englisch on CCC Event Blog

#rC3: Es war einmal kein Congress …

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 15:45:08 +0000

Once upon a time, the people of the nerds wanted to celebrate their annual festival. But the lands were struck by a pestilence, and it was dangerous to go out and meet other entities. The nerds lamented, for their festival was the highest holiday in their world. But they were all wise creatures, and since wise creatures do not let other creatures come to harm, the committee decided that the celebration would be canceled in the year of the plague.

But the people were strong and wise, and so they pondered. And someone suggested to create an enormous artificial island, which everyone could enter with their avatar, instead of their physical presence.

But the committee was tired, and they asked who would build this island. Many, many words were passed back and forth, responded to, struck through again,and painted in gay colours, because a newly hatched idea needs time to grow.
And, finally, a few princesses stepped ahead, and declared they would lead the journey. They gathered builders and knights, saddled dragons and unicorns, and the committee gave them provisions, a book full of lore and their own stories and experiences, and a magical pigeon (conforming to RFC 2549). And they went forth to find the place where this island could spawn.

They journeyed across hills and mountains, passing the roaring rivers of Stackoverflow, the huge flocks of the green pastures of the comments, the gaudy market places of video jugglers and podcast artisans, and the homely homes of the World Wide Web. After many weeks they reached a small valley, where grass was green, and space was aplenty. and so they agreed to build the island here, in the Land of the Unchartered Internet, in the rC3 Valley.

The princesses sent messengers on unicorns and dragons to the home villages of their hackspaces to bring them the message that a place had been found, but some of their messengers got lost in the thickets of online fora, and their messages never reached their destination.

The builders began to plan, the knights explored the area, to find how it could be secured against Spam, Downtime, and Boring Humans. Jugglers and messengers rode the lands, carrying signal drums, posting announcements to gather more Wizards of System Administration, and Masters of Code Structure, and to inform the people. The land was empty and barren, and so our heroes commenced by creating a lake to separate the island from the realms of the Land of the Unchartered Internet. To cross this lake, they would need boats, one for each guest, and so the shipmasters from the tribe of Tickets&Presale were asked, and they were all delighted to build the boats, and distribute them amongst the guests.

The clan of Eventphone prepared to equip the island with a system that would allow communication over vast distances, and Heaven itself sent their Angels to support the creation and care of the island.
Many creatures and villages contributed, and many small valleys and hills, rivers, pastures and utilities and airports, churches and halls were erected.
Then the day of presale arrived and a big pack came running! They were standing at the shore of the lake and wanted to cross – and nobody could move. The numbers were too high.

But the ship-builders of the clan of Presale and Tickets were untiring! They erected one small ark after another to let as many nerds as possible travel to the island.
They built and drank Mate and built again. They convinced the Knights of Infrastructure, and the Software Mages, to enlarge the island by another bit, just one more acre! (It mitigated that dragons were forbidden to spit fire, so no more computing serfs burned down).
And the Committee sent a pigeon and donned bricks and beams, so a place for even more guests could be made.
Finally the moment came. Wherever they looked, no more bare metal could be found for more boats.

The day of the festival broke, the nerds entered their boats with their avatars, and traveled to the island, so that every so often, the havens could not accept arriving boats, for not a single berth was vacant.

Everyone had come!
The Grand Celebration could begin! In the background, hammers could still be heard, as the opening banner was hoisted in a dignified ceremony. The Mages of Hotpatches and of Software groaned under the rush of Nerds. Luckily the colourful people soon distributed amongst the different villages of the assemblies. But the halls were not sufficiently filled with creatures yet, such that a Dark Magic fell over the land. A magical attack of the dDOS demanded all their prowess, so the islands would not fall to this magical storm. And since this is the way with magical storms, in those times no one could reach the islands. So when night fell, all knights, mages, unicorns, and dragons joined their forces to reinforce the fortress walls, and to kindle more protective fires.

The villages and clans and tribes came together and began to spawn more content. For more content would calm magical attackers, distract them, and also delight the people with their sparkling, blinkenlighting, and beeping, and it would be very useful overall.

A new dawn broke … and wild jubilation filled the islands, and enlightened the data travelers. Gaily and lovely tetris melodies replaced the lamenting sound of hurdy-gurdies, well-known signs on magical tiles, which even made sense as a Tic Tac Toe; well-known ritual buildings like a Silk Road, and even a postal service were created. More amusement was provided, even for those regrettable angels who missed doing many tasks common in previous festivals. The Bottle Collection Simulator was treasured, and so was searching and finding of exits, and filling in forms A38, B38, and C38.

But Peace was not won yet. Another magical attack! The Curse of Invisibility stroke the islands. But our brave heroes of Server Fortress fought the problems of the Demon Name System and prevailed, so the magical guide posts would guide travelers to the island again.

