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I haven't been to any of the other conferences mentioned above but I attended CCC four times so far (twice as a speaker). For me, one the most striking and ple

I haven't been to any of the other conferences mentioned above but I attended CCC four times so far (twice as a speaker). For me, one the most striking and pleasant things of the CCC is that it's organized ENTIRELY by volunteers and financed by entrance/membership fees (as far as I know) so there is NOT ONE commercial sponsor to be found. I really really value this highly because today there are almost no places left that commerce/business hasn't invaded yet (most IT conferences feel like marketing events of FB/Google/Microsoft/...) I haven't seen many (any?) conferences / congresses of this scale that are organized like this (the Burning man might be an example of a similar event, not sure how they finance it though). And of course the people are amazing and very friendly, and it's a safe space to really be yourself. Also, they really try everything they can to make everyone feel at home, there's even an entire floor dedicated to children (with projects, games, workshops, theather, ...) and one day dedicated especially to young hackers. Where else can you find this kind of stuff?

nly 11y ago
Their video recording and streaming efforts are also world frickin class. They put commercially sponsored venues to shame in this category alone. Source: been twice, watched live this year, downloaded all the talks in HD a few days after it ended.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  I was pretty much living on German time during the conference, despite watching it from Australia. Even on a fairly pathetic connection I was able to stream the SD streams during the day, and the HD streams during the night. I was even able to fall back to audio-only via Skype for about an hour when they had technical issues at the start of the streaming. World frickin' class, indeed.
thomersch_ 11y ago
There are commercial sponsors for the Congress, e.g. for some of the network equipment, because it would be uneconomical to buy network equipment and using it only once a year. Nevertheless, sponsorship doesn't play such a big role, there is no advertisement on the venue.

nly 11y ago

Their video recording and streaming efforts are also world frickin class. They put commercially sponsored venues to shame in this category alone. Source: been twice, watched live this year, downloaded all the talks in HD a few days after it ended.

voltagex_ 11y ago
I was pretty much living on German time during the conference, despite watching it from Australia. Even on a fairly pathetic connection I was able to stream the SD streams during the day, and the HD streams during the night. I was even able to fall back to audio-only via Skype for about an hour when they had technical issues at the start of the streaming. World frickin' class, indeed.

thomersch_ 11y ago

There are commercial sponsors for the Congress, e.g. for some of the network equipment, because it would be uneconomical to buy network equipment and using it only once a year. Nevertheless, sponsorship doesn't play such a big role, there is no advertisement on the venue.