Events on CCC Event Blog

36c3: Have your say

Fri, 20 Sep 2019 20:28:32 +0000

We would like to ask you, again.

The survey has been closed. Thanks for over 2000 submission!

You will be as surprised as we are: A new Chaos Communication Congress and its Call for Participation are coming up really soon now. And as we still wipe the Camp’s dust from our sleeves, we noticed that we might ask you for support.

Building a Congress Fahrplan requires working through a lot of submissions in our frab from people responding to our Call for Participation. But our restless curation teams will be also busy approaching potential speakers for topics not yet covered. However, from time to time, we were missing developments worth covering.

On the other hand, over the last years, we managed to tap into our community’s wisdom time and again to make our Fahrplans even better, you helped us with avoiding scheduling conflicts and with your preferences regarding our lecture grid. So naturally, it’s only fair to ask you again to help us out and use our tiny feedback tool you can find here https://content.events.ccc.de/haveyoursay to submit your ideas on what we could try to cover at 36C3 to make the next Congress a better experience for everyone!

Thank you!

(And please, refrain from any blockchain jokes.)

**Photo:
** Wentworht Cynthia, CC0

Being an Angel at Chaos Communication Camp 2019

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 08:00:56 +0000

Hello fellow life form.
Let’s get it out of the way: We need lots of volunteers, especially for teardown. If you want to help, become an angel.

I want to help
That’s easy. You just need to register on Engelsystem and come to heaven on camp. You’ll find more details in our wiki.

I want to help with buildup
There are not as many different tasks during buildup, so please don’t arrive early without talking to us first. If you are resilient, love to to tackle even heavy work and want to arrive early for buildup please contact us at ticket@c3heaven.de so we’re able to plan for you accordingly. Be aware of the timeline.

I want to help during camp
Nice! Being an angel is one of the best opportunities to meet new people and look behind the scenes. There are many different tasks in the Engelsystem and you might join different teams on the “Angeltypes” page. There’s an overview of angeltypes. Questions will be answered by heaven in the Engelsystem and via email to ticket@c3heaven.de.

I want to help with teardown
To leave no traces we especially need angels after camp. Just stay a little longer and help with teardown.

What else is there to know?
We’ll be surrounded by nature, so plan and act accordingly.
Be aware of heat and the sun, drink more water and apply sunscreen.
This checklist might give you some pointers on what to consider.
There will be a tent only (no campers) heaven village, although we encourage you to prioritize populating other villages first.
For further and frequent questions monitor the “Ask the Heaven” page on Engelsystem.

We look forward to your contributions, projects, and participation as Camp is what you make of it. Without you, it would just be a pile of infrastructure right in the middle of nowhere. So let’s make the Camp into a Hackerevent worth remembering. See you.

Wir sind in der Natur, deal with it

Fri, 24 May 2019 06:10:54 +0000

Hello camp visitors,

there is general camp planning going on for several weeks so far. Now we need information in terms of your villages in order to do concrete campsite planning. If you want to create some big stuff we need to know. You can find the contact details below in this post.
For your orientation we gathered some facts that are clear so far:

water:
The watersystem we build up for the camp is limited in its capacity and unfortunately won’t be very high due to local supply limitation. This means that we need to watch our water consumption a little bit. From the overall capacity we need to supply all of the sanitary and gastronomic infrastructure, e.g. the showers, dish washing stations, drinking water supply, heavens kitchen and so on. That means we cannot manage to supply running water in individual villages. So please plan to get water from the closest water station and find a workaround with water tanks. It’s also planned to limit the showering time to several hours a day to reduce the amount of water consumption.
Please be thrifty with the water and for example take a dip in the nearest lake instead of having a massive water fight on the campsite.

