TL;DR: Ask everyone who you can see in your lens for their permission before taking a picture or video! If someone asks you to delete a photo they might be in, or put away your camera, please do so!

Each congress is a huge social event, a great time many people want to remember and share with their friends. Thanks to smartphones and social media, photography in public places increases year after year.

Some of you in attendance may be very accustomed to environments where taking pictures and videos in public areas is common place. The 30C3 is not one of those places. For a variety of reasons, …

There was a time when we put all user-generated community-driven crowdsourced events under the label “workshops”. We said that a workshop need not be an event with hands-on and making, it’s just something that happens at a special time and place, outside of the big halls.

For the 30c3, we’ve added 3 new REALLY BIG rooms (Hall D-F) in addition to the halls we used last year (Hall 13-14) just for your events. We also chose a more appropriate name for everything that is organized by you: “Self-organized Sessions“.

It doesn’t matter whether you want to give an introduction into your favorite …

Is your preorder not marked as paid, but you transferred the money last week or earlier? Mail us right now and be sure to provide transaction metadata (name of account holder, account number, sort code). We may not be able to help you with your failed preorder on site, so please make sure you have your tickets before going to the cash desk (or be prepared to buy a ticket on site).

If you’re planning to buy a congress ticket on site, please make sure you bring enough cash as we cannot accept any other kind of payment.

TL;DR: Please set up a congress everywhere near you, invite your neighbors and take part in C.H.A.O.S.!

Remember when we met in Berlin at the bcc? The 25C3 was when we first stuck those pesky signs on the door that read “Sold out, we’re sorry”. The building was already incredibly packed and we couldn’t let anyone in anymore. This inspired the concept of “congress everywhere” which debuted at the 26C3. The theme of that congress was “Here be Dragons”, so the idea to expand the fun of the congress beyond the bcc was called “Dragons everywhere”.

But what was this notion of “congress everywhere”? …

“You can create art and beauty on a computer.” The quote has been derived from Steven Levy’s famous hacker ethic in his book »Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution« – published in 1984, the debut year of the Chaos Communication Congress at Bürgerhaus Eidelstedt in the Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg.

30 years later »Art & Beauty« (»Kunst und Schönheit«) – its ironic twist entirely unfolding in German language – is one of five content tracks in the conference program. You can’t overlook it in the Fahrplan –  the purple colour coding is as weird as the naming is misleading.

The particular …

TL;DR: Please get to the CCH by 25th/26th with your assembly setup if possible

Beat the crowds and start building your assembly on the 25th! (Day -1). It makes loading so much easier for all of us and gives you time to make sure you have everything you need. Why get stuck in traffic around and inside the building? If you arrive early enough on the 25th, you may even be able to drive right into the unloading hall!

If you’re unloading a vehicle with equipment or other stuff you plan to use at the 30C3, put <a …

We of the “Chaoswelle“, the Amateur Radio operators of the Chaos Computer Club and our 30C3 assembly are bringing a very special piece of hardware: A Radome!  We plan to place it on the roof of the CCH. But we won’t tell you what’s hidden underneath.

The radome is about 4 Meters (13 ft.) in diameter and was formerly used by the US to listen to “hostile neighboring countries”. Today, it belongs to the Stakenburg Observatory who is graciously loaning it to us for the 30C3.

Dear Congress Visitors!

You’re tired of running around the Congress on the Schnitzeljagd (sounds like it’s fun!) or didn’t get a place? You’re like knocking your head on problems? Then we might offer something interesting for you!

Grab a few friends and join our capture the flag competition. These so called CTFs are hacking competitions in which participants solve various challenges – all based around gaining access to remote machines by exploiting vulnerable binaries, solving mathematical problems and completing various other tasks. This CTF will be run in “Jeopardy” style, i.e. challenges …

Angels are the voluntary auxiliary carbon compounds making the whole congress possible. They run everything: introduction of speakers, audio/video streams and recordings, data, electricity and phone networks, bars, and even emergency services.

What makes being an angel so special, you may wonder. Let us answer this with a question: Are you able to run an event with thousands of visitors, creative minds, eager to discuss, explore and most of all: create?

Join the angels and find out! Doing so, you will join a community as old as the Congress itself. Since the very first Congress in 1984, …

For the 30C3 we have designed a scavenger hunt for hackers and geeks. You will be challenged with puzzles and tasks including writing code, printing 3D objects, solving riddles and much, much more… The hunt will take place on the second day of the congress (28th of December) from 2pm to around 8pm and is made for about 10 teams competing with each other. A team should consist of 3 to 6 members. All you need is a computer, a twitter and email account and a blog of your choice (soup, tumblr, etc.) for documentation purposes.

If you like challenging riddles and games, write to info (at) …

German summary: Unbedingt Mehrfachsteckdosen mitbringen! Außerdem: Cat5-Kabel, Lampen für Eure Assembly, Telefone, Werkzeug, etc…

Distributing power on 30C3 requires a lot of planning and effort, and of course a truckload of equipment. This year the setup consists of 5 kilometers (km) of CEE compliant three-phase and 8km of 230V/16A power cabling, resulting in a total of 13km of cables needed to distribute power at the venue. To connect all the cables there are also about 100 three-phase distributors needed, 25 of them being “big” ones with 63 amperes. On top of this power backbone we will …