Attending 38c3

Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve every year the Chaos Computer Club Congress takes place. This year it was called 38c3: Illegal Instructions. With the support of my employer Dynatrace I had the chance to travel to Hamburg and attend the congress there between 27. and 31. of December.

I’ve already attended the congress once in 2016 for the 36c3, where it was in Leipzig, and this year I wanted to be there again and a friend of mine joined me. After lunch time, where we enjoyed some nice Asian food in on of our favourite restaurant in our hometown, on the 26th of December we hopped on the ICE train for a 9 hour trip. There I spent the time finishing some open to-do’s, worked on this website project and enjoyed the trip with 1 or 2 mate drinks. As you might know mate is a classic soft drink in the hacking culture. It’s special taste and the contained caffeine result in the hype and the massive consume in the community.

#Arrival

After some sleep we went to the Congress Center Hamburg in the next morning, where already a big queue built up. But there was a surprise for us. The queue wasn’t managed with metal barriers, but self managed with the support of some few angels. There where some hundreds of people in the queue inside and outside of the congress building, waiting to check in.

One more thing was obvious right from the start: The general open culture. You could see that a wide range of people are attending the congress. There was quite a range of people that were part of the LGBTIQ+ community, obvious nerds, “normal people” and all the people had some thing, that they were really passionate about. Everybody just can be who they are, they can connect and bring their ideas and stories together. I think this is great.

#Angels

Now I want to take some time to write about the angel system on the congress. The congress is completly self organized and most of the responsibilities and needed duties are managed and fulfilled internally by the Heaven and Angels. The Heaven manages the angels and the shift and Angels are the people at the congress, who volunteer to keep the congress running. There are a lot of things, which need to be done.

Some examples:

• CERT (Chaos Emergency response team): the medical and technical team that handle internal emergencies and make sure all people feel well and everything is safe and that the fire protection is ensured without needing external emergency services
• LOG - the logistics team, that handles empty bottle containers, garbage and a lot more
• VOC - the Video Operation Center team, that handles recording and streaming infrastructure
• POC - the Phone Operations Center team, that manages a self built up phone service inside the congress and many many more

#Talks

During the congress there were a lot of talks that attendees could attend with a variety of topics.

• cyber security
• net politics
• software
• hacking
• ethics
• science

and much more.

The talks always started at a friendly time for tech enthusiasts. At around 11, just before lunch time and took on till the early morning hours.

I could now list a lot of specific talks here, but I encourage you to take a look yourself on the streaming platform of the CCC - https://media.ccc.de/c/38c3.

#Cadus Talk

But I want to mention one single talk. “Als die Kommentarspalten brannten – 11 Monate Einsatz in Gaza”. A talk from the Cadus organization who acts as a medical and technical humanitarian organization in war areas. They told us what they did, what they experienced and what bad feedback they received, for their help. You can imagine the big applause afterwards for there work.

Link to the talk: https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-als-die-kommentarspalten-brannten-11-monate-einsatz-in-gaza

#Congress - there’s so much to see

On the congress was a lot to see. I can’t tell you about everything and I think we just saw a small piece of everything. There’s so much to-do and to experience. You could join “assemblies”, where you can get help with your own projects. Doesn’t matter if it is about hardware hacking, coding a project or just nerding around with people and organisations.

You could see people driving around with motorized Bobycars or drink crates (with LEDs for sure 😄). There was a toilet rave (which we sadly didn’t know about) and if you’d like you could party till the morning. But always remember the most important rule:

6-2-1

6 hours of sleep

2 meals a day

1 shower a day

#Other activities

One two days we had other plans for the evening. One day a friend, we know, showed us his favourite bar. “Zum tanzenden Einhorn” (To the dancing unicorn), which was a pretty cool and nerdy bar in the City.

Another day we visited the famous Miniatur Wunderland Museum. In currently over 1600m² they built whole cities, sceneries, famous buildings and other things. But the catch is, that there everything is moving. There are small people, that move. Trains, boats, trucks and cars everywhere. You can trigger certain events with buttons and they even built a working F1 track.

#End

That was the 38c3 with all it’s beauty. Tired but grateful we drove home on the 30.12 with the new nightjet and enjoyed the new “mini cabins”.