electricity:
As for the 2015 camp we will bring generators for the electricity supply because we can´t get enough power from the Ziegeleipark. As usual for a generator powered grid interruptions are possible.
It’s the same as for the water: please be thrifty and leave hungry consumers (e.g. old fridges or likewise) at home.
If you want to use your own solar power infrastructure to supply your village or if you are bringing big power consumers (>2kW) you necessarily need to speak to our power team (camp2019@c3power.de). Due to necessary fire protection, environmental and noise issues, please leave own generators at home. Nobody likes stinking two-stroke engine generators.

tents and buildings:
Due to safety reasons on the campsite you need to involve the village team in the planning of your village. If you want to bring big tents or build up something special, you need the village team’s permission. Tents for example are limited to the size of 75 square meters and must not have a second floor. Please don’t bring materials that are easily inflammable to build up your village. Cars and similar vehicles can not be parked in the villages.
Don’t dig holes and pits. There are several undocumented cables and pipes in the Ziegeleipark which are suspected to lie low under ground. The ground is not fun to dig in either. Also please don’t bring big pegs and don’t drive your tent pegs deeper in the ground than 20cm.
Please answer the village registration (https://signup.c3assemblies.de/) and speak about your plans. You also get the possibility to order tables, chairs, big tents and wood via the village team. Only register your planned village if you already got a ticket for the camp!

fire and cooking:
There definitely won’t be the possibility to have open fires or campfires on the campsite and the whole area due to fire safety. The same goes for barbeque grills on the campsite. As in 2015 there will a defined area where barbeque grills can be used. If you want to use a gas cooker make absolutely sure that it is based on some non inflammable ground and that it stands solidly and is not likely to fall over. The operation of a major village kitchen is only possible after permission of the village team.
Please be aware that the fire safety rules need to be adjusted if there is a change in weather oder dryness and can become stricter.

vehicles:
If you want to bring your vehicle please take care of the ground, yourself and the people nearby. The campsite won’t have a continuously bright illumination and a black dressed person or a pothole can easily be overlooked in the later evening. Please leave your battery powered vehicles at the chargers after dusk and please leave vehicles running on any kind of fuel at home. The noise and exhaust for other camp visitors exceed the individual fun. Also if your vehicle is leaking fuel it will damage the environment around.

water protection and environmental protection:
The Ziegeleipark Mildenberg is based in a water protection area (Wasserschutzgebiet). Please make sure that your cars, campers, motorcycles etc. are not leaking fuel.
Please leave any kind of chemicals at home. The opportunity of producing a new circuit board versus the possibility of damaging the closest drinking water reservoir is definitely not worth it.

music and noise:
If you bring PAs please limit the volume in sense of your neighbors on the campsite and outside the Ziegeleipark. Background music is totally fine in your village but constant party volume in some parts of the campsite was a problem in 2015 that we don´t want to have again.
There will be a major party area that is designed to produce a low noise level to the outside.

be excellent to each other:
In 2015 we got major complaints from neighbors outside the Ziegeleipark about noise, trash thrown in private gardens and damage to private property. We assume that this won´t happen again. Be excellent to each other!

dont forget your towel:
Have in mind that we are outside in the actual nature in midsummer. Bring sun protection, bring sunscreen, a big hat, create yourself some shady space. Have in mind to drink enough and also have in mind that in case of rain it can become quite muddy.
Bring a chair including a backrest and don’t forget your towel!

questions?

Village coordination, village buildup, village placing and questions
about villages: cccamp19@c3assemblies.de
Village registration: https://signup.c3assemblies.de/

Power supply, solar powered infrastructure, questions concerning your needed supply: camp2019@c3power.de

Logistics, deliveries, mail, moving heavy objects on campsite and so on: camp19@c3loc.de

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).

What’s new in 35C3 Fahrplan?

Tue, 11 Sep 2018 15:50:18 +0000

The Call for Participation for 35C3 is out now. For all of you just checking in to see the diff to 34C3 CfP.

Foundations!

Congress lectures usually cover a lot of bleeding edge topics, sometimes leaving the broader scope out of sight. This year we want to enable both newcomers to Congress and folks unfamiliar with recent developments to refresh their memories or get an introduction to the basics of the field – presented by experts in the fields. And yes, this might mean you!