Tired heroes need breaks. Thus, Mate, Talks – and something against Boredom.
Because heroes, when they can not be heroic, get bored. And so in the whole land, quests were announced, to earn a knight’s decoration, and win badges for heroic deeds. As as things so often are, the first heroes found many who followed them, because everyone wanted to gain the grace of the Waving Cat, and the regard of their clans.

Though some of these quests were highly elaborate, and those who sought to win them had to follow confusing paths that were misguiding and led into the deepest dungeons, every Hackspace created their own medals, and there were plenty of them, so every hero could earn theirs if they tried.

And since many of those heroes became thirsty, and hungry for music, more festivities were made. So many that, in the end, you could not find any more room for your celebrations and even rooms of rest became places of celebration. Luckily, this was well known among the long-established population, and the healers of the clans also gave their blessing.

The Festival went on, day and night, for the seventh part of a moon’s revolution. Travelers to the island told the inhabitants of the Land of the Unchartered Internet about their journey and the island, and even though not all areas were easy to find, and some parts even seemed to hide themselves, the nerds were happy, for they had missed dearly their festivities and the opportunities to gather with all their fellow hackerspace-villages. The opportunity to exchange stories and experience, and to learn together, is why this festival was so much desired, why it had to take place!

But the day came when the festival was to end, and everyone was very sad, because it had been a wonderful, magnificent event. As the builders had explained in the beginning: artificial islands are not meant to exist forever, for it would tire the data witches and bit mages too much to keep the barriers stable, and the island afloat. So the celebration had to end.

But the princesses and builders, the masons and mages, they all wanted to make another present to the people. So they discussed what they could give to the people, and at the end, they concluded: The one and only worthy treasure would be the blueprints of the island. Because it had taken many mages and knights, and princesses, and builders, and masons, and so many more to erect this island, it should also be possible to build many small islands, and to connect them with magical guide posts. So every hackspace clan could build their own small island, and you could visit each other, while the pestilence held the land in its claws.

They wrote la large declaration, and sent it with RFC-conforming pigeons into all corners of the land: The mages would rest a while, and then create a place to publish the blueprints. (Everyone agreed that Alpha Centauri would not suffice.)

The villages received the pigeons, and read the plans, and created their own islands. And steady traffic arose between the islands, and clanspeople visited each other and hacked, because this is what these people, also called Chaos, do: They work together for a better world. And they all knew: Only if they would stick together and stand together could these dark ages be survived.

And They All Hacked Happily Ever After!

36C3 content teams running full steam

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 16:58:41 +0000

Last Sunday at midnight the submission period for our Call for Participation ended. The last submission, by a Swiss, landed just in time at 23:59:20 UTC. Our content curation teams will now use the next two weeks to review, rate, sort, and ultimately decide on a large number of submissions. We intend to inform all submitters on November 11th on whether we found a place for them in our Fahrplan.

At the time of our coordination meeting on Sunday there were 690 pending submissions in our system. To put this into perspective: If you would want to just spend a minute to review them all, you would be busy for eleven and a half hours. Another way to look at the numbers is that nearly five percent of 36C3 participants have applied to present a lecture!

Among these submissions the most popular tracks are “Ethics, Society & Politics” with 237, the “Security” track having 194 and the “Science” track seeing 82 submissions.

The following table contrasts the numbers of submissions this year with the numbers of lectures accepted for 35C3. This means that (assuming a similar amount of lectures this year), some teams have to reject 82 percent of their submissions, sometimes heartbreakingly so. The sheer range and creativity of the submissions left us deeply impressed with the energy and wisdom that is sparkling within our community. All without us offering a single cent of speaking fees.

Track	Submissions	Slots
Art & Culture	49	18
Ethics, Society & Politics	237	42
Hardware & Making	49	16
Resilience & Sustainability	61	16
Science	82	21
Security	194	39

To complicate things further: You gave us valuable feedback on our haveyoursay interface, which helped us identify important issues not yet covered by submissions. Of the over 2,000 comments you sent us, around a third was constructive and helpful, with some of them pointing to things other than the conference program where 36C3 could improve. So in addition of the submissions already in frab, some of this year’s content will be filled by invitations by our content curators.

What this all means: Each lecture that makes it into this year’s Fahrplan has prevailed against tough competition and each presenter we could not accept to the conference can be sure that they belong to a group of high quality submissions that had to be turned down solely due to time constraints. We simply do not have more than four days and five stages. With all high quality rejections alone we easily could fill two more conferences. And while our teams often try to explain their decisions together with their rejections, the overwhelming number of submissions makes answering each and everyone of them a time consuming effort. Also, as stated above, the most common reason not to accept a lecture is the simple lack of space in our Fahrplan. So if you receive a rejection email with that reason, please don’t take it as a cheap excuse.

