Assemblies at 31C3

Assemblies are categorized by their topics this year, based on our experience and the info you gave in the form for the orga. We want this to be a further step towards decentralization of the organisation of the Congress.

Assemblies won’t get specific tables assigned, instead they form clusters with other assemblies. Space is assigned to the clusters. This means that you have to coordinate with the other Assemblies in your cluster, agreeing who gets which tables of the allocated space. At Congress you will find a stack of assembly signs in your cluster area and it’s up to you how you spread them in the area. As usually, “Shared Spaces” are the exception: These tables are not for permanent use, they are temporary space for workshops as well as participants of Congress who don’t have a permanent space.

Some clusters are a combination of Assemblies that share the fact that they all cover unrelated, unique topics. Of course, some Assemblies in one cluster might not have a perfect thematic fit, especially if the Assembly descriptions were sparse. We hope you will look past our errors and nonetheless create a nice area together.

Unfortunately, due to the high number of registrations, we were not able to assign the space you asked for to most of the over 200 assemblies. On the other hand: We didn’t have to decline any Assembly requests! When assigning the space, we had to prioritize. The most relevant criterion was the visibility of your assembly: Congress is a place for communication and exchange, so Assemblies trying to showcase something were assigned space first.

The long term idea behind the cluster concept is that we hope for clusters to form themselves before registering together. Noisy Square and Chaos West show how to do so: Several different groups or hackerspaces connect, register, gather and organize a large area under one name. This can include a shared area for talks and workshops, cosy corners for discussions and areas for showcasing their projects.