Time slots

In order to accommodate for the larger venue and to correct for the overly compressed half hour lectures, we changed our Fahrplan raster to sport 20 minutes intervals, making room for a default lecture of 40 minutes and extended lectures of 60 minutes with 20 minute breaks.

We will return to a scheme with two major breaks of ~45 minutes for you to relax, eat, and meet.

Double Features are gone

Double features just did not work out and introduced a lot of stress, so we skipped them.

Focus on Q&A

We will use the extra time and more relaxed breaks to allow for more Q&A. So the standard lectures are meant to be 30 minutes plus 10 minutes Q&A, the extended lectures 45 minutes plus 15 minutes Q&A.

Rooms

To make room for the more relaxed Fahrplan and our Foundation talks, we will open a fifth Saal in 35C3.

Helping hands with titles and abstracts

From this year on, our content curators will actively work with submitters to improve titles, subtitles and abstracts if we feel they will confuse our audience.

Invite Co-presenters

You can now invite other presenters to your lecture in frab, using the “Join event” button. You can see the required token (or a direct link) when clicking on “edit” for a submitted event on the bottom of the page.

The Chaos Emergency Response Team: CERT

Fri, 22 Dec 2017 09:38:51 +0000

Did you ever feel sick or had an accident at Congress or one of our Camps? We hope not. But if so, then you probably know the Chaos Emergency Response Team (CERT). It is a team of trained medical and fire prevention personnel who help in case of need. They take care for a safe and sound event and aim to reduce dangers of all kinds.

It is twenty years ago this year since the idea emerged to have an emergency team of our own. At 19c3 the actual CERT we know today came into existence and has grown ever since.

It is not only responsible for medical help but also for assisting in a crisis situation. That is why the team includes professional psychologists, mediators and crisis intervention specialists. If an intervention of any sort is required, you can count on the CERT.

In case of a severe medical emergency the CERT is equipped to help like any professional emergency vehicle could. The team does also cover a wide range of issues, providing first response to medical emergencies, fire prevention, and checking that emergency exits and escape routes are always unblocked.

In case you need help, just call 112 on every DECT phone or pay the CERT a visit in Glashalle, at level -1. Every „Angel“ – as we call our volunteers – with a radio or a DECT phone is able to alert the team of first responders. You can also reach the CERT via Twitter but please refrain from using it for emergencies.

And be excellent especially to the CERT, you never know if you maybe need them.

34C3 Tickets: Status and Open Sale

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 09:24:27 +0000

Since August, the first tickets for 34C3 can be bought using a voucher. This voucher phase will continue until October, 15th 2017 or until the ticket quota assigned for this phase is empty. At this point, all issued vouchers will be invalid with the exception of Angel vouchers which are valid until November, 15th 2017.

After the end of the first phase, we will open the ticket shop to everyone interested. To distribute chances to buy a ticket more fairly, we will distribute the remaining tickets into three quotas on three dates:

Thursday, 2017-10-19 20:00 CEST,
Sunday, 2017-10-29 15:00 CET (attention: end of daylight saving time!),
Tuesday, 2017-11-21 11:00 CET.

The ticket prices are available at https://tickets.events.ccc.de/34c3/. Our FAQ at https://tickets.events.ccc.de/34c3/page/faq/ should answer most questions.

We will put all available tickets on sale on those three dates. Therefore, there will be no ticket sale on site, provided that the presale tickets will be sold out.

The whole process of the presale is explained in more detail at https://tickets.events.ccc.de/34c3/docs/.
The ticket team is happy to answer any questions not answered by the FAQ at 34c3-tickets@cccv.de.

34C3: Call for Participation and Submission Guidelines

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 21:55:29 +0000

The CCC calls for participation and your submissions!

34C3 – 34th Chaos Communication Congress
December 27th through 30th 2017, Leipziger Exhibition Grounds in Leipzig.