But who are those in charge of selecting 36C3 content? At the moment, lectures are curated by six teams with three to ten main curators and an extended set of reviewers – all in all around sixty people now eagerly working through all those submissions. Some of them have introduced themselves in this blog in the past.

Some team members have introduced themselves on their social media accounts and actively work on encouraging potential speakers to submit (just monitor #36c3 to find out who they are), while others prefer to just help anonymously. And a lot of work is needed: Starting even during CfP submission periods, around 250 lectures needed to be fixed up, their durations, event type or tracks corrected, questions answered by email, co-speakers manually added, and typos corrected. With those bureaucratic nuisances out of the way, all submission now have the best chance to shine by their merits.

Over the next two weeks, our curators will now have to dive into the actual details: analyse the substance, verify claims made in the submissions, clustering them by rough topics, researching presenters regarding their expertise and ability to present – and to verify they do not accidentally invite PR drones, intelligence service, or military personnel on stage. So if you see storms of visitors on your social (business) media accounts, just smile and wave at our curation teams. ;)

Our teams are made up of experts in their respective fields, sometimes working in their domains for decades, who can tap into their vast networks to help estimate a submitter’s history. We want the speakers to present their own work, we want them to present for their enthusiasm for the topic, not money. We want them to be role models, not rock stars. So it is important that our teams find out who the speakers have been working for in the past, where they have presented and how that turned out, and if the conduct in their communities might raise objections to having them on our stages.

In the end we need to find a balance between novelty and community traditions, presentation skills and domain knowledge, entertainment value and soundness, allowing newcomers and tapping into weathered experts, presenting utopists and realists, as well as topics with global impact and niche expertise we think will be important soon.

With so many knobs to turn, we know it’s impossible not to be disappointed with the outcome of certain promising choices, and in the end each 36C3 participant brings a slightly different set of interests, so it might very well be that you find parts of the Fahrplan uninteresting and some lectures worth being replaced with others that you might find more interesting. But keep in mind, there are 16,000 other attendees who might disagree.

One last thing: While the content teams curating the main stages have the longest traditions, they’re by far not the only teams working on content presented at 36C3: As usual there will be self-organised lightning talks, which you can submit at https://c3lt.de/ once its 36C3 section is live. Also there are at least three decentralised stages at 36C3 assemblies that await your submission now: Chaos West will be running a stage at their asssembly, you can submit to here https://fahrplan.chaos-west.de/36c3/cfp, the Freifunk community has kicked off their CfP here https://talks.oio.social/36c3-oio/cfp and, last but not least, ChaosZone just opened theirs as well https://cfp.chaoszone.cz/36c3/cfp.

Oh, and one more thing: If the stars align just right, this year there might be a Hacker Jeopardy again!

Image by Florian Kleiner, CC BY-SA 2.0

Press accreditation to #35C3

Thu, 06 Dec 2018 15:03:02 +0000

As you might have noticed by now, the 35th installment of Chaos Communication Congress titled „Refreshing Memories“ will open doors in Leipzig, Germany, December 27-30th, 2018.

We welcome members of the press on grounds and would kindly ask you to request prior press accreditation. To do so, please send your name and the media you will be reporting for via email to press-accreditation@cccv.de. If you plan to take pictures or record videos as part of you reporting, that’s no problem in general, but accreditation is mandatory in that case. Please add a line telling us what your plans are.

Be sure to submit your request for press accreditation before December 16th, 2018 – and only to the address above. We’ll be glad to answer any questions by e-mail and are looking forward to welcome you at 35C3.

Photo by Yukiko Matsuoka under (CC BY 2.0).

BUILD-UP

Tue, 12 Dec 2017 08:32:34 +0000

Dear Angels,

Below are some important details for the 34C3 Buildup.
Please read them carefully.

Buildup Angel

Similar to the 34C3 it self, buildup and teardown only work thanks to the heroic effort and participation of countless volunteers. Warm thanks to everyone who helps to bring Congress to Leipzig, we very much appreciate every bit of help.
Even though buildup nominally starts on the 16.12. true parallelization does not take hold until the 18.12.. Before that we need some time to boot and warm up ourselves. For this reason our suggestion (especially to non-local volunteers) is to have a relaxed weekend partying in leipzig or get some (probably much needed) sleep in advance, there will be more than enough work to do from the 18. to 26..

Times for the buildup:
8:00 to 24:00

Closed footwear (preferably hard-toed / German “S1 Sicherheitsschuh”)
Working gloves. (You don’t _need_ to bring them, but they’re nice to have)
Warm clothing. Empty exhibition halls tend to be cold.

