Blogosphere round-up

It seems like this blog on the preparations for 22C3 already filled a gap: Several blogs commented on our efforts, most of them in German. This brings us to the question why we write this blog in English (or rather: broken English) while the majority of all participants at the Congress will be German or from German-speaking countries.

Almost from the beginning in the 1980s, the Chaos Communication Congress used the sub-title “The European Hacker Party”. What this meant in reality was that among all the German hackers you’d find the occasional guy or girl from Austria, Switzerland or the Netherlands (who’d put you to shame by not only speaking perfect English, but perfect German as well).

It wasn’t until the open-air camping hacker conferences organized by the Dutch hacker scene (HEU in 1993, HIP in 1997, HAL in 2001, and WTH this year) that we realized that we need to take our own slogan more seriously. The Dutch hacker camps had all talks presented in English and eventually turned everything into a real international party where (almost) no one was excluded because of language issues. We successfully tried this concept with our own Chaos Communication Camps in 1999 and 2003. Last year, we decided to turn the annual Congress into a more international event, too and we actually managed to attract some very interesting guests from all around the world. We know that not everyone is happy with English as a dominant language, but still: you’re hackers, so you read man pages and technical books in English all day, it should work out at least somehow. Also keep in mind that the Congress will be less frustrating for those who come from countries where German isn’t taught in schools; international exchange is good! But still: About 1/4 of all talks are given in German and we will probably keep it this way. Fair deal? We think so.

After these words on language issues, here are some links you might want to follow (if you speak the language, of course):

• Der Schockwellenreiter, one of the most popular blogs in the German blogosphere, linked to us: Thanks. Ausdrucken!
• Kellerkind gave us a link. Danke.
• Pau Oliva linked to us in his blog written in what I guess is the Valencian language. Looks… um… interesting. Mercés. Catalan. Moltes gràcies!
• Joi Ito wrote a bit about 22C3 and we are happy to have him with us this year. Thanks, Joi. ありがとう
• There’s more than one link by Antenne. Neat.
• Hendrik Scholz is looking forward to his talk. So do we.

Thank you all. Keep on blogging…

Update: We’ll never have a complete lists of nice people linking to us. Read the comments for more blog coverage.