The Event

The Chaos Communication Congress is the Chaos Computer Club’s (CCC) annual symposium and hacker party. During four days between Christmas and New Years Eve, thousands of hackers, technology freaks, artists, and utopians get together in Leipzig to communicate, learn from each other, and party together. We focus on topics such as information technology, networks, 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 our six tracks:

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

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. We also have special places for kids to learn and tinker.

Tracks

Art & Culture

This track awaits submissions that address, from an artistic perspective or with artistic means, the societal changes and contradictions caused by computers, the internet, robots, and general digitalization.
One can create art and beauty with computers: We’re also open to lectures that include art installations, performances, concerts, readings, etc., that involve past, contemporary, or upcoming technologies. We will try to help with the organizational side of such lectures as much as possible.

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 digitization 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.
The focus is on creating things of all kinds of (e. g. textiles, musical instruments, robots, alternative energy, medical tools, etc.), the expansion, repair, and liberation of proprietary systems (from the decapped smart-card to the firmware of your toaster to a modified agricultural machine), the sovereign use of technology, getting your hands dirty, and all the things we can’t imagine yet – 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

The rapid development of science and technology is steadily changing our view of the world. But that doesn’t only mean that we’re profiting from new technology as a byproduct. We are also increasingly trying to understand the complex relationship between nature and society, in order to comprehend how our actions parameterize this whole system. We see science as a method of reverse engineering the world API and are interested in the newest diffs. No matter whether research centres, universities, or garage-driven science: If you explore and evaluate interesting and important developments from a scientific standpoint, then send us your submissions!

This year we’re especially interested in submissions regarding the phenomenon of climate change in its whole width and complexity. We are interested in everything from sociocultural effects to frost-resistant measurement technology, from the past to the near future, from the depth of the oceans up to the atmosphere. What are the actual effects of the technical and societal systems we have built? What will be the next Dieselgate, and which active approaches towards solving the problems are there?

Resilience

The world is developing at an increasing pace, and most of it involves computers and algorithms. Unfortunately, those developments do not necessarily equal progress. Some increase complexity; others require waiving freedoms. But many projects already incorporate recent research, like p2p gossipping networks (meaning less data accumulates at central points as everyone runs their own infrastructure), extended OS security (reducing persistence, new policies, virtualisation), or reorganised social frameworks intended to simplify life (by eliminating bureaucracy and sources of stress), and, of course, reduction of our dependency on human competition.

In the resilience track all submissions are welcome that lead to a world more worthy of living in – be they long-running projects or recent developments.

New Feature: Classifier

In addition to the content tracks you know from previous years, we now ask you to rate your submission by dynamic tags we call „classifiers“. Those help your reviewers and your audience to better understand the content and what your audience can expect. If, for example, your topics cover both hardware and security, you now can show us on a scale between 0 and 100 percent – making the classic „tracks“ much more fluid. You can also tell us what level of prior knowledge you expect your audience to bring.

Further Program at the 34C3

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 or project, or to do a rant. A formal submission through our conference system (frab) is not required; as usual, the lightning talks are organized via the public wiki. Lightning talks can be held in German or English and will be streamed, recorded and published (see below).

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.” We will have lots of space, so some bigger installations will be possible.

To further the exchange and the get-together of communities and groups, we will cluster the assemblies at the 34C3 along key subjects. We will link these key subjects to bigger workshop areas, stages, or auditoriums which will be available for the assemblies connected to the subject for workshops, self-organized sessions or after talks discussion.

You and your community are interested in adopting a key subject, or your established assembly wants to take care of more space? Then write an email to c3-assemblies(at)lists.ccc.de and join the effort to create a great congress. Installations with up to 30m² big roofs are possible!

The usual application for assemblies will happen in due time at the public wiki.

Projects, installations, workshops and other fun stuff

A formal submission through frab is not required. There will be a wiki page to keep track of requirements for space and other resources. Simply start already considering 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.

