Call for Participation: 33rd Chaos Communication Congress

33C3 – 33rd Chaos Communication Congress
December 27. through 30. 2016, CCH, Hamburg

The Event

The Chaos Communication Congress is the annual symposium and hacker party of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC). During four days between Christmas and New Years Eve, thousands of hackers, technology freaks, artists and utopians get together in Hamburg to communicate, learn from each other, and party together. We focus on topics such as information technology, digital security, making and breaking. We engage in creative, sceptical discourse on the interaction between technology and society.

We’d love to see your submission for one or more of these tracks:

• Art & Culture,
• Ethics, Society & Politics,
• Hardware & Making,
• Security and
• Science.

Apart from the official conference program, the Chaos Communication Congress also offers space for community assemblies, developer and project meetings, art installations, lightning talks and workshops.

Tracks

Art & Culture

One can create art and beauty with any technology, including computers. This track awaits submissions that address, from an artistic perspective, the societal changes and contradictions caused by computers, the internet, robots and general digitalization.
We’re open to lectures that include art installations, performances, concerts, readings, etc., that involve past, contemporary or upcoming technologies.

Ethics, Society & Politics

We’re looking forward to submissions which address present and future societal, ethical and political questions that arise from the technologization and digitalization of all aspects of life. What will the future bring? Which commercial and political interests are in the way of an utopia worth living, and how can they be overcome?
Any activistic, fantastical, solidary and commerce-free ideas and concepts are welcome here.

Hardware & Making

This track is all about developing and creatively using things that allow the digital to make a physical impression. Reverse engineers, micro-controller developers and quantum physicists are all very welcome. Decapped smart cards and system-on-chips, sanded-down PCBs and reverse-engineered firmware should feel right at home, next to the cocktail-mixing 3D-printer and the hidden nuclear reactors you are secretly operating in your basement. The focus is on all kinds of hardware design, the expansion and liberation of proprietary system, getting your hands dirty – and of course rockets!

Security

For this track we would like to request submissions that show how hardware and software can be made either more secure or less secure. If you want to share your discoveries with thousands of fellow security enthusiasts, if you have developed new solutions to previously unsolved problems or if you have found new problems which we knew nothing about, then this is the right track for you.

Science

We have science to thank for our blinking computers, but not just that – nearly all progress in society and technology is facilitated by science in one way or another. This track features talks that look into progress from a scientific point of view and evaluate what has been achieved by science, whether it happened in research institutions, in universities, or in your backyard.
Besides topics in the social sciences, such as the history of secret services, research of alternative coexistence or economies, we are also interested in pressing questions of humanity’s growing need for energy, drug-resistant pathogens or access to drinking water. Furthermore, the big questions are also relevant: Are we alone in the universe? How does life work? How do I detect an infinite loop?

Submission guidelines

For talks

Please send us a description of your suggested talk that is as complete as possible. The description is of particular importance for the selection, so please ensure that it is as clear as possible. Quality comes before quantity. Due to the non-commercial nature of the event, presentations which aim to market or promote commercial products or entities will not be entertained.

As it is likely that there will be multiple submissions on the same topic, please show us exactly why your talk should be part of the conference. Remember that the teams are diversely staffed, and not every reviewer knows every submitter and their background. Please write something about yourself, your research and your motivation. It does not matter if the talk has been held at another conference somewhere on this planet, as long as it is up to date and relevant.

Talks should be either 45 minutes long plus 15 minutes for questions and answers or 20 minute long plus 10 minutes for questions and answers. Longer slots are possible in principle. Please tell us the proposed length of your talk at the time of submission.

For lightning talks

Got something interesting to say but don’t want to submit a full talk? Consider doing a lightning talk instead. You will have five minutes to present your idea, project, or to do a rant. The lightning talks will only be organised during the event. A formal submission is not required.

For projects, installations, workshops and other fun stuff

A formal submission is not required. There will be a wiki page to keep track of requirements for space and other resources. Simply start considering already now what you would like to make, bring or show, and write it down once the wiki goes online. We are open to crazy and surprising stuff.

For Assemblies

Assemblies are places where communities around a certain interest can meet, talk, exchange ideas and be inspired. Assemblies play a huge part in creating the special „congress atmosphere“. They are comparable to villages at the Chaos Communication Camp. The assemblies are organized in the public wiki.

Language

Although the Chaos Communication Congress is an international event and a lot of content is presented in English, this year there will again be a translation team that will simultaneously translate most German talks into English. So if you are not comfortable with presenting in English, don’t hesitate to present your lecture in German. If your talk will be held in English, your submission should also be in English.

Publication

Audio and video recordings of the lectures will be published in various formats under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. This license allows commercial use of excerpts by media institutions as part of their reporting. If you do not wish for material from your lecture to be published or streamed, please let us know in your submission.

Note: As German law (and therefore the license) might differ from the law of your country, please let us know if you should have any issues or questions regarding the exact implications. Unfortunately, we can’t guarantee a perfect translation.

Travel, costs & visa

The Chaos Communication Congress is a non-commercial event where neither the organisers nor the speakers are being paid. As a speaker you get free admission though. If necessary, we are able to provide limited support for travel costs and accommodation. If you need help applying for a visa, such as an official invitation to present to the German embassy, please let the content team know well in advance. Please be aware that the visa application procedure may take up to six weeks.

Dates & deadlines

• September 30th, 2016 (23:59 UTC): Deadline for submissions
• November 13th, 2016: Notification of acceptance
• December 27th – 30th, 2016: Chaos Communication Congress

Online submissions only

Please submit your lecture to our conference planning system at https://frab.cccv.de/cfp/33c3.

Simply follow the instructions there. If you have any questions regarding the submission, you are welcome to contact us via mail at 33c3-content(at)cccv.de.

Picture: CC-BY-NC 2.0, Sascha Ludwig.