself.
Training people here who can design, solder, deploy and operate that entire chain without depending on anyone.
Create
Energy, compute, tools, knowledge and people in the same loop. Everything below is on site, and everything below is provided.
A room, a bed, firewood. Simple, warm, thirty seconds from the workshop.
Three meals a day, cooked and eaten together. That is often where projects change direction.
Benches, soldering irons, oscilloscope, 3D printer, component stock. From idea to prototype within the day.
Compute on site to train and run your models, with no bill and no leak.
Big tables, whiteboards everywhere, and the right to work at three in the morning if that is when it comes.
Camera, microphones, neutral backdrop. To document what you are building while you build it.
Guests who come and spend two days on site opening up their field in depth, not in passing.
Short sessions, run by participants, on one precise technique you can use immediately.
One problem, one whiteboard, every field around the table. The most effective format in the house.
Everyone is someone's mentor on one subject, and someone else's student on another.
400 Mbps — enough to publish, call, deploy and upload a dataset without waiting, at the end of a road that goes nowhere.
The spa and the sauna are both wood-fired, right by the water. Snowshoes, silence — the part of the work that gets done while walking.
A network of trails cut through the forest and groomed by local volunteers. Open from the first snowfall, right at the camp's door.
Cleared straight off the ice, in front of the camp. People head out after supper, usually to keep going on a conversation that started inside.
A separate building: pool table, bar and a collaborative desk. Where you go when you are stuck.
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Mutual aid
Mutual aid is not a value posted in the entrance hall. It is the structure of the day. Four rituals, repeated until they become second nature.
Everyone standing, ten minutes. Each person says what they are working on and where they are stuck. That is all. By the end of the round, half the blockers already have a taker.
When someone stalls, two or three of us sit down on their problem — even if it is not our field. Especially if it is not our field.
Every participant runs at least one session on what they know best. Not a presentation: a workshop you leave knowing how to do the thing.
We show what moved forward, what we broke, and what we learned breaking it. Failures told out loud are worth as much as demos that work.
Each field gives something to all the others. It is the only org chart in the house.
The fields
We never recruit the same profile twice. The mix is the mechanism.
Training and fine-tuning models, agents, embedded systems. With compute on site, you try things you would not try on a metered bill.
Gives the others ·automation and analytical capacity.
Architecture, products, internal tools. What turns a prototype into something other people can actually use.
Gives the others ·infrastructure and a path to production.
Board design, sensors, embedded systems, instrumentation. The field where an idea becomes an object you can hold.
Gives the others ·contact with the physical world.
Generation, storage, load management, autonomy. Here it is not a theoretical subject: it is what keeps the lights on and the GPUs running.
Gives the others ·the autonomy that makes everything else possible.
Protocols, smart contracts, payments, decentralised governance. The logical extension of digital sovereignty: systems nobody can switch off from a distance.
Gives the others ·exchange and governance rails that belong to no one.
Quantitative strategies, execution, risk management. A field where the idea meets the real world every second, and where a mistake has a number attached to it immediately.
Gives the others ·the discipline of numbers and a measure of risk.
Model, funding, structure, governance. What decides whether a good prototype becomes a company or stays a nice demo.
Gives the others ·trajectory and viability.
Grants, tax credits, non-dilutive funding, venture capital. What decides whether a prototype can afford to become a product once the cohort is over.
Gives the others ·the means to keep going after the cohort.
Intellectual property, contracts, company structure, compliance. The field everyone consults too late, and the one that costs the most when it has been neglected.
Gives the others ·legal solidity to what gets built.
Positioning, first customers, distribution, narrative. Finding the people it genuinely serves, and telling them clearly.
Gives the others ·the encounter with the real world.
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Launch
Ten minutes. We want to know what you have mastered and what you are ready to pass on to the group.
A thirty-minute conversation with the team. Your project, your expectations, life in a remote place.
You go up to the camp with five to seven others. Everything is provided on site. You run at least one session.