Submission Guidelines

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 minutes 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.

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 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, though, you get free admission. If necessary, we are able to provide limited support for travel costs. If you need help applying for a visa, such as an official invitation to present to a 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

October 15th, 2017 (23:59 UTC): Deadline for submissions (no excuses),

November 19th, 2017: Notification of acceptance,

December 27th – 30th, 2017: Chaos Communication Congress.

Online submissions only

Please submit your lecture to our conference planning system at
https://frab.cccv.de/cfp/34c3.

Simply follow the instructions there. If you have any questions regarding the submission, you are welcome to contact us via mail at 34c3-content(at)cccv.de.

Pictures taken at 31C3, FOSSASIA, CC BY 2.0.

MRMCD 2017: Schedule and end of presale

Fri, 11 Aug 2017 15:14:14 +0000

Finally, we can present you a preliminary schedule for this year’s MRMCD! We are happy to see the wide range and diversity of the topics covered in the submitted talks and workshops. You can find the schedule here: https://cfp.mrmcd.net/2017/schedule/.

Please be patient with us: Our schedule still is a young plant that needs to grow. Not all speakers have already confirmed their appearance yet and some talks will still shift their exact times.

If you did not do so already, you can buy one of the very last tickets in our ticket shop. We assume that the presale will be sold out very soon. There will be a handful of tickets for sale on site, but since the capacity of the building is limited we cannot promise you to get in without a ticket from the presale.

If you have any questions, you can reach us at parkaufsicht()mrmcd.net.

Hello, this is 33C3 „works for me“

Tue, 22 Nov 2016 22:30:19 +0000

Design Specifications

33C3: „works for me“

works for me
A commonly used phrase by software developers to indicate that the bug reported by a user is not repeatable on their machine, and will therefore receive no more attention. Usually connotes a dismissive approach, where anything that is not visible immediately to the developer is „someone else’s problem“ and is therefore not worth fixing.

Like no other, the year 2016 pointed out how well „works for me“ works for us.
It does not. Mutual hate, envy, insensibility and exclusion have driven us apart.

Feeling isolated and threatened, we turn further against each other, take less care of each other and worry even more about ourselves. And yet, we are never alone: Excessive surveillance is now politically normalized, if not for all then at least for those who are different, intractable, foreign.

Let’s break this vicious circle.
Let’s get together and live our utopia.
Let’s strive for something that works for all of us.

And let’s fight those, who will not let us!

Welcome to the party! :-)

PS: You can also make the Design work for you…

33C3 halfnarp: The talks that ‚work for us‘

Fri, 18 Nov 2016 16:56:07 +0000

The 33C3 content committee is proud to announce a lecture selection that ‚works for us‘. Our five hard-working 33C3 track teams have hand-picked a set of around 150 excellent lectures to be formed into the best four day, six track programme possible.

Having to select talks from an impressive lot of more than 500 submissions was a hard and sometimes frustrating task. But we have been amazed by the overwhelming interest in volunteering to present at 33C3. We’re thrilled to see that support and enthusiasm to contribute to this year’s event is as high as it ever been. Some speakers even refuse to accept a free ticket!

With this post, we want to do three things: Whet your appetite for our programme, ask for your help in putting together a collision-free schedule, and call for your workshops and self-organized sessions.

First, we present: The halfnarp https://halfnarp.events.ccc.de/.

In the halfnarp, you’ll find a list of all re-confirmed talks for each track (note: around 15 lectures are not yet re-confirmed, if you’re a speaker, please check your spam folder ;). You might notice that we offer a new track ‚Space‘, simply because we think all hackers should absolutely make space ‚work for them‘.

Second, we ask that you to help us put together a collision-free schedule that ‚works for you‘:

Select all lectures you would like to attend.
Press submit.
That’s it, there’s no step three. We’ll do the rest.

You can modify your choice at any time (don’t forget to press Submit again), or share it with your friends.