NOTE: We will not be able to provide you with a ticket and/or sleeping place. It is also not possible to sleep in the exhibition hall.

Assemblybuildup

If you plan to bring, or construct big things for your assembly, please be aware that this needs to happen before the 26th and that you have to have to run it past the assembly team. The usual Assembly buildup will start on Dec. 26th. If possible please arrange deliveries for the 26th onwards only. More information on Assembly buildup will follow in a separate post soon.

We’re looking forward to have an awesome 34C3 with you.

Your Logistic Team

The Congress is not only what the streams tell you

Fri, 24 Nov 2017 17:21:50 +0000

Das Programm im Fahrplan und auf den Bühnen des 34. Chaos Communication Congress ist nur ein sehr kleiner Teil dessen, was die größte Hacker-Zusammenkunft Europas ausmacht. Der Congress lebt vor allem davon, was wir alle draus machen: viele Workshops, Bastel-Projekte in einer unglaublichen Vielfalt, kleinere Bühnen in den Assemblies und natürlich die Gespräche und Revolutionspläne auf den Gängen. Denn der 34C3 ist bei weitem nicht nur, was aus den Streams kommt.

Willst Du Dich inhaltlich beteiligen?

Wenn Du Deine Ideen und Projekte im neuen Veranstaltungsort in der Leipziger Messe einbringen willst, auch solche, die vielleicht für den Fahrplan abgelehnt wurden, dann bieten sich die selbstorganisierten Workshops an (self-organized sessions). Sie haben gegenüber den großen Bühnen den Vorteil der unmittelbaren Kommunikation zwischen Teilnehmern und Ideengebern und waren schon oft Ausgangspunkt für neue Projekte. Wir haben viel Platz für diese Workshops und auf den großen Bühnen zusätzlich die [Lightning Talks][4] vorgesehen: mehrere Stunden voller Präsentationen von jeweils wenigen Minuten, um Ideen bekanntzumachen, Mitstreiter zu finden und sich vor einer Masse Zuhörer auszuprobieren.

Wenn man sich einer Assembly anschließt oder selber eine gründet, liegt es in der Hand der Organisatoren, eigene Inhalte anzubieten. Das wurde in den vergangenen Jahren in vielen [Assemblies][5] mit eigenem Programm und wachsendem Engagement ausgebaut und macht den Congress für manche zu einer echten Entdeckungsreise. Der Chaos Computer Club ist mit weit über 9.000 Mitgliedern schlicht größer geworden und bringt zum Jahresende auch viele befreundete Aktivisten zusammen, so dass in genau jeder der vielen [Assemblies][7] etwas Neues zu entdecken ist.

Wir kommen zum Congress auch deswegen zusammen, um all dem einen Raum zu geben. Wenn Du Dich inhaltlich beteiligen willst, helfen wir dabei. Das ist der Sinn der ganzen Sache. Du kannst Dich für Workshops und Lightning Talks der technischen Hilfsmittel wie unserem Wiki bedienen und Dich eintragen. Wir koordinieren dann das Organisatorische rund um die Räume, Technik und Bühnen. Du kannst aber auch eines der Teams direkt kontaktieren, um Deine Idee unter die Leute zu bringen: zum Beispiel das Sendezentrum der Podcast-Spezialexperten, das Presse-Team mit Kontakten zu Journalisten aus aller Welt oder die Assemblies, die sich für Deine Idee anbieten.

Was wir nicht gern auf dem Congress sehen wollen: Produktwerbung und sonstige PR sowie Projekte mit militärischem oder geheimdienstlichem Hintergrund. Bleib weg, wenn das Dein Plan ist.

Pictures: miguel, CC BY-NC 2.0.

Welcome to HHackertours – your provider of sightseeing tours for technical enthusiasts!

Sun, 18 Dec 2016 20:21:22 +0000

Visiting the 33C3 and wondering what the city has to offer? Try one of our tours! Our goal is to show Hamburg to the visitors of the 33C3 like no other tour guide would. We have selected tours showing the behind the scenes of our most fascinating technology related sites.

Save a seat for a tour on our webpage and follow us on Twitter to get updates about new tours, changes and important updates. We also have a page in the congress wiki to help you find our assembly.

Here’s a list of our tours (English and German):

**Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY)
**

DESY – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via flickr/Kay_B

If you’ve ever wanted to stand next to a particle accelerator, DESY is the place for you. One of Europe’s leading accelerator research centers, our tour will give you an idea of how particle physics and a host of other sciences are advancing with the help of scientists from all around the world. No special physics background necessary!

