31c3
31c3 Finished 21 days, probably enough for me to get past the conference high, but also enough time for me to catch up on almost all of the talks. All of the talks from 31c3 and most of the other congresses have been put online at media.ccc.de .
I took notes during Congress, but I had a hard time turning them into a post. If anyone wants to see my notes I am sure they could appear. Instead here are some thoughts.
Congress is Europe's largest temporary art installation. The CCH is a simply massive building, after 5 days of wandering around the I am still not sure I saw everything. It wasn't until day 4 of Congress that I realised the floor numbers were not floor numbers, but actually the Saal you were closest to. The ones and twos I could see around me were not helpful directions.
The building was augmented by the CCC to make it a home for hackers. The lights were dimmed, there were blinkenlights in every corner and just to make things even better there seemed to be a pop up interactive installation at random intervals. A pneumatic tube system was run around the ground floor of the building.
Of course there were talks 12 hours of the day, but the talks were streamed later. There were too many things that could only be found in the 4 days of Congress to sit in a full lecture theatre.
Instead we held court at our table in the international hackerspace village. Hung around with the crazy cooks in the Food Hacking Base , argued politics in Noisy Square and wandered the cavern is a daze.
At night(due to the lighting it was hard to tell when that was) we would be at our table hacking on something super cool, or hiding in the amazing nightclub.
It is probably impossible to describe congress, there is just too much happening. It is probably unfair to try and give someone else a picture, the only real way to know what it is like is to experience it.
Join us next year.