Third: The vast majority of submissions did not make it into the curated lecture programme. But that does not mean they wouldn’t be interesting to the crowd at 33C3. We invite you to present your ideas in lightning talks, gather in your assemblies or even get hands-on with a self organized session.

Foto: CC-BY 2.0, astro@spaceboyz.net.

Chaos Mentors: We make congress work for you!

Wed, 16 Nov 2016 13:08:32 +0000

It is that time of the year again – 33C3 is approaching and the Chaosmentors are getting ready to support new visitors during their first Congress experience.

For those who visit the Congress for the first time:

You always wanted to visit Chaos Communication Congress but worry about getting the best out of the experience? You are interested in computers, technology, hacking, privacy, free speech and perhaps just need pointing in the right direction?

We are the „Chaospatinnen“ (chaos mentors) and we welcome you to the Chaos Communication Congress. We encourage you to participate in 33C3 this year and we will do our upmost to help you to have an exciting, enjoyable and most of all memorable congress. As a „Chaospatenkind“ (chaos mentee) you’ll have a mentor and a group that suits you. Mentors are available in advance of the congress for your questions, welcome you on the first day and explore congress with you. Together, we will find talks and workshops that interest you as well as answer any questions or concerns ahead of congress.

How does it work?

Signup by the 10th December by emailing us with a little about yourself to our email-address chaospatinnen at lists dot ccc dot de. Please write to us as early as possible and tell us what you are interested in and why you want to come to the Congress for the first time. With this information, we can find you a suitable mentor, who will then contact you before congress.

Why do we do this?

We have always had a great time at the Congress for 1, 2, 10 or 30 years. But we know from our own experience how difficult the first step can be. However, once the first step is taken, great people, knowledge and unforgettable experiences await you. But it’s not only you who will learn something new, it’s also important for the existing community to open doors to new people and perspectives year after year. Many of the Chaospatinnen took this first step just like you are about to – So what are you waiting for? Get in touch!

For Mentors:

Of course, we are also looking forward to the support of friendly, experienced and reliable mentors. If you are interested in welcoming a group of new comers and taking care of them, please contact us by e-mail at chaospatinnen at listspunkt ccc punkt de.
Just tell us what you are looking for and we will be in touch.
Thanks in advance!

Arne, Anja, Ryan, starbug, Fiona, Johannes, Jan, Nixen

Twitter: @chaospatinnen
Chaos Mentors Assembly

Call for Participation: 32nd Chaos Communication Congress

Mon, 14 Sep 2015 11:43:52 +0000

32C3 — 32nd Chaos Communication Congress

December 27th through 30th 2015, CCH, Hamburg, Germany

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 others, and party together. We focus on topics such as information technology, digital security, making and breaking, and we engage in creative, sceptical discourse on the interaction between technology and society.

We’d love to see your submission for these tracks:

Failosophy
Art & Culture
Ethics, Society & Politics
Hardware & Making
Security
Science

Tracks

Failosophy

LOLWTF was yesterday. Today we learn from failures – both our own and those of others.

Failures are frowned upon and we don’t talk much about them. We’d rather cover something up, than to speak about it and share it. Many developers – regardless of whether their software is open-source or proprietary – don’t talk about their failures. This needs to change. Open-source developers who work on projects that affect everybody are usually ridiculed and criticized whenever security vulnerabilities are published. This doesn’t just hurt the community, but also the backers of the projects.

Software errors are unavoidable. This track is dedicated to those who have experience with failures, so that others can learn from their mistakes and experiences. Please speak about your shipwrecked projects and about your failures – you will be the bravest participants the event.

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 (without citing Deleuze) 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 a utopia worth living?

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, microcontroller 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 reactor 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 rocket!

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. But remember: If you break it, you fix it.

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

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 environment 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.

Longer slots are possible in principle. Please tell us the proposed length of your talk at the time of submission.

For lightning talks

In addition, there are 5 minute short talks (so-called Lightning Talks) for small ideas, projects, or rants. These will only be organised during the event. A formal submission upfront is not required, but they will be collected in a wiki again.