Miniatur Wunderland Backstage

Miniatur Wunderland – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via flickr/Norman Z

Get an in-depth view of the internal wiring, decoders, computers etc. Explore the details of the ‚intelligent‘ car system and the process behind it. During the tour one of the guides will give you details on concepts, model building, construction and technology. You are encouraged to take photographs any time! Included in the price is a day-pass for the whole exhibition.

Container-Terminal (soon online)

Container Terminal Altenwerder – CC BY 2.0 via flickr/Alexander Svensson

The harbour tour “eye to eye with giants” takes you directly onto the container terminals of the second largest harbour in Europe. You will visit CTA (Container Terminal Altenwerder), with semi-automated container bridges and fully-automated transfer and storage of containers. The on-site container transport is done by fully-automated container transport vehicles. The only drawback is, you have to stay inside the tour bus.

St. Pauli Museum and Kiez Tour

Picture by St. Pauli Museum

Hamburg is famous for it’s amusement quarter around the Reeperbahn, commonly referred to as the “Kiez”. It is a colourful mix of clubbing and red light district, with a lot of history. Why not get that history told on a guided walk around the area and warm yourself up at the museum afterwards? Typical drinks for Hamburg included.

St. Pauli Museum and Bone Crypt

Picture by St. Pauli Museum

Would you have guessed that Hamburg has a bone crypt? Even most people living here don’t know about it, but it’s right in the middle of our amusement district St. Pauli, underneath a baroque church. Have a chill go down your spine while looking at those bones and learn about the only bone crypt in northern Germany, which was opened to the public just last year.

Welcome to HHackertours – your provider of sightseeing tours for technical enthusiasts!

Fri, 18 Dec 2015 21:54:43 +0000

Visiting the 32C3 and wondering what the city has to offer? Try one of our tours! Our goal is to show Hamburg to the visitors of the 32C3 like no other tour guide would. We’ve selected fascinating tours showing the behind the scenes of our most fascinating technology related sites.

Save a seat for a tour on our webpage.

Here’s a list of our tours (English and German):

DESY – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via flickr/Kay_B

DESY

U-434

U-434 – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via flickr/destinyuk*

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, more than 150 submarines have been decommissioned, the most in 1995. Only very rarely are they handed over by the Russian government, in consultation with the intelligence, into museum operations. As a spy submarine U-434 (Russian B-515) was used for special purpose secret spy missions off the east coast of the US and long patrols in the territorial waters of the Soviet Union.

MS Stubnitz

The MS Stubnitz is a large ex-fishing Vessel, made in the GDR and commissioned in 1964. She is one of the last examples of the shipbuilding-skills of the socialist countries and she remains mostly in her original configuration. She has been used for Fleet-fishing of herring.

MS Stubnitz – CC BY-NC 2.0 via flickr/Rain Rabbit

During that times she was able to deep-freeze 60 tons of fish per day and to store nearly 2000m³ of deepfrozen fish. After the fall of the Wall, the MS Stubnitz was transformed into a cultural arche. The Cargoholds got emptied of fish-production machinery and were transformed into concert venues with an impressive soundsystem. The electromechanical main-engine, the bridge, the ship hospital, the enormous DC-system to freeze tons of fish and the radioroom remain unchanged and are still in original and working condition.

Miniatur Wunderland Backstage

Miniatur Wunderland – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via flickr/Norman Z

German only:

Deutsches Zusatzstoffmuseum

Zur Herstellung von Lebensmitteln werden Tausende von Zusätzen beigemischt. Im Deutschen Zusatzstoffmuseum in Hamburg erfahren Sie vieles über die Funktion, Herstellung sowie Risiken und Nebenwirkungen von Zusatzstoffen. Lernen Sie anhand alltäglicher Produkte die Welt von Emulgatoren und Stabilisatoren, von Farb- und Konservierungsstoffen, von Aromen, Backmitteln und Geschmacksverstärkern kennen.

Cap San Diego

Cap San Diego – CC BY-NC 2.0 via flickr/Sabine Nüsch

Die Cap San Diego ist das größte fahrtüchtige Museums-Frachtschiff der Welt. Ihre elegante Silhouette gehört zum Hamburger Hafenpanorama wie die Speicherstadt und der Michel. Touristen lieben sie, die Crew und 45 ehrenamtlich tätige Seemänner im Ruhestand halten sie mit viel Engagement in Schuss. Die Cap San Diego ist das letzte noch erhaltene Schiff einer Serie von sechs schnellen Stückgutfrachtern, die 1961/62 für die Reederei Hamburg Süd gebaut wurden und bis Ende 1981 vorzugsweise nach Südamerika gefahren sind. Seit 1988 ist die Cap San Diego ein Museumsschiff, seit 2003 zudem maritimes Denkmal und schwimmendes Hotel, das heute seinen Liegeplatz an der Überseebrücke in Hamburg hat.

