This year is different. There are no official tracks and therefore no official call for paper. Thats why only the local CCC Clubs (erfas) offer talks.
A lot of these talks are held by people that are closely related to the CCC. I expect that once the congress is taking place offline again, there will be a official track with selected talks.
Also please note that the ccc was founded in the TAZ headquarter on the table that previously belonged to the Komune 1. CCC was political from day one. I maybe wasn't so present in the earlier days but as "the internet" got more intertwined with politics the CCC followed.
> here are no official tracks and therefore no official call for paper. Thats why only the local CCC Clubs (erfas) offer talks.
There was a CfP process and speakers could pick one or more channels they'd like their content to be with (channels are not just individual Erfas too, many streams are run by many different groups together), and the channels coordinated who picks up what talk. At least the channel where I have insight in the process, the majority of talks is by people who aren't "members". So while there are no "main stages", the other channels are open to all (just as many usually are at congress).
To save somebody else a Google search: taz is a left-leaning daily newspaper in Germany, and kommune 1 was a student community against conservative thought.
I have no problem about it being left biased. That's was always like that. What makes me sad is how left became "lifestyle left" and consequently the "lifestyle left" became too present in the CCC congress.
This point is being made each year again and again, that it is getting more and more political. I also had that impression myself.
However, I was surprised to see some actual statistics that it was already political right from the beginning (sorry, no ref, I barely remember).
And there are always also a lot of technical talks. It is not really phased out. Maybe just some of the political talks get more attention. Or the attention to political content increases. Or maybe my own attention to political topics, and I just ignored that earlier. But when you look for technical content (at least on a regular C3), there is plenty.
I believe the argument isn't that there was zero politics before, but that it was creative/technical, and oh, we also have some political talks. And now it's politics, and oh, yeah, we still have a few technical talks.
Inviting a member of parliament just to talk about being a member of parliament is indeed a bit weird. The CCC has always been a political club but airing a 60 minute ad for an individual politician is indeed a new quality that will certainly be discussed inside the club afterwards. https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021/talk/358/
I'm depressed about rC3. I totally get that we can't meet up in person and hack all day but this year I've been so unexcited about rC3 that I didn't even bother to get a (free) ticket.
Of course, I value everybody's enthusiasm towards continuing a tradition. I'm happy the scene continues to do their best and I'm grateful to be able to listening in the talks.
But it still feels off. The congress and other chaos events are so much more than what the live streams portait. It's exhibition halls full of nerds. Waves of applauses and cheering of everyone's excitement. Pixelflut, tschunk, blinking LEDs and having an awesome time with my haxor friends for 3 days a year.
Fingers crossed that we can meet in person next year!
I liked club music okay, but had never experienced a proper German 8(12?)x18" thumping club system until CCC. I went back to America and built my own folded horn, 6kW system after that, but it's still not the same..
yeah agreed. The disco areas they had in 2019, the sound was so super crisp. I wish I could reproduce the high fidelity clicking they played in some tracks
Some related events took place normally this year, e.g. Camp++. Hackerspaces in some cities are also active, open and provide some of that atmosphere.
Don't passively expect the real Congress to come back (I think it's dead). Work towards finding substitute events that suit you instead, they will grow and eventually replace what Congress used to be.
There is no reason to assume that the meatspace Congress is dead. It's no more dead than any other event with large crowds. The demand is there and the will to organize it is there as well.
Thanks a lot :)
We are thinking about opensourcing. Not really any experience with it. It's quite easy to build yourself (ESP32 with EDA and heartrate attached).
Can ask the hw team for the schematics (or just the sensing setup, I guess easy to replicate with most embedded platforms).
We might still have a couple of bands in the lab somewhere ... If you have a cool idea what to use it for, could send one out. (Yet, might take a while before I know, Just ping me by mail).
When it was still on-location, many people focussed on interacting with other folks, having a drink (see: Tschunk) rather than stand in line to get into one of the Leipzig trade fair halls. Think of it as a big makerspace (Back in Hamburg, both activities were generally intermingled, due to that location being more approachable for such a "living room" atmosphere)
> Just me or are the talks this year mostly in German?
The German talks appear to be largely political, concerning issues one probably wouldn't care about anyways if one does not speak German. For instance there's a talk about making Hamburg ad-free.
With few exceptions the things that may be interesting to an international audience are in English.
Readit News
Recordings: https://media.ccc.de/c/rc3-2021
Relive: https://streaming.media.ccc.de/rc3/relive
Tickets (none available anymore): https://tickets.events.ccc.de/RC3-21/
There are very few technical "hacking" conferences anymore (i.e. not tied to a particular topic, e.g. Linux)
A lot of these talks are held by people that are closely related to the CCC. I expect that once the congress is taking place offline again, there will be a official track with selected talks.
Also please note that the ccc was founded in the TAZ headquarter on the table that previously belonged to the Komune 1. CCC was political from day one. I maybe wasn't so present in the earlier days but as "the internet" got more intertwined with politics the CCC followed.
There was a CfP process and speakers could pick one or more channels they'd like their content to be with (channels are not just individual Erfas too, many streams are run by many different groups together), and the channels coordinated who picks up what talk. At least the channel where I have insight in the process, the majority of talks is by people who aren't "members". So while there are no "main stages", the other channels are open to all (just as many usually are at congress).
EDIT: CfP announcement for reference https://events.ccc.de/2021/11/10/rc3-2021-meta-cfp/
I have no problem about it being left biased. That's was always like that. What makes me sad is how left became "lifestyle left" and consequently the "lifestyle left" became too present in the CCC congress.
However, I was surprised to see some actual statistics that it was already political right from the beginning (sorry, no ref, I barely remember).
And there are always also a lot of technical talks. It is not really phased out. Maybe just some of the political talks get more attention. Or the attention to political content increases. Or maybe my own attention to political topics, and I just ignored that earlier. But when you look for technical content (at least on a regular C3), there is plenty.
Reading from your linked summary, I get the impression it's not just about being a member of the parliament
Deleted Comment
Of course, I value everybody's enthusiasm towards continuing a tradition. I'm happy the scene continues to do their best and I'm grateful to be able to listening in the talks.
But it still feels off. The congress and other chaos events are so much more than what the live streams portait. It's exhibition halls full of nerds. Waves of applauses and cheering of everyone's excitement. Pixelflut, tschunk, blinking LEDs and having an awesome time with my haxor friends for 3 days a year.
Fingers crossed that we can meet in person next year!
I liked club music okay, but had never experienced a proper German 8(12?)x18" thumping club system until CCC. I went back to America and built my own folded horn, 6kW system after that, but it's still not the same..
Don't passively expect the real Congress to come back (I think it's dead). Work towards finding substitute events that suit you instead, they will grow and eventually replace what Congress used to be.
There's no way any other event could be a in-person event right now.
Talk info: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-fem/talk/RXUW8B/ Stream Link: https://streaming.media.ccc.de/rc3/fem
Work was also presented at Siggraph Asia the last weeks, https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3476122.3484847
Can ask the hw team for the schematics (or just the sensing setup, I guess easy to replicate with most embedded platforms).
We might still have a couple of bands in the lab somewhere ... If you have a cool idea what to use it for, could send one out. (Yet, might take a while before I know, Just ping me by mail).
https://c3lingo.org/
The German talks appear to be largely political, concerning issues one probably wouldn't care about anyways if one does not speak German. For instance there's a talk about making Hamburg ad-free.
With few exceptions the things that may be interesting to an international audience are in English.
Top right hand side has a well hidden pulldown to download .json, .ics etc