For projects, installations, workshops and other fun stuff

A formal submission not required. There will be a wiki again where requirements for space and other resources will be kept track of. 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 and represent the core of the congress. 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 being 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 completely comfortable with presenting in English, please present your lecture in German. Please also use the language of your presentation for its title, so as not to confuse any visitors.

Publication

Audio and video recordings of the lectures will be published online in various formats under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 DE) 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 a 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, 2015 (23:59 UTC): Deadline for
November 16th, 2015: Notification of
December 27th – 30th, 2015: 32nd Chaos Communication Congress

Online submissions only

All submissions of lectures have to be entered into our conference planning system, which is located at the following URL: https://frab.cccv.de/cfp/32c3

Please follow the instructions there. If you have any questions regarding the submission, you are welcome to contact us via mail at 32c3-content(at)cccv.de.

Towards a greener CCCamp?

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 20:46:33 +0000

When in this years’ camp’s opening ceremony hukl noticed that the on-ground generators actually are a little embarrassing for the hacker’s scene and the camp should in fact be self-sustaining, he struck an important chord: If not even the self-proclaimed tech elite is able to power its festival without burning fossiles, the IT-revolution will never be a very green one.

And it got us thinking where most of the electricity is spent on site (we will leave out central infrastructure for now), and we guess we’re basically heating wires and transformator coils. If we can eliminate on-tent demand for those power-consumers, we can get rid of miles of extension cords, inefficient chargers and most important: the noisy and smelly generators.

The average participant needs power to charge phone and notebook, illuminate the tent and it’s surroundings, play music and refrigerate beers or (baby) milk. None of this actually needs AC power.

After being thunderstruck at CCCamp15, via „powlpaul“

Ultrabright LEDs lasting a week on an off-the-shelf power brick are dead cheap by now and from our experience even need some shades to be comfortable.
Looking ahead four years to the next camp, an average notebook computer may even run on the power you brought in its battery from home – we’re not so sure about your smart phone, though ;). However, there’s no need to have everyone re-convert the 230 V we just transverted, back down to 5 V, when we can just provide USB outlets powered by Power walls or their future competitors. They could be pre-charged with solar power and neatly distributed around the camp ground.
Laptops and other devices that do not last a whole camp might also be charged&locked at central charging stations. Since virtually all chargers convert to DC, an exhaustive set of plugs and a variable regulator can take care of all devices, including your power bricks.
For the day to day refrigerating needs, one or some centralized cooling sources helps saving energy, as well. A coin locker system where each slot can take a six pack of beer will surely do.
There is a whole tinkerer scene building urban sound systems running on batteries that fit in a child’s waggon. We doubt you can’t find a way to annoy everyone around you with loud 90ies techno without a wall plug socket.
Other festivals offer deposits returned if you return you trash. We might do the same with power, if you feed clean energy into our grid. Maybe you can have your toddlers walk in a treadmill?
If you manage to operate your whole village infrastructure without our electricity, you will be placed on the glorious environmental heroes list.

We have not yet fully explored, how to improve our central infrastructure in NOC, lecture halls and sanitary installations. More aspects and ideas that might help reduce our environmental impact are welcome in the comments.

While it might seem unrealistically to operate the whole CCCamp 2019 independently of external and fossile energy sources, we can at least challenge ourselves to dedicate half or even more of the camp site DC and generator free and be a good example not only to outdoor festivals.

Do you have thoughts on that?

Bus Transit from Camp to Gransee and vice versa

Tue, 11 Aug 2015 14:56:28 +0000

There are finally more information on the timetables of the transit busses Gransee <-> Camp. We have published them here:

https://events.ccc.de/camp/2015/wiki/Location#Additional_Shuttles

To cover the travel expenses you will be asked for a donation of about three euros. It can be paid at the designated table located somewhere around the entrance. Thanks!

Attention: The busses only drive one-way!