See you soon!

32C3: Gated Communities

Wed, 04 Nov 2015 13:54:22 +0000

It is 2015, a large part of the population has withdrawn to heavily guarded islands of comfort.

Technological eco-systems created by single companies relieve us from the burden of choosing our own mobile phones, computers or fitness trackers and understanding how they work. We let their commercial interests decide, which media outlets, news bulletins and expressions of opinion we notice and which are accepted by the globally valid terms of service.
Filter bubbles take the pain away of thinking for ourselves. Strongly opinionated agitators provide acceptable sources of information and handy concepts of an enemy.
Communities of states, just recently lauded with a nobel peace prize, take the moral duty from us, having to think about the costs of our wealth: They erect walls, experiment with biometrics and discuss firing orders – finally easing the fear they monger every day.
Every day politics are taking away the burden of social responsibility, participation or even scrutiny: By arranging treaties behind closed doors setting in stone for which there appears to be no alternative.
Transnational surveillance systems help us to pre-emptively separate our fellow human beings into good and evil, beneficial and useless ones. I our cozy cherished sociosphere full of barely prevented terror attacks and career defining social networks we devotedly seize the opportunity never to cultivate a conscience of our own. Subversives, dissenters and outliers disturbing our harmony are automatically and systematically blocked, arrested, harassed or placed in their very own filter bubble.
The guardians of our networks and browsers take away the difficult decisions, which connections are expendable. We get to enjoy those providers that can afford us and are supplied with exactly the services and speed we are entitled to.

The Congress gives us the space to do the things ourselves. To discuss for ourselves, to think for ourselves, to decide for ourselves and to tinker on our own. Our own gated community helps us against some of the bullshit bingo of the outside world.

Why don’t you come out of yours and visit us?

Picture: CC BY 2.0 by FOSSASIA

Camp 2015 Ticket Shop is open now!

Mon, 29 Jun 2015 11:27:26 +0000

https://tickets.events.ccc.de/

We all are very much looking forward to Camp 2015 – the new location makes things very exciting but such a new location also makes it very costly: We’ll need to get at least 950.000 EUR from ticket sales, which brings us down to an average ticket price of ~212 EUR.

When we moved the Congress to the new venue in 2012 we have been facing the same issue, remember?
Back then, we didn’t want to raise the price above 100 EUR and right now we don’t want to go above 200 EUR: We leave this, again, up to everyone of you to contribute as much as you can afford to – to make the Camp affordable for everyone in sum.

You can get:

Standard tickets for 220 EUR,
Supporter tickets for 240, 260, 280 and 300 EUR,
Business tickets for 450, 600 and 750 EUR,
Up-and-coming tickets for 50 EUR.
If you are on a low budget, there is the option to buy a ticket for 200 or even 180.
As usual there is also the friends request available, so that everybody is able to attend.

We provide you in the ticket system a graph that shows the average ticket price and how far away we are from the goal of 950.000 EUR. Please help us to create a nice graph! :)

Please be aware that there will be no ticket sale on site! So go ahead and get your ticket right now: https://tickets.events.ccc.de/ – if you have further questions please refer to our wikipage.

Update:
Shame on us, we forgot the Up-and-coming tickets for our young generation! This is fixed now.

If you are under 12 you get in for free! Between the age of 12 and 18 you are eligible for an Up-and-coming ticket for 50 EUR. That means, you must convince us to be born before August 13th 1997. Please bring a (sufficiently convincing fake of a) document / photo ID stating your age.

Chaos Communication Camp 2015: Save the date!

Tue, 10 Feb 2015 16:26:52 +0000

Not just because of tradition, but because we can: There will be a Camp in 2015 again!

After more than three thousand guests at the last Camp in 2011, we expect many outdoor enthusiasts, who like to hack during the day and marvel at the light displays at night and will celebrate the ultimate party in the middle of the festival season with us. Let’s just bring all the great experiences from the Congress out on the lawn and do all the experiments too dangerous for the halls of the CCH!

After an exhaustive search we found the perfect green field site for hackers of all kinds to build a camp with the most distinguished wood illuminators and musicians: the Ziegeleipark Mildenberg (brickyard Mildenberg), located idyllically between waterways, but still easily accessible. Don’t forget your swimming trunks and bikinis, because there is a bathing area right at the site: a truly beautiful swimming lake, just a few minutes walk away and well suited to fight the noble nerd paleness. But if you do not like swimming lakes: We will have the popular shower containers again! :}

Of course, we will put together an exciting talk program, which will be presented in two large tents, accommodating 800 and 1,200 people respectively. Moreover there is a park train system with three different track gauges, winding it’s way through the industrial scenery. There will also be a steam engine and a whole museum on machinery and tools used for brick-making.

