The 25C3 twitter has been abuzz with questions regarding the ticket situation. We hope this post answers your most pressing concerns.

• If you are traveling to the conference from outside of Europe you will get a ticket. We know many of you were affected by snowstorms in the Midwestern USA and we will be saving tickets for you.
• If you are already en route to the Congress, we will have tickets available for you.
• Otherwise, please do not travel to the Congress if you have not yet left.
• Approximately 3,000 tickets for the entire conference have been sold. The exact number will be available on Day …

This year, we will continue a tradition started last year with the “spontaneous simultaneous” interpretation of the Hacker Jeopardy. As of tomorrow, we will interpret one event in Saal 1 each day.

On day 2, we will give it a try with the Fnord News Show (11pm). On day 3, we will continue with the traditional Hacker Jeopardy (11pm as well). This is always a lot of fun for the participants, the audience, and the interpreters as well. On day 4, the finale will be the Security Nightmares 2009 at 4:30 pm.

If you would rather listen to bad English than perfect German, you can dial in to 8101 using …

It seems that the 25C3 is more popular than expected. Tickets have been sold out, as of December 27th, 7:14 pm. If you are planning to attend the 25C3 and are not here yet, please consider to watch the streams of our lectures at home rather than outside in the cold in front of the bcc.

The streams can be accessed here:

http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/wiki/Documentation

Imagine a swarm of small insect-like robots crawling around at the Congress (YouTube video). At least, about 20 of them will do so on stage in hall 3 on day 2 at 18:30. They are part of Formica, an open-source hard and software project about very affordable small robots initiated by a group of students from Southampton University. One of them, Jeff Gough, has brought his robot farm here. His hands-on approach combines electronics, mechanics and art and since it is completely open, everybody is invited to participate and produce more crawling robots.

If you’re in Berlin, why not get a head start on meeting fellow congress attendees at the Pre-Event Dinner at Maredo in Berlin-Mitte. We have 65 seats reserved under a heated atrium.

Arriving a little later? From 21:30 (that’s 9:30 PM) there is an all-you-can eat Late-Night special on the excellent salad buffet for only 3.50 euro!

After dinner, we’ll all head over to get our tickets for tomorrow! Please register here or call +49 179 3966141 for more information!

The spaceship has landed, a nice gentle coating of fairy dust has fallen on the bcc and the groundwork for the 25C3 is nearing completion! Here are a couple of quick updates and helpful hints:

• The wireless internet is up and running. (We’re blogging from it now!)
• Follow the 25C3 Twitter for the latest news and updates.
• We strongly recommend that you purchase your ticket TODAY. The cash desk is open!
• This year, there are two lines to purchase tickets. If you are purchasing a regular ticket, use the Fast Line. If you are not purchasing a regular ticket, use the Regular Line.
• Become an angel! …

… some already asked for it: The Fahrplan (schedule) as a handy A4-sized PDF for print-outs (fold it in the middle). So you can now use the lonely moments under the Christmas tree to figure out what lectures to attend – even without using a computer.

But there is no need to get your printer-drivers back to working – a print-out will be waiting for you at the entrance of 25C3.

To give you an idea on the “look’n’feel” and the wonderful arrangement of the contents, we compiled a small PDF-Preview of the Proceedings (2,5 MB, Acrobat 4.0). It contains front- & backcover, indexes, lecture-pages and the beginning the paper section.

The Proceedings will be for sale from the day congress starts for 23 Euros at the Information Desk (and via …

Guess who's bringing the Party Mode to the 25C3. You are!

We told you about the great speakers and their incredible talks. We told you about the awesome workshops. It seems like we’re missing something, doesn’t it? Oh! That’s right! Where the parties are! Thanks to your continuing contributions to the 25C3 wiki the parties have nowhere to hide!

Fortunately, the parties at c-base are always easy to find. As usual, the c-base will be hosting the afterparty and throwing an awesome New Year’s event. And as usual, Phonoelit is back to get the 25C3 party mode kicked off correct. Join …

Bre and Astera practicing for their Kartoffelpuffer workshop

In addition to the great talks and scheduled events, there are really great workshops that any person, group, or transnational delegation can host at the 25C3. If you’ve been to a BarCamp, you’ll feel right at home in a workshop. They’re another way to actively participate in the 25C3!

Best of all, there’s still lots of room! Take that talk, project or idea you’ve been thinking about and turn it into a really awesome workshop! There’s lots of prime time space available in Meeting Room C04 and lots of off-hours time …

Runs on open source. Srsly.

There’s very little hiding from participants at the 25C3. They’re even working hard to shed much needed light and openness on something most of us use every day—our mobile phones!

There’s a lot of activity surrounding GSM—the Global System for Mobile communications at the 25C3. While GSM is a well documented standard used by most of the world’s mobile phones, the hardware and software it runs on are largely hidden from public view.

“Nonetheless, in recent years there are a number of different projects working on driving a wedge of openness into this …

It’s time to glam up your lecture-descriptions!

Starting this year, every lecture’s long description will be printed in the Congress’ Proceedings. This was decided in the very last days.
So please try to enhance the abstract and description of your lecture in the particular Pentabarf-Record until:

 Tomorrow, Sunday, 17:23:42 UTC

 (9am PST; 12pm EST; 20pm MSK // 1am CNST; 3am AEST)

The long-description may even be one or two pages long, especially if you don’t submit a paper. Even your short-bio and, if given, a public photo will be printed.

If you are about to make a lightning-talk about your …