A prototype further along, often co-founders, and permanent access to the community of past cohorts. On the last morning everyone plants their tree on the site: the cohort ends, but it leaves something behind that keeps growing.
Events
Each cohort has its theme and its group. We select so that the fields answer each other around the table.
Dates to be confirmed
3seats left/ 8
Road closed — snowmobile ride up from the rendezvous point
Dates to be confirmed
8seats left/ 8
Road access — personal vehicle up to the camp
Dates to be confirmed
6seats left/ 6
Road closed — snowmobile ride up from the rendezvous point
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Mailing list
Leave your email: we write when the camp moves forward — a build finished, a project coming out of the lab, a talk coming up — and when a next cohort opens for applications. Nothing else.
Terms
$0
That is the price of taking part. There is no fine print.
Free does not mean open to everyone. Seats are few and every application is read by the team.
Keep the camp standing
The camp stands because of people who pay for it without ever sleeping there. There are two ways to be one of them.
A cohort, a talk, a week of meals, a piece of equipment. You pick what you carry, and we name it.
A small amount, once, no strings. It pays for the morning coffee.
Through Buy Me a Coffee
Talks
Two days on site, one talk and a lot of conversation. Guests for the coming cohorts are being confirmed — no name is shown before it is signed.
Profile to be confirmed
Training and fine-tuning a model on your own hardware
Profile to be confirmed
Sizing a microgrid that holds through winter
Profile to be confirmed
From prototype board to small production run
Profile to be confirmed
Funding a hardware project without diluting yourself
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Come and pass it on. We are looking for people willing to spend two days answering every question, including the hard ones.
Three ways in
You want to move a project forward, surrounded by people who know things you do not.
You want to spend two days opening up your field in front of a group that genuinely listens.
You want to bring your team, sponsor a cohort, or plug your own problems into the lab.
Application
Free to attend, everything provided. Seats are limited and every application is read by the team. Give it about ten minutes.
FAQ
Nothing. Taking part is entirely free: lodging, meals, energy, access to the compute cluster, workshop, studio, talks and workshops are all provided. You pay for your travel to the rendezvous point and bring your personal gear. The only other thing we ask is what you share with the group.
Every application is read by the team. We look at demonstrable skill in one of the fields, the ability to pass it on, and the concrete contribution to the group. Shortlisted applicants have a thirty-minute video call. We answer everyone, selected or not.
Between six and eight per cohort. It is deliberately small: beyond that, the morning circle stops working and people stop genuinely knowing each other.
From December to April the road is no longer plowed. We meet at a rendezvous point on the plowed road and go up together by snowmobile, backcountry skis or ATV depending on conditions. Transport and supervision are provided.
Electricity is produced on site: 30 kW of solar panels, stored in 300 kWh of lithium batteries — the camp is connected to no grid. The connection runs over Starlink at 400 Mbps: enough to publish, call, deploy and upload a dataset without waiting. Critical infrastructure does not depend on that link.
Because the place does part of the work. With no commute, no notifications and no going home at night, attention holds far longer and ideas from one field get the time to cross another. The isolation also forces the group to become a team: you go up to the camp together, you cook together, and you sit down on each other's problems. No room rented by the hour produces that in a week.
On the last morning of every cohort, each participant plants a tree on the site. The saplings are provided. It is the gesture that closes the week: the cohort leaves, and what it leaves behind keeps growing. The camp's tree count goes up with every group.
No degree is required and there is no test. What we look for is someone who has genuinely mastered something and can explain it to people from another field. Self-taught people are welcome.
Your computer, winter clothing and personal effects. If your project needs particular equipment, say so in your application: we will look at what we can provide on site.
French, with English whenever a participant needs it. Both are spoken freely in the workshops.
You do. Sourcelab takes no equity, no intellectual property and no rights over the projects. What you build leaves with you.
The camp has permanent satellite communications, first-aid kits and an evacuation protocol set up with regional services.