Assemble in vacation travel groups! If you are free this summer, August 13th through 17th, we would like to invite you to come to the Chaos Communication Camp in Mildenberg. Where a hundred years ago the bricks were burnt for Berlin, we will set up our Camp. Bring your projects, ideas, space rockets and tents, of course. In return we will provide you with a DIY market near by, three brick bbq places and several bars to care for an appropriate environment to fraternize with others.

Tickets for all four days of the Chaos Communication Camp 2015 will be offered in a presale. The presale will be available in June the earliest. Right now the final price is uncertain, because the calculations are not finished yet. We aim to keep the price for the four day ticket below €200. Of course, people accompanying disabled people enjoy free admission. The Call for Participation for the camp program will be published on this webpage soon.

Save the date for a summer vacation with like-minded people, including working hand rail trollies and locomotives! Until then you might want to indulge yourself in some memories of the Camps in 2011 and 2007.

Assemblies at 31C3: Map available

Thu, 25 Dec 2014 16:41:29 +0000

Please go and have a look in the wiki (or direct link to the .png). Please be aware that this is only a beta version. Keep an eye on the version numbers, we’ll be updating from time to time.

Also there are now the lists of clusters in the wiki available. Please contact us on c3-assemblies (at) lists.ccc.de if you have any serious problems with your group. Please don’t forget that we can not fulfil every single wish in total, and tried to give everyone in average the best possible experience and place.

Feel free to give us some less serious feedback after Congress at the above mentioned address.

Welcome to HHackertours – your provider of sightseeing tours for technical enthusiasts!

Mon, 22 Dec 2014 00:00:35 +0000

Visiting the 31C3 and wondering what the city has to offer? Try one of our tours! Our goal is to show Hamburg to the visitors of the 31C3 like no other tour guide would. We’ve selected fascinating tours showing the behind the scenes of our most fascinating technology related sites.

Save a seat for a tour on our webpage.

Here’s a list of our tours:

DESY
If you’ve ever wanted to stand next to a particle accelerator, DESY is the place for you. One of Europe’s leading accelerator research centers, our tour will give you an idea of how particle physics and a host of other sciences are advancing with the help of scientists from all around the world. No special physics background necessary!

Container-Terminal
The harbour tour “eye to eye with giants” takes you directly onto the container terminals of the second largest harbour in Europe. You will visit CTA (Container Terminal Altenwerder), with semi-automated container bridges and fully-automated transfer and storage of containers. The onsite container transport is done by fully-automated container transport vehicles. The only drawback is, you have to stay inside the tour bus.

Cap San Diego
The Cap San Diego is the largest seaworthy, civil museum ship in the world. Its elegant silhouette is part of the Hamburg harbour panorama like the Michel. Tourists love it and its crew of 38 honorary retired sailors keeps it in good shape with dedication. The Cap San Diego is the last surviving ship of a series of six fast general cargo ships, which were built in 1961-62 for Hamburg Süd and which has preferably sailed to South America until the end of 1981. The tour will take you to the Cap San Diego and you’ll take part in an behind the scenes tour on the ship.

U-434
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, more than 150 submarines have been decommissioned, the most in 1995. Only very rarely are they handed over by the Russian government, in consultation with the intelligence, into museum operations. As a spy submarine U-434 (Russian B-515) was used for special purpose secret spy missions off the east coast of the US and long patrols in the territorial waters of the Soviet Union.

Laser Tag
Equipped with a phaser pack, consisting of an electronic phaser (lamps) and a sensor vest, you move through a slightly foggy, maze-like game arena. You are trying to score by shooting the other players with your phaser. But pay attention to your shields, because when you get hit too often yourself, you’re going to be disabled for a few seconds. In addition, there are interactive arena components such as energy gates (computer controlled light doors with special features), base stations (e. g. make more points if they are captured) or “targets” (there are power ups like “hyper shield”, etc.).

See you soon!

Hackerschnitzelcloud: What a wicked game to play

Sat, 20 Dec 2014 16:31:47 +0000

One week to go until the Congress starts and with it the games from the Hackerschnitzelcloud. You can download an Android app from the Play Store and test the games you created so far. If you want to test the iOS application, send us an email at 31c3(at)toto.io and ask for an invite link.

With these QR codes you can also start a test game to get an impression of how a game on a phone works. So get your app and register at Toto-Website. To get your first game going, simply scan the QR code.

You want to create your own game? Find all the information needed here:: Welcome to the Hackerschnitzelcloud at 31C3!. If you need any help or answers to whatever question comes to your mind, write to: 31c3(at)toto.io

On the acceptance and rejections in the 30c3 Society, Politics & Ethics track

Fri, 15 Nov 2013 19:56:52 +0000

Within the next hours, everyone who submitted a talk or lecture (not: lightning talk or workshop) should receive their notice of acceptance or non-acceptance. Some of you will be disappointed, because talks that you considered important did not make it into the program. We would like to share with you how decisions were made and by which priorities, so everyone can have a better understanding of how the final Society, Politics & Ethics program came into existence.

First, we would like to give you some background on the content team process. In previous years, there was one global content team for all tracks. This year, we had five “track teams”, each responsible for one track. The track teams consisted of subject matter experts who reviewed the submissions thoroughly. We did this in order to (a) reduce the work load on each content team member and (b) to increase the time for reviewing each submission.

Before we started, the total number of available congress slots was split up between the tracks. The resulting distribution of slots aimed at creating a proper balance between tech/science subjects, IT security questions and politics/society topics, as well as art & beauty and making/crafting. The CCC congress has always lived from its very wide area of subjects and topics, so distributing the available talk slots among different tracks is a good way to get the right mix.

The Society, Politics & Ethics track was assigned 29 hours out of 120 hours total lecture time. This does not include lightning talks, workshops, CCC related talks or evening shows. We received a total of more than 300 submissions to the congress – more than 120 of which were aiming at a slot in the Society, Politics & Ethics track. Many submissions asked for slots even longer than one hour.

With regards to contents, this track’s goal is to reflect on last year’s important discussions and events in order to bring forward the debate in our community and in society in general and to – and this is just as important – have a number of talks that just widen the horizon and introduce you to fields you haven’t heard or thought about much so far. The overarching goal was of course to help forming connections between different communities in the fight for digital freedoms and to learn from each other’s successes and mistakes.

So, we needed to make some hard decisions.

The track team, after reviewing all submissions, came up with some rules to ensure general fairness between submissions:

Maximum slot length is one hour.
A number of talks has to be condensed to thirty minutes, so we can cover more topics.
No panels – unless we have contrarian, extra-ordinary, kick-ass panel members.
No lectures whose sole purpose is the introduction of a specific project (we humbly ask you to do this in a workshop or lightning talk).
Strong international/European focus, no predominantly US-centric talks.

As a first step, we identified this year’s general topics of interest and clustered submissions into 12 resulting sections. Within each section, submissions were then rank-ordered. Judgements were made strictly based on the talk submission’s contents. As we have emphasized on numerous occasions before the submission deadline: Submitting a weak, hastily written or convoluted description or one that does not convey what you really want to talk about, immensely reduces your chance of acceptance.

After the first round of thorough reviewing and within-section ranking, we ended up with about twice as many talks as we could fit into the available time. This means: For every submission we accepted, we had to drop at least one other submission that we had also agreed to accept. As you can tell, this was when the really tough decisions had to be made.

At this point, there were two types of conflicts:

(a) the intra-subject conflict: When there were two submissions dealing with the same (or very similar) topics, we had to opt for only one of them, in order to not discriminate other, just as important subjects. This is when we introduced speaker performance as a criterion. We looked at videos of previous talks, read through the rankings collected at previous CCC-events and asked around to hear about audience experiences with the speaker in question at other conferences.

(b) the inter-subject conflict: Even after (roughly) enforcing the one-slot-per-topic directive we had laid upon us, there was still not enough time. The only solution was to shorten submissions down to thirty minutes of length, and – ultimately – dropping them. So we sat down and made these uncomfortable decisions based on which talk might interest the bigger audience, has the higher relevance in the current situation.

In the end, only 35 submissions made it into the final program.

If your submission was accepted, please keep in mind that two other submissions had to be rejected to make space for you, one of which was originally considered indispensable by the track team. We trust that you will not disappoint our faith in you.

If your talk – or one that you feel strongly about – has not made it into the final 30C3 Society, Politics & Ethics track, don’t despair. You all were up against some very serious competition. We could have filled about twice as much time as we had and would still not have weak talks in the program. The other track teams faced similar problems, just that they had (except for the Security & Hacking track) a far less dramatic submissions to available slots ratio.

To those of you who did not make it into the final round, there is one consolation: Judged by the number of rejected obviously-unrejectable submissions, we’re sure to have compiled a kick-ass program. :)

More information at 30c3? Here: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2013/wiki/Main_Page.

Ticket sale has opened

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 17:47:05 +0000

Ticket sale for 29C3 is finally open now.

Please go to https://presale.events.ccc.de, create an account and order your tickets.

You can also order shirts, hoodies or zippers there.

Find more information about the ticket sale in the wiki and in